Supporting legal immigration isn’t anti-Christian

Could a Christian support separating illegal alien families (Letter to Editor, June 20)? Absolutely! I’m a Christian and following is my logic based on biblical principle.

If an adult parent robs a bank, or commits some other crime, that parent will go to prison and be separated from his/her children. That will happen as the result of the parent’s criminal activity, not because a president’s administration is trying to be inhumane. Children suffer when their parents commit a crime. When illegal alien parents steal their way into the U.S., they become criminals. If you commit a crime, you are a criminal. Stealing is stealing whether it is money or a way into the country. Criminals are criminals for a variety of crimes, they get separated from their children, and the children suffer. That is a result of the parent’s criminal activity. If parents don’t want to be separated from their children, they should do things legally.

Adult parents who don’t commit crimes have no concern that their children will be separated from them. The Bible commands us to obey civil law. (Romans 13, 1 Peter 2)

Please understand I’m not opposed to immigration. You can tell by my last name that my ancestors immigrated from Ireland (six generations ago to be specific) or I wouldn’t be here today and writing this letter. But my ancestors entered the U.S. legally, the way all immigrants should.

Jim Carnahan

Baker City

Time to replace Walden with Jamie McLeod-Skinner

It’s time for a big change in our country’s leadership. I urge my fellow readers to learn about and vote in November for Jamie McLeod-Skinner to be our next U.S. representative.

Jamie has made a lifelong commitment to public service with a strong belief in people over politics. She’s working on the ground to meet our most important needs. For example, her top priority issue is a livable wage, and she has focused on global warming as “the biggest threat to our environment.”

An engineer and lawyer, she has both international experience and local elected service, working on water quality and other environmental and social issues. She says: “We must develop clean energy (solar, wind, geothermal) to create good-paying jobs and preserve our wilderness and natural resources. And shift tax incentives toward clean, sustainable energy systems and away from dirty fuels.”

In stark contrast, incumbent Greg Walden remains silent on the stagnant wages and the widespread poverty all around us, and on the damage already obvious from global warming.

Walden’s votes in Congress have gravely harmed us, from his approval of the disastrous Iraq War, up to his recent vote for egregious tax cuts for the wealthy and trillion-dollar deficits. He has even sidestepped and minimized the outrage over the separation of terrified, crying children, saying merely that it’s, “… another example of the need for reform in our immigration system.”

Walden is a member of a private club of wealthy elites, and we’re not invited in. It’s a rare town hall where he will even meet with us anymore.

But Jamie McLeod-Skinner will not leave us out in the cold. She eagerly welcomes us in to join the conversation and work together to solve the major problems that we face.

For starters, we will all have the chance to meet Jamie in person this coming Friday, June 29, at a meet-and-greet at the Baker Library, 2400 Resort St., from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., and then again at the Miners Jubilee on July 21.

Learn more and donate at JamieFor Oregon.com. And please be sure to vote in November.

Marshall McComb

Baker City