The article “Key Mexican lawmaker rejects strings to U.S. aid” (June stated that Mexican officials feel that any conditions placed on U.S. aid to help combat violence in their country is an infringement on Mexican sovereignty.  What about U.S. sovereignty?

The U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs continues to issue warnings for American citizens traveling in Mexico, especially around the border areas, due to the fact that dozens of Americans have been carjacked, robbed, kidnapped or murdered.  These travel advisories do not even mention the number of unsolved cases of Americans who have been kidnapped from U.S. cities and taken to Mexico to be held for ransom or eventually murdered.

Our various media, as well as the U.S. government, have documented the fact that the Mexican government has encouraged and even abetted its citizens to illegally enter our country resulting in a deluge of illegal, undocumented aliens many of whom are criminals in their own country.  Thousands of these illegal immigrant criminals have perpetrated crimes, up to and including murder, against Americans in our own country.  We have had documented incursions by Mexican troops onto U.S. soil and our Border Patrol Agents and other law enforcement officials are being shot at and killed by Mexican drug gangs. I don’t think we can even estimate the number of Islamic terrorists that may have seeped through our porous southern border.

The time for President Bush and the Congress to muster mucho machismo and close our borders to those who would wish us harm is long past.  In order to be a sovereign nation we must have defensible borders.  Anything less is madness.  Americans have always welcomed hard-working and legal Mexican and other immigrants to our country and we should continue to do so.  But in today’s climate of rabid anti-Americanism we need to know who’s coming to dinner.

Edward J. Olsen

8503 Maylor Dr.

Affton, MO 63123

314-832-4861