No time to open borders

Science has proven that strict border control works. Just look at the island of 23 million in Taiwan. In January of 2020 they immediately implemented strict border control and as of Oct. 31, 2020, they had only 553 confirmed cases of COVID -19 and seven deaths. Naturally, other aspects such as: contract tracing, quarantining and mask distribution to their population allowed Taiwan to succeed — a country that learned from the horrible SARS epidemic of 2003. Taiwan is still leading the world today in fewest positive cases and deaths even with the new variants of the COVID virus discovered.

So how does Joe Biden’s plan of flooding our borders in the middle of a pandemic contain any common sense, not to mention fit into any science and data models? I also ask myself why it is more urgent to allow illegal immigrants, many of whom have not been tested for COVID into our country when legal Americans are still suffering — for instance, not being able to open businesses to 100%, being behind the curve on vaccinations, kids not back in school.

I can only imagine how the tax paying owner of a small small business feels about increasing the odds of being shut down longer because we must let people with no background checks and many without COVID checks, stream into our country.

Is this putting the American people first?

We are still in a pandemic last time I heard from our Governor Jay Inslee who prides himself on true and correct data. Kids are not fully back in school, travel is limited, people are out of work, unemployment at an all-time high.

Yet the minute President Biden was elected he signed some 30 executive orders, some of which stopped the orderly process of accepting immigrants into our country. One could argue he incited immigrants to flood our borders for the first 100 days.

Yet at the same time he spoke of unity as 1,000 skilled union welders and pipe fitters on the Keystone XL pipeline were laid off, with thousands of more follow-up good paying construction jobs that will never come to fruition.

The facts are we cannot even take care of legal Americans right now. Orderly immigration with a process such that the Trump administration started to put in place is the correct way to do business.

Ex-Rockwell County Sheriff Harold Eavenson of Texas calls the Biden administration border policy a huge mistake as numbers of immigration arrests by U.S. authorities along the Mexican border topped 75,000 in the month of January, the highest numbers since 2006. Biden ended the anti-fraud stay in Mexico policy, ended cooperative asylum agreements with Central America, has halted most interior immigration enforcement, and has attempted to halt deportation for most illegal aliens for 100 days.

Again, in the middle of a pandemic putting an urgency on open borders, if this is not the definition of hypocrisy, what is?

Charley Austin

Ocean Shores

Vaccine volunteers are heroes

On Thursday, Feb. 4, my husband and I got our COVID-19 vaccinations at the Port in Aberdeen.

A rainy, cold, uncomfortable day for those of us in our cars waiting, but our sympathy was for the amazing volunteers standing in the Grays Harbor drizzle. We were told some 80 people of all ages were putting in 10-hour days. They were unfailingly kind and patient.

The organization of such a large undertaking was awe-inspiring and very nearly seamless.

We were in and out in less than an hour, much of that time ensuring the fact that there were no after affects.

Our thanks to the Grays Harbor task force, Pasha, the Port of Grays Harbor, Grays Harbor Fire Departments, hospitals and Dr. John Bauscher.

Flora Dade-Watson

Aberdeen