Dear HCN,
Although I was pleased to see an HCN column touching upon immigration issues (HCN, 12/23/02: Holding open the door to the good life up north), Michelle Nijhuis painted a very one-sided picture of U.S. immigration policy.

She submits that allowing illegal immigrants to use the matricula card as a form of legal identification would be a "surprisingly effective solution to the international deadlock" over immigration policy.

This is nonsense. Allowing the matricula card to be used as legal identification condones the breaking of federal law. This would not only mock U.S. laws, it would insult all potential immigrants who patiently await to try to enter the U.S. through legal channels.

Rather than opening our borders to all comers in an effort to assuage feelings of guilt, one might ask if it is morally just to allow generations of Americans to inherit a nation with the industrialized world’s largest population and highest population growth rate.

What will the West and our nation look like with an additional 150 million people? Do we wish to bestow this type of legacy upon our children and grandchildren? I look to the writers of HCN to raise and promote these types of discussions, rather than suggest it is morally corrupt to curb immigration quotas.
Jeffrey Jacobs
Alexandria, Virginia