Readers Write: Immigration, health care, political candidates

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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We get it — there are people who really don’t like illegal immigrants, and even some who don’t like immigrants of any kind (“ICE actions draw opposing views,” Dec. 18).

But at some point, your stance is less about what you want and more about what negative consequences you tolerate. We all want less gun violence, but few of us would tolerate masked agents grabbing people off the street because they look like they might own a gun. We all want fewer traffic deaths, but who would support a government that forbade you from ever owning a car if you got a single speeding ticket?

The president’s supporters need to articulate what limits they demand on the Trump administration’s crackdown. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has become a massive federal bureaucracy, spending billions and building a surveillance system that connects tax records and medical claims to facial recognition software. It has sent people to horrific foreign prisons and treated people with brutality here. It has trampled due process and overridden local leaders’ wishes. It has pulled law enforcement personnel from more serious issues. It has destroyed families when someone’s “crime” was being brought here by their parents as a child.

Once, Republicans would have found any of this unthinkable. But now they sit by silently or cheer it, ignoring all examples of government overreach. Criticizing rhetoric doesn’t count — we’re way past the “I don’t agree with everything he says” stage.

We get it — you want less illegal immigration. But at what cost?

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If there are 103,000 Somali U.S. citizens and legal residents in Minnesota and a few hundred undocumented, isn’t ICE wasting taxpayer dollars going after a needle in a haystack?

Why not go after the factory farms and meatpackers? Because that will raise the price of meat and poultry.

I don’t mind illegal immigrants being deported. I mind that after Judge James Boasberg told Trump that everyone deserves their day in court, Trump said online that obeying the law would take too long. Trump told immigration judges to dismiss asylum cases out of hand, and judges who didn’t got fired. ICE detains people and causes them such pain and discomfort that they voluntarily self-deport, even those on a legal path to citizenship. Uphold the law, ICE; don’t violate the Constitution. You can’t uphold the law by breaking it.

We are a nation of immigrants. We like, and love, legal immigrants. Obey the Constitution.

Fund upgrades to the Internal Revenue Service computer systems so you can find when one Social Security number is being used in four states at the same time.

Susan Frenzel, Minneapolis

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It’s Dec. 18, and I watch as a man with a shovel is clearing water and slush on Lake Harriet to create an ice rink. It appears futile to me, but I am sure this man is hopeful. My 76 years of life have not adjusted well to having rain in December. Then I read with dismay that the Trump administration wants to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado because it is causing climate alarmism in our country. Then suddenly my phone alerts me to an ICE raid in Bloomington, and I wonder: Will our immigrant friends and my neighbor’s snowman survive the winter?

Mike Menzel, Edina

First, insurance only works if most people in the pool are healthy. If there weren’t healthy people in my insurance pool, I likely would be dead or penniless.

Second, while healthy lifestyles don’t cost a lot, medical diagnoses and treatments do. And I’m pretty sure we’re buying a lot more of those diagnoses and treatments than we were only 30 or 40 years ago. Perhaps their cost could be lowered, but let’s be honest: We consume a lot of medical care.

So, what can we do about the cost of medical care? Possibly buy less of it. Preferably, find less expensive ways to deliver it.

And why can’t politicians talk honestly about the choices? The idea of the federal government just sending cash to people and letting them shop for insurance may sound attractive, but there are problems. For one thing, if you send them cash, they may use it for something else — especially if they are young and healthy and think they can risk buying less insurance, and we need those people in the insurance pool.

If you send the assistance out as vouchers that can only be used for health insurance, the question then becomes what kind of coverage can the vouchers be used for? And who’s going to pay for catastrophic care?

We’ve been debating the national health insurance issue since I was in graduate school 50 years ago. It’s time to figure this out.

J Fonkert, Roseville

A Dec. 18 letter writer (“No politician ‘deserves’ anything”) makes a common allegation that is popular among Republicans: The Democratic Party lost the 2024 presidential election due to the party’s decision to not hold primaries after Biden withdrew on July 21, 2024, but to appoint the nominees instead. This reasoning misrepresents the legalities and reality of the situation.

First off, political parties can set their own rules for selecting candidates. Not only is there no law that mandates how candidates are selected, but the methods have changed several times over the centuries.

So let’s turn the tables on the writer’s assertion. It’s July 21, 2024. Biden and President Donald Trump are the official nominees of their political parties. Suddenly, Trump withdraws from the race due to a medical condition. What would the Republican Party do, given the same limited time (approximately 106 days) that the Democrats had? Would it 1) find a slate of candidates (the original candidates withdrew), secure funds for them to campaign, schedule and hold new primaries across the nation, then hold a convention to formally decide on the official party ticket? And would there even be time for a Republican-Democrat debate (which is also not required by law but is accepted practice)?