Immigrant Benefits

Your Dec. 21 article on immigrants pressured to repay past health and welfare benefits was very disturbing. Most people I know are kind and generous as individuals; yet the government, enforcing laws that the majority asked for, is treating some immigrants in a harsh, punitive and mean-spirited manner. It is especially poignant in this season celebrating caring and giving to read of poor people threatened and harassed. Particularly where the rules have changed after the benefits were received.

Granted, we cannot feed and care for the whole world; choices need to be made, but can’t they be made in a more thoughtful, humane manner? I imagine that Gov. Pete Wilson and other advocates of these programs feel that these actions are necessary. But is this what the rest of us really wanted when we insisted on these laws?

MARTHA CHURCHYARD

San Pedro