English is the issue

Dear Editor:Had to respond to Matthew Starbuck’s B.S. in The Aspen Times, May 9 issue and his so-called counterpoints.I was born in Chicago of immigrant Norwegian parents in 1925 in the most mixed nationalities part of the city that you could imagine. Almost every one of my friends’ parents were legal immigrants and tried only to speak English outside of their homes and native tongue in their homes. My mother used to get angry with other kids because they teased me because I only spoke Norwegian when I was 4 years old.Everyone knows why there are so many legal and illegal Latinos in the valley and everywhere else, it’s to find work and to help their families in Mexico and other Latin American countries and feed themselves! Why don’t you turn your anger on Vincente Fox, president of Mexico, and get him to help his own people get a good education and a better life than they have now.? He wants the U.S.A. to allow more people to come to America to earn a living and send money back to Mexico to support their poor families. I have a couple of Mexican friends who were illegal and turned themselves in when amnesty was offered to them, and now one of them bought his own house and he is so proud, rightly so. Like millions of immigrants, my parents learned to speak English, and with night school available many of the Latinos could learn fundamental English with a little effort.By the way, Matthew, how many of your Latino friends pay taxes to support the educational system that you condemn? A friend of mine who was working with Latinos asked a co-worker, “Why don’t you learn English?” The co-worker responded, “Why don’t you learn Spanish?” This is the attitude of some Latinos, not all. I still practice a little of my high school Spanish on Latinos I deal with at City Market, and they tell me I do all right even after 62 years! My feelings are that most of the Latinos in the valley are hard-working, honest, church-going people, but the few bad apples are hurting the good ones. My son-in-law is an immigrant of Italian parents and he worked his way through college, the only member of his large family to have a college education, and we are very proud of him. He is now the national distributor sales manager of the largest electronics company in the world. This is why I urge my Latino friends to make sure their kids go to school and get an education better than their parents got in their homeland.Chris TessemBasalt