The President's Immigration Plan

Letter to the Editor of the Los Angeles Times 
Readers React: Republicans Play Politics with Immigrants' Lives

By Carolyn Crandall

To the editor: The largest piece of the president's plan would be open to immigrants who've lived here for at least five years, have no serious crimes on their record and are parents of legal residents. There is nothing in the president's immigration plan that forces people to come forward; rather, it's available for those who want to come out of the shadows.

These people are already here, going to school, working, paying taxes, owning businesses and driving. So why have the Republicans not deported them already instead of waiting around for a judge to halt the president's plan?

The Republicans go on and on about family values only to turn around and advocate and cheer for separating families, with no plan of how to round all these people up and ship them wherever. They also do not say just how they intend to pay for this, nor do they tell us their plan for all of the children left behind.

But this is the way the Republicans in Washington do their business: complain, attack and condemn, but never offer a workable solution. The hypocrisy is suffocating.

Carolyn Crandall, Camarillo