To the Editor:
I never knew that enforcement of our federal immigration laws was “despicable,” since I write as one whose grandparents were all immigrants, as well as my father, who came to this country at the age of 6.
However, my grandparents came here legally, and respected the laws of their soon-to-be adopted country, and neither was there an insanely generous welfare system to greet them, since they arrived in 1907, when there wasn’t even income tax to fodder the monster that our government has become.
We are most fortunate to live in a constitutional, representative republic, and not a democracy. The word “democracy” is not to be found in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, or the Constitution.
The founders of our country, who were also the framers of our Constitution, knew that democracies were not good models of government.
James Madison, who had an important role in writing the Constitution, was clearly aware of this, and in 1787, stated: “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property, and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
My late father, after becoming a citizen, wanted to do something for his adopted country, and, even prior to the U.S. entering World War II, he became a member of Company B, 328th Combat Team, 26th Infantry Division, U.S. Army. In the Battle of the Bulge, he was very seriously wounded, and spent two months in a field hospital, nearly dying from his wounds. When he recovered, and returned to duty on May 7, 1945, his unit assisted in the liberation of Gusen, which was the sister camp of Mauthausen, and he saw firsthand what a single-party, actual totalitarian regime could do, and no one needed to tell him about it.
But specters of the Third Reich aside, there is nothing wrong with enforcing the law, and those who do not like the law should work to change it, rather than vilifying federal officers who truly are brave.
Michael Fontes
West Tisbury
