We should welcome immigrants

As a former faculty member at Babson College (I’m now retired), I have had the pleasure of teaching and mentoring a great many students from immigrant families. These students are grateful for the opportunities the US education system makes available to them. They take these opportunities seriously and they work hard. In fact, they often work harder than their US-born classmates. They understand that this is a land of opportunity, not a land of easy success. They know that to get where they want to be they will have to learn the language, get the grades, get internships, excel in the workplace and show their colleagues, professors and managers what they can do.

In addition, and perhaps most importantly, these students bring with them values that we recognize: reverence for democracy and human rights; an understanding of the importance of family; a sense of dedication and loyalty to their institutions as well as a strong will to give back, and finally the kind of humble confidence and persistence that deserves our encouragement and respect.

I am appalled and sickened to witness the way immigrant families and their children are presently being treated by our elected officials — most especially by the vicious and mendacious Trump Administration. These are human beings no different from you and me in their hopes and dreams for a better life. They deserve to be welcomed as long as they obey the law, pay their taxes and do their best to be productive citizens. We need their labor, their courage and their cultural richness.

Immigrants, like our own parents, grandparents and great-grandparents are what has made us a great nation. Let’s not be blind to the fact that we all came from somewhere else.

Neal Harris

New London

Where patriotism belongs

On Feb. 27, the Bugbee Senior Center offered a Hartford Selectboard candidate forum with good turnout on Zoom and in-person despite the weather. I initiated this afternoon forum with the staff at Bugbee last year when I saw a need for seniors who do not drive at night. Those gathered were interested, cordial and asked good questions of us … mostly.

The few questions about our attendance on flags in town or whether we recite the Pledge of Allegiance are not about Selectboard duties and responsibilities and are meant to create divisions and unhealthy drama, and are counterproductive to working together for our community.

Patriotism, or service to town and country is not evaluated by flags and pledges, but by how people live their lives in community. It is an inclusive act, not an exclusive one. As the Supreme Court explained, “To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous, instead of a compulsory routine, is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.” Compulsory allegiance to flags or pledges are not supported by the Supreme Court.

I would suggest that next year our excellent moderator make a question submitted like these as optional to answer, … if we even include it. Last year, a question came up about which party the candidates voted for. A selectboard’s responsibilities are non partisan.

Mary Erdei

Wilder

The writer is a member of the Hartford Selectboard. The views she expresses here are her own.

Story was
fractionally wrong

A recent Valley News article left me scratching my head. A Feb. 28 story on the troubling effects of long COVID says that a New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute study “shows that close to 17% of people in New Hampshire have experienced long COVID at some point.” In fact, according to a news release on the organization’s website, the denominator is people of working age, 25 to 64. That’s an alarming and tragic figure, but much less than the article implied.

Math was not my strong suit in school, but one thing that stuck with me was my teachers’ advice: check your work.

Cybele Merrick

Lyme

What DOGE misses

The failure of Trump and DOGE is their incapacity to see the caring that’s at the core of being human. They believe that people can be browbeaten into effectiveness or made to fear failure. They also see the world through a lens of money and power. In doing that, they forget about the ones we all rely on: Farmers, and most all of us for that matter. Teachers, nurses, engineers and programmers, don’t see the world through a lens of money and power. And most of us understand failure as part of being human and not something to fear. We work to make a positive difference in peoples’ lives while making a living. There are bean growers and bean counters who are more interested in being helpful than helping themselves to another serving at the expense of others. That is the real blind spot of Trump and DOGE.

Or maybe it’s not a blindspot. Maybe they see that kind of caring as a weakness to be exploited. After all, isn’t DOGE really a farce? To save tax dollars DOGE has gone after everything except the real money — the waste in defense spending on weapons systems that are obsolete even before they’re off the drawing board. Those dollars appear to be far from DOGE’s sight.

A wall of resistance is forming against these gangsters. Check yourself for what side you’re on because there is a heavy weight of shame that awaits some on the other side of this storm.

James Graham

Lyme

Beware the bullies

On Feb. 28, we watched in horror as a pair of snarling, rich bullies ambushed and beat up on the scrappy little kid from across the tracks who had the gall to talk back to them, to refuse to buckle, to stand up for the heroism of his people in the face of their enormous suffering. Meanwhile the other kids in the playground stood around, some cheering, some silently grinning, others appalled, traumatized. And then, perhaps even worse, after they shoved the little kid off the playground, little clusters of the children sidled up to the bullies, fawning, patting them on the back, congratulating them on their toughness.

I was born shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, remember looking anxiously up at darkening skies wondering if the bombs would start falling. We pulled black shutters over the windows and kept the lights low so they couldn’t find us. When the war was finally over, they handed my sister and me bells to ring out the car windows as we drove through cheering streets. We had fought for freedom, won the war! I never forgot that. And from Korea to Vietnam to the struggles for civil rights, to the Ukraine, Americans have stood for that principle as we formed alliances around the world to ensure those rights for others as well as ourselves.

No longer. The rich bullies put an end to all that. The plan now is to solidify their hold on the playground, to group the girls in one place, the boys in another, and to keep the poor kids and the ones who look different out of sight. The Big Kids will patrol among us to keep us in hand. The teachers and principal will cower in the classrooms, praying to the right gods, teaching that things are much better now. There will be peace, efficiency, and everyone will behave. Or else.

The rest of the world? That’s no longer our business. We are great again.

Larry Daloz

Hanover

Losing our allies

Like most Americans, I was shocked and dismayed by the vile, disgusting, staged for TV attack on Ukraine President Zelensky in the White House by Putin’s Pocket Puppet and his bootlicking VP. Those two clowns embarrassed most Americans on the world stage and continue to dishonor our country by their lack of diplomacy and decency. The respect they lack for Canada and Mexico, our Allies in Europe, Ukraine and other countries around the world is deplorable and despicable and should be rebuked by all U.S. citizens, including the GOP congressional members and Trump appointees. Instead of these sycophants robotically agreeing with everything their master says and does, they should call him out occasionally or at the very least, advise him to tone down the rhetoric. While it may not penetrate that warped mind, perhaps it would give Americans and the world some peace of mind knowing that our self-appointed dictator has some guardrails.

The primary responsibility of the president is to keep America safe and secure. The road we’re currently on doesn’t seem to adhere to that principle. We may need our traditional allies to be with us in the future and this last couple of weeks is jeopardizing that prospect.

Kevin Raleigh

Hartford

How to handle Trump

Let’s call the Trump administration to account. His approach to diminish government’s size is reckless and cruel, symbolized by Elon Musk’s giant chain saw. The illegal firing of at least a dozen inspectors general suggests a deliberate strategy to eliminate government accountability. Big changes happen in workplaces but are rarely motivated by this kind of overt animus and ideology.

Trump and Musk and their sycophants seem to have no guiding moral principles. They disparage people and flout norms, laws and allegiances. No evidence of fraud is provided and little acknowledgement of important functions lost and people’s professional lives devastated. I ask of them, "Do you have no empathy?”

Research has found that adults are willing to carry out actions on command of an authority even when those orders conflict with their personal beliefs. We can’t allow ourselves to be cowed into thinking that this is the “new normal.” Things we can do: join civic associations, support local countervailing institutions, defend a free press, foster political leadership.

Bob Scobie

West Lebanon

A nation dismantled

It is difficult to succinctly describe the urgent catastrophe of our political situation. President Trump, a puppet of Elon Musk, and Russell Vought, author of Project 2025, have unleashed cruel, painful and destructive attacks on democracy and the rule of law. They have terminated at least 17 inspectors general, whose job it was to prevent fraud and promote efficiency.

Recklessly and with little forethought, they have terminated tens of thousands of federal employees from the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Energy, Agriculture, Justice, State, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security (including FEMA); the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Internal Revenue Service; the National Park Service; the Forest Service; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and USAID.

The abrupt dismissal of these important workers disrupts not just their lives, but the lives of countless others both here and abroad. The administration plans to cripple the office overseeing recovery from the largest US disasters, HUD’s Office of Community Planning & Development. How then, will we be able to rebuild after catastrophic floods, wildfires and hurricanes?

Most worrisome are the firings of the Joint Chiefs and other high ranking military officers and legal officials. With the military led by loyalists, Trump, Musk and Vought, are now poised to politicize our military. We, the people, must resist, by calling our elected officials and by engaging in nonviolent demonstrations to protect our fragile democracy.

Dee Gish

Sharon