Apply the Golden Rule to immigrants

For those who want to throw the law-abiding illegal immigrants out of our country, please sit down with your mama and have her teach you the “Golden Rule.”

Who do you know who would work in our farm fields and harvest the food you and I eat to feed, clothe and house their family for minimum wage after they have withheld city, county, state and federal taxes and FICA from their check and then refuse to give them a driver’s license? Could you do this without some form of subsistence?

After trying to feed, clothe and house their family, how could they ever afford hundreds of dollars for a green card and travel expenses to Portland or all the fees and other expenses for citizenship for them and each member of their family in order to make all of them legal citizens? Why can’t these problems be resolved?

How would you like to be thrown in jail and then be deported for just trying to give your family a better life?

If our forefathers had treated our immigrating ancestors the way some of you want to treat these Mexican families, you might not be here.

Tom Gates

Salem