Put U.S. troops to work guarding our borders

Crossing certain foreign borders illegally can have hazardous ramifications. For example, North Korea, 12 years hard labor; Iran, indefinite detainment; Afghanistan, liquidation by shooting; Saudi Arabia, jail; China, never heard from again; and Cuba, rot in political prison.

Crossing the U.S. border illegally you will get a job, a driver's license, Social Security card, welfare, food stamps, credit cards, subsidized rent or a loan to buy a house, free education, free health care, millions of dollars worth of public documents printed in your own language and the right to carry your country's flag while you protest that you don't get enough respect.

Why have Asian and European immigrants been so meticulously screened at our eastern/western borders over the past two centuries while our northern/southern borders have been virtual “free pass” zones for the past two decades? Not only does the U.S. military have the ability to move hundreds of thousands of troops anywhere on the planet in a matter of hours, so also these selfsame troops could, and should, be guarding the homefront on a perpetual basis, as well as departing any/all illegal immigrants as they are routinely apprehended.

The United States s a democratic Republic governed by constitutional rule of law; not a Third World banana republic with a “laws are made to be broken” mentality.

Wendell Carr

Ottumwa