I wanted to express that I took great offense at your Our Corner section in the May 12, 2010, edition of The Courier-Herald.

If you had read the entire Arizona bill, the bill enforces laws already a part of our American legal system for lawful entry into our country. Law-abiding United States of America citizens are required to have “papers” in our everyday lives. Want to cash a check, purchase gas, buy groceries, or provide identification to a law enforcement officer that requests it, is a law in this country. We already carry our papers proudly – a driver’s license. A Mexican driver’s license is for Mexico, not valid in the USA. Try going to Mexico and flashing your USA driver’s license to their police. Without proper entrance (passport) information, they can either arrest you, deport you or shoot you if you are not where you are supposed to be.

Without proper entrance papers, a person is not supposed to be here. Check out your history on Ellis Island. People had to be processed, legally, in order to enter into our country and become U.S. citizens. Those people you spoke of coming into our country over these past decades, took a lot of time and money to get here legally. They have all the privileges of being a U.S. citizen, including paying taxes, creating a new business, higher education and they had to learn the language of our country – English. They were proud to be Americans.

Prosecute those USA citizens who are using the illegals of any country for forced labor and slavery. You see, Brian, the more you let them come without the legal protection of being a citizen, the more exploited they become. People want a better life, but do they have the right to take away jobs in our own country from our own citizens and not pay taxes, contribute to communities, pay for all this help you want to give out? Try going to another country to work and see what you get. They don’t accommodate English; you learn their language. They don’t give free housing, free health services, free food and free to do whatever you want. Why should our country be ridiculed by people like you because we should accommodate them? Look at all of our own people who, in a down economy, are losing work to these illegals who are exploited by USA shady business owners who seem to be able to get away with it. Protect people coming to our country by lawful entry into it.

Many of us are tired of people like you who sit behind a desk, rumble about how bad our government is and you would give our freedoms and right to citizenship to people who knowingly enter this country without the proper authorization. I say to you, “Bone up on your Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, etc.” You will need to speak, read and write in several different languages if we, the people of the United States of America, who speak the language of the United States of America (which is English if you didn’t know), can’t stop people like you and newspapers like yours spouting “give everyone, everything they want and need.” The people who want things for nothing are not here to be Americans.

I really don’t expect you to respond, but if you wish to, you can meet me at my small business, located between two small local towns, that is struggling to keep five people employed. We have established laws in this country that, because of comments like yours, are not enforced and the rest of us pay for it.

Fight for my country and my rights – you better believe it.

Gail Bohnas

Buckley