Crossers considered innocent
till proven otherwise
Anne Hamilton has confused two different categories of crime, felony and misdemeanor. A felony is defined as a more serious crime usually involving violence and punishable by one or more years in confinement. A misdemeanor is defined as a minor violation punishable by less than a year of confinement or by a fine, or both.
Crossing the U.S. border illegally is a misdemeanor, not a felony. Under the U.S. justice system, there is a presumption of innocence until proof of guilt. Therefore, those crossing the border requesting asylum must be presumed to be acting in good faith until proven otherwise in a court of valid jurisdiction.
The Trump administration under its zero tolerance policy has decided that even those seeking asylum are committing a crime by crossing the border. In fact, a person crossing the border seeking asylum has committed no crime, felony or misdemeanor. It is perfectly legal for someone who is entitled to asylum to cross the U.S. border and request it. To incarcerate legal asylum-seekers is wrong. Separating them from their children is wrong and immoral. Any interpretation of the law which pretends to permit this is not an effective cover for something so heinous and reprehensible.
John Sucke
Kamuela
WHT editorial wrong about
lava’s islandwide impact
Whilst like everyone, I feel for the Puna and Pahoa folks who have lost homes but living in lava zone 1 and 2 is like building a home on a freeway and being surprised when a vehicle runs into your house. It’s going to happen for sure; just a question of when.
Some residents have said they have had 30 years of enjoyment living there. Let’s not also forget that the island is almost 100 percent dependent on tourism, so let’s also focus on getting them back and wake up to the fact that less than 0.02 percent of the island is negatively affected by the present situation.
Kailua-Kona hardly ever makes the top 5 for poor air quality so please quit the negative editorial and focus on getting tourism back on its feet. After all, we all depend on it, either directly or indirectley.
Mel Gear
Kailua-Kona
We don’t deserve her
We should send the Statue of Liberty back to France as we have discarded the principles etched on it.
“Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these the homeless, tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden sea.”
Arlene Block
Waimea
Separation letter left out facts
In her letter “Family separation nothing new” (WHT June 19), Anne Hamilton urges readers to “research the facts.” So I did just that and it only took a few clicks to learn that, according to reliable fact-checking sites including Snopes and Politifact, her claim that the Trump administration’s policy of separating children and parents who illegally enter the U.S. only continues Obama era actions is false.
Although she chose not to cite any sources in her letter, it appears some of the details Ms. Hamilton uses to make her case come from a recent Newsweek article which based its information, in part, on an investigation in Mother Jones magazine — specifically that in 2013 the Obama administration “had as many as 25,000 unaccompanied children separated from their families in its care at shelters.”
Setting aside the irony of a conservative relying on the very liberal Mother Jones, Ms. Hamilton glosses over the fact that those kids were in a wave of children sent across the border alone (i.e., without their parents) to escape dangerous conditions in their home countries. That is what “unaccompanied” means and so her assertion that “the kids were reunited with their parents” is … well, bonkers.
I would urge Ms. Hamilton to look in the mirror and read aloud the last line of her letter: “stop making up stuff to satisfy your hate.”
Alan Silverman
Kailua-Kona
