Enforce immigration laws

To the editor:Would Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton take a job for $8 an hour and give up Section 8 housing, food stamps, unemployment benefits, Medicaid, WIC and other welfare incentives, all of which $8 an hour would even begin to replace? What has Jetton offered his constituents in Wayne County since 2004?

At the $4-a-gallon gasoline predicted by summer, a worker driving 20 miles one way to work would have to pay two to three hours a day of his net pay just to get to and from work. Those "lazy Missourians," as Jetton called them, are in need of jobs that pay a living wage -- jobs that free-trade agreements took away from Missourians.

Politics, welfare and the loss of good jobs have left Southeast Missourians without much hope. Jobs that paid $4 an hour in 1969 should be paying $18 to $22 an hour today. But because of the influx of illegal aliens, wages have been suppressed.

From 1979 to 1982, there were two immigration investigators to cover the eastern half of Missouri, and they were usually assigned clerical duties or airport inspections. From 1983 to 1991, there were only three immigration investigators to cover four-fifths of downstate Illinois. I was one of the investigators.

The Immigration act of 1986 called for amnesty for 2 million illegal aliens. It resulted in amnesty for several million, because there weren't enough investigators to look into the fraud. Enforcement was thwarted by bureaucracy and politics. I hope legislation proposed in Missouri passes and is enforced.

JACK L. PARKS, Jonesboro, Ill.