LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

PEA RIDGE — Keep it legal

To the Editor:

Once upon a time there was a little town in Arkansas, the natural state. The residents were a content bunch, working industriously, happily taking care of business and expanding those businesses.

Companies grew and some of the larger ones decided they needed more economical labor so they went outside of the U.S.

borders, recruited cheaper labor, transported them and put them to work.

Some of them would study, learn English and become citizens. These new people moved here legally, with jobs waiting. This worked out well and they were welcome.

However, soon their relatives and neighbors decided the United States streets were paved with gold. Some moved in legally with jobs waiting, still fine, and some illegally, not so fine. They didn’t bother to learn English, had no jobs waiting and couldn’t find work. With no jobs and more family on the way, what could they do?

The “do-gooders” said: “These unfortunate people need our help. It doesn’t matter they are illegal, don’t speak English and can’t get jobs, they need welfare.”

Welfare made life so much easier for the illegal residents, the charitable people decided moreshould be done. Anyone who thought it was getting to be too much was made to feel guilty and labeled selfish. Before long, they were settled in, eagerly accepting all the free gifts. Then the same generous people decided the invaders should also have free medical care and social security.

“It doesn’t matter they haven’t contributed, we’ll just make the legal, working residents pay for everything. So what if we bankrupt Social Security and Medicare, we’ll worry about that later.”

They’ve given the illegal residents money to live and bestowed unearned retirement. After paying their hospital bills, they decided to increase the taxes lawful citizens pay in order to subsidize those expenses and build more schools to teachnew offspring.

“We’ll increase the legal citizens’ taxes and everything will be fine. There is no need for the illegal to be a burden to their families.”

They’ll just be a burden to everyone else.

It’s not going to get better. This is such an opportunity, there will be additional immigration and they will have more children, all expecting the same hand-outs.

Increase the penalty for hiring illegal immigrants.

Stop all the free welfare and free medical. Youmight end up with enough funds to give health care and welfare to legal citizens that really need it and have paid into it.

Repeal the rule of automatic citizenship to all born here, unless the parents are citizens. Make it retroactive. I don’t want more taxes. We’ve worked all our lives for a comfortable retirement. I have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren I would rather “donate” to.

Enter the U.S. legally, speak English, have a job, pay taxes, become a citizen. Then and only then should their children born here be citizens. Antiquated laws should be rescinded. What part of illegal don’t the new people and the “do-gooders” understand?

BARBARA KOSSIECK Rogers, Ark.

Manhattan Declaration

To the editor:

Finally Christians have united in the Manhattan Declaration and agreed on fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and call upon our fellow citizens to join in defending them.

The Declaration affirms three truths: The sanctity of human life; the dignity of marriage as the union of husband and wife; and the rights of conscience andreligious liberty.

“Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

From America’s Declaration of Independence we learn the source of truth: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all menare created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable [God Given] Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Our Founding Fathers based America’s Bill of Rights on these God Given Rights.

President Lincoln affirmed these truths: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty,and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure ... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The Manhattan Declaration quotes from Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham jail: "There are just laws and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all ...One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly ... I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law."

Scripture admonishes us to, “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” but in matters of conscience we must, “Obey God rather than man.” Throughout history, the faithful have been imprisoned, thrown into lion’s dens and fiery furnaces, burned at the stake, stoned and crucified.

If your conscience leads you to “Obey God ratherthan man,” go to www.

ManhattanDeclaration.org.

Study the Declaration and add your name to the tens of thousands of brothers and sisters who were “Born for such a time as this.” ALLEN MERRITT Rogers, Ark.