SUPREME COURT
Education/police duality can’t be trusted
I stand with former district attorney J. Tom Morgan (“New legal rights for children a good step,” Opinion, June 21). As a retired police officer, I have sat more times than I can count on the police side of the table in situations such as those considered by the Supreme Court in the J.D.B. case.
I was concerned years back when schools took on the police function (with harmless-sounding names such as “school resource officer”) within the educational structure, which seemed to me at odds with their standing in loco parentis.
I suspected then and continue to believe that the underlying motive was control — more than the safety of children entrusted to their care.
I agree with the outcome in the instant case, while continuing to distrust the education/law enforcement duality now common in our public schools.
Jim Miller, Hoschton
IMMIGRATION
U.S. can’t handle woes of illegal immigrants
As an immigrant who used to prepare immigration applications, I wish to respond to the article “If immigrants flee, schools may take hit” (Metro, June 19).
Illegal immigration must be curbed. The sensible way to help people who are here illegally is to urge billionaires abroad to work with their leaders to stop population growth, and educate and improve life for their own citizens.
Immigration advocates must realize that the U.S. is overwhelmed with high unemployment, budget deficits and numerous other problems affecting Americans of all racial groups. Many experts here and abroad have warned that our fiscal crisis is worse than Greece’s. A quasi-moratorium should be enacted to address our existing problems.
Yeh Ling-Ling, executive director, Alliance for a Sustainable USA
IMMIGRATION
A solution that has led to even bigger problems
It’s with amusement and some bitterness that I note the real-time problems that (apparently) no one in the zealous, theory-driven anti-immigrant group foresaw. For all the hype and numbers, this new law has succeeded in creating a much larger problem than the one(s) it sought to solve. You can smell it rotting in fields all around the state.
This is the nub of a larger paradox. While the GOP (and its subset tea party) lambasts “Obamanomics,” it was the party under whose leadership the recession was created; which has guided increasing numbers of state legislatures to gut their budgets in vital areas like education; and, most ironically of all, has cast itself as the pragmatic party.
In Georgia, where’s the pragmatism? Of course: It’s in Gov. Nathan Deal’s idea of employing criminal probationers to do the farm labor that thousands of migrant (now migrated out of the state) workers used to do. Talk about great numbers, great math and great problem-solving.
Ricks Carson, Atlanta
