LETTER: Self-survival paramount in these troubled time

For Peninsula Daily News readers who have written retorts or disapproved of my Feb. 12 letter to Peninsula Voices [“Shirking duty”] on the exclusion of migrants who haven’t taken responsibility for rectifying their centuries-old religious civil wars, read these qualifying lines contained in my letter:

“Most who have emigrated to the U.S. have been of religions that have denounced cutting heads off, stoning, circumcising girls and causing mayhem on those who have offered response.”

Throughout modern history, never has the acceptance of political refugees resolved the basic cause of their exodus.

The Lord-high demigods of those defective countries don’t have to reform.

The safety valve of exodus is offered by the naive, only to have their hands bitten off.

In the 1860s, we had to solve our civil strife — nowhere to run.

The president of the United States has one responsibility: the security of its citizens.

The plight of political refugees or illegal migrants is not to be put before those who’ve stood in legal lines for years to enter.

I concede the need for humanitarian outreach in times of natural disasters, but when mass migration is caused by others’ internal political dysfunction, and when that mass holds the host countries’ culture as despicable, self-survival must be paramount.

Gates closed.

Jan Richardson,

Sequim

EDITOR’S NOTE: Richardson is a commissioner on the Clallam County Parks and Recreation District 1 board of commissioners.