This is in response to Ms. Clark’s Aug. 26 letter (“Illegal aliens are a threat to our nation’s economy”). After making two solid, supportable yet arguable claims that illegal aliens take jobs away from low-paying workers and African Americans, she then makes a statement that I consider to be almost laughable: “Illegal aliens have highly paid lobbyists who promote their agenda.”

For those of us who may be sympathetic to the anti-illegalimmigrant movement, do us all a favor and at least make your assertions remotely plausible.

Do you expect anyone to actually believe that illegal aliens are secretly banding together, pooling the cash from their lowpaying jobs to spend it on “highly paid lobbyists”?

Really?

Perhaps you really meant that politicians with ties to countries from which the illegal aliens come are lobbying for illegal aliens? Well, illegal aliens can’t vote, so that doesn’t work either.

Come to think of it, you know who benefits the most from illegal immigration?

The businesses that hire them.

Now they are very likely to already have “highly paid lobbyists” promoting their agenda. They’re the ones who stand to gain the most from the status quo. They have plenty of cash and motivation to lobby.

Many businesses, large and small, hire illegal aliens for obvious, profit-driven reasons, and I’m no enemy of the profit-motive, by the way.

Our government–Republicans and Democrats–does next to nothing to punish those businesses. We, liberals and conservatives and all the rest, do next to nothing to avoid doing business with such companies.

This issue, like most, is really not about liberals versus conservatives, etc. It’s about the “haves” and the “have-nots.”

The “haves,” those in power, the wealthy, those in government –again, both parties–have a vested interest in maintaining their control. They benefit as we fall into the false dichotomy of left versus right, etc. It takes the focus off of them while we get nowhere because neither the right nor the left will ever “win.”

Keep your arguments on point and reasonable and you won’t lose us. Travis Dudley Newbury Park