If you are a critic of the new illegal alien law passed in desperation by the citizens of Arizona, I challenge you to read the following speech made by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 expressing his ideas about immigrants and being an American:

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American … There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag … We have room for but one ­language here, and that is the English language … And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

A recent estimate of the cost of ­supporting illegals (education, welfare, Medicaid, prisons, etc.) is $338.3 billion dollars a year. When have so many Americans forgotten the meaning of the word “illegal”?

Genette Stripling

Whispering Pines