Spreading hate by believing what you want to believe

To The Daily Sun,

Dear Steven Earle, sir, with all due respect, let’s please remember it was you who didn’t research your own LTE to begin with, you just thought it “sounds reasonable”. That’s how hate spreads, and EXACTLY what Tina Griego said in her editorial: “People will believe what they want”.

I simply brought it to your attention that it was not Tina Griego but Frosty Woolridge who penned that article you mentioned in your Jan. 7 letter, “Blackmail, treachery, quid pro quo by the Democrats,” and you dare to question MY sources?

Well, I have done some research on this subject, but apparently Woolridge hasn’t. If there’s one thing I learned in my college Statistics class, it was to check my sources, so no, sir, I don’t count on CNN or any of the left-leaning media for my facts. But I certainly do question Mr. Woolridge’s sources, because the very first thing I learned in my research, my source being the 2007 report of the Congressional Budget Office, is this: “There are no comprehensive records that document the number of unauthorized immigrants currently residing in the United States; as a result, the size of that population must be estimated by indirect means. Such estimates are subject to considerable uncertainty because of questions surrounding the following: the extent to which that population is undercounted in the census; rates of emigration and mortality; and whether immigrants who are in the United States in a quasi-legal capacity should be classified as unauthorized”. With that in mind, the Department of Homeland Security has reported that there were approximately 11.6 MILLION UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANTS in the United States in January 2006.

Let’s use our “critical thinking” skills here, Steve; how did Woolridge come up with a “$538.3 BILLION annually” (or maybe that was your assumption, as I did not see that figure anywhere in his writing) in savings if he couldn’t even research that there weren’t 20 million undocumented immigrants in the United States in 2007?

You are right, you are not qualified to challenge his data, but I’d say the CBO certainly is. Woolridge went on to offer a couple “example” states/cities. He did not give mention, in any of these scenarios, that undocumented immigrants not only received services but also PAID INTO the system in the form of income taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, mortgages, Social Security, etc. and if they don’t naturalize, they will NEVER benefit from the money they have put in the system.

Woolridge’s editorial was full of hateful rhetoric such as “Denver’s four percent unemployment rate would vanish as our working poor would gain jobs at a living wage.” Exactly how does one determine this to be a fact, Steve?

Stop the hate, Steve.

Johnna Davis

Gilford