Letters: The high price of border security

Re “Immigration bill gains support — at a price,” June 23

Add 20,000 more Border Patrol officers to protect us from poor people gambling with their lives and freedom, and several more drones to check it all out, and “we’ve practically militarized the border,” according to a pleased Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Add in the National Security Agency’s surveillance of all of us, a “kill list” that our president justifies as the equivalent of a SWAT team responding to a sniper (and that includes American citizens), the cyber-hacking of foreign governments, subpoenas of journalists’ records, the prosecution of whistle-blowers and the languishing of “cleared” prisoners still at Guantanamo Bay on hunger strikes, and it makes one wonder: Is this what we meant to become?

Nancy Palter

Los Angeles

There is sticker shock in the Senate over the immigration bill’s $46-billion price tag to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

Since there is general agreement that these are costs to control illegal immigration from Mexico, I must ask the question: What is Mexico doing to increase programs to prevent this problem, and at what price?

I would like to see evidence that both countries see this as a shared problem.

Wally Grayson

Santa Monica

I have a cheaper solution: The Republicans continuously speak of their affection for Ronald Reagan. So they should offer the same amnesty law as the one Reagan signed in 1986.

They can’t possibly resist.

Norwood Price

Burbank

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