Two separate, yet related, columns caught my attention. The first was Froma Harrop’s column about the border (“The democracy hangs on an orderly border,” The Columbian, Jan. 11). I volunteer to help teach legal immigrants who want to become citizens. They work very hard to understand our system of government, often more so than native-born Americans. And though they wouldn’t say it, they are no doubt frustrated, as am I, that they jumped through so many legal hoops to get here and then watch thousands skirting the law every day. If the migrants who cross the Rio Grande so brazenly disobey the law, what makes any of us think that they will follow the law while in America?
And then there is Robin Abcarian’s column about DEI programs in universities (“Diversity efforts wrecked to prove we’re all equal,” The Columbian, Jan. 12). Diversity of background, and therefore of worldview, is a good thing. It needs to be tempered, however, with the humility to recognize that people with different experiences and worldviews have a point. Instead, our culture is moving more in the direction of everybody thinking that their point of view is 100 percent right. The result is an ever-increasing divide which is only exacerbated by the amount of diversity.
