Letter to the editor: American dream needs borders

There’s no American dream without a border. It marks the beginning of differences between what’s inside the boundary and what’s outside. Some of those differences are opportunities, some are the laws designed to protect the people within.

Without laws, a person’s assets might easily be exploited or stolen by others. Consider home ownership. Trespass laws forbid people from taking up residence in our homes without permission, even if accompanied by heartbreakingly innocent kids. However cruel that seems, all of us — including politicians and Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters who oppose constitutional immigration law — expect protection from a forced home invasion, even one involving illegal immigrants and their children.

Similar law has always applied at our borders.

I don’t know anyone opposed to legal immigration or valid asylum claims. Nor anyone unmoved by the misfortune of others, including our homeless and hungry. Most of us volunteer time and donate money to help the needy, but too many political parasites exploit them. They weaponize human heartbreak. They purposely fail to address immigration reform. And the very worst envision a land of handouts designed to deliver unconstitutional votes.

The obnoxious president most of us didn’t vote for is dead right. To doubt that is to permanently jeopardize our children’s standard of living. How? By condemning them to funding support for the unlimited number of asylum (some say “entitlement”) seekers that one increasingly radical political party would accept without regard to law.

An enforced border defines the start of the dream. Without it, America is just land to be squatted on.

Robert Szypulski

Penn Township, Westmoreland County