LETTERS
LETTERS Nothing's permanent In your April issue, you tilted toward the wrong windmill by denouncing the "computerized data bank" for wives of Foreign Service Officers. There are good...
...As for numbers, he quotes a congressional estimate that 1.4 million would apply...
...TWM needs to lead the discussion...
...Cooper was advised that as a matter of policy, a number of things would not be discussed...
...Although the Secret Service always strives to be responsive to public inquiry, it would rather err on the side of caution than disclose information which could prove detrimental...
...Doesn't sound very elitist to me...
...At final tally, about 1.6 million applied (excluding agricultural workers...
...As one of its bureaus, the Secret Service routinely reports to the Treasury Department and Congress, which has budgetary and oversight responsibilities...
...For God's sake, don't ask me where Spud Webb gets his advantage from...
...Now obviously a candidate for the NBA has to work hard and stay in shape like the next man, and it would help if he had the intelligence, coordination and quick wits of the average NBA center...
...We had little to lose...
...these days he sounds like an accountant...
...Our entire constitutional system breeds this type of political attitude...
...Amnesty international Jason DeParle's article, "Why Amnesty Failed" [April], is almost unequalled in its reporting of opinion as fact and in distorting the few facts reported in his attempt to justify an extension of the amnesty application period...
...I am a retired Foreign Service Officer, now accompanying my FSO wife on her foreign service assignments...
...Family unity" is an issue that even some of the immigrant advocates privately admit was overplayed...
...He was right about the fact that blacks of a certain heredity have a physical advantage in certain sports...
...At some posts, part-time employment for spouses may be useful to maintain sanity, while at the same time providing those posts needed skills not otherwise available...
...The illegal immigrants we left behind—mostly poor, confused, and afraid—had a world to gain...
...The number of applicants for the legalization program to date is quite close to the number that Congress assumed would apply...
...Anybody that small who can jump that high is obviously an extraterrestrial...
...So the fact that the average age of death of a group of NFL players from the 1940s is 58 is not to be lightly dismissed...
...DeParle claims that "processing" and "regulations" issued by INS have increased confusion about the legalization program...
...JIM MORGAN Mt...
...Talk of a "shortfall" in the number of applicants relies on data which were not used by the Congress...
...In addition, the amount is much lower than the average fee an alien smuggler charges to take someone across the southern border ($300-$500/person...
...Cooper makes light of this policy by quipping that: "This left plenty of room for discussion ." Perhaps Mr...
...To dilute the Secret Service's mission would seem analogous to "robbing Peter to pay Paul ." In this age of terrorism, the "trade-off' could be even less acceptable...
...The PIT jobs help relieve morale problems, while providing our missions with relatively inexpensive means to perform tasks that would have to be done somehow, some way...
...There are good reasons for criticizing the USG bureaucracy generally and the State Department specifically, but this particular observation was silly, poorly researched, and sexist...
...If "fear" were such a problem, direct applications to INS would be much lower...
...asks Mr...
...Senator Simpson belittles the reasons that many illegal immigrants failed to apply: fear of family members being deported, fear of the INS, lack of documentation, lack of money, confusion about the program...
...To date, 1.2 million (and counting) have applied for the general legalization, and 400,000 (and counting) have applied for the agricultural legalization...
...Pigskin probabilities In "Tilting at Windmills" for April, you cited a mortality study of National Football League players...
...The amnesty program has been a success...
...The year 1989 would be a good year to admit that after 200 years our system is in need of change...
...The point is that an extension would have allowed us to fulfill more completely our original promise...
...As our nation's capital, the District does contain a variety of federal police/security forces, including the Secret Service Uniformed Division...
...He was always a boor, and his credentials were always fishy in the extreme...
...LETTERS Nothing's permanent In your April issue, you tilted toward the wrong windmill by denouncing the "computerized data bank" for wives of Foreign Service Officers...
...A parliamentary system is my hobby horse...
...Cooper, referring to the federal police forces in Washington...
...A constitutional convention is long overdue...
...As you may also know, increasing numbers of FS spouses with good jobs in the D.C...
...The players' average age was surely higher in the late forties because so many of them had not only gone to college but had served in World War II as well...
...But my experience in government is that temporary jobs tend to become permanent jobs and often endure long after the real need for them has passed...
...A year ago, Senator Simpson played the role of a wise and generous statesman...
...Buckley wouldn't want to be governed by the Harvard faculty because it is liberal, not because it is elite...
...The General Accounting Office (GAO), which has studied the implementation of the legalization, noted in congressional testimony that INS's efforts regarding all major aspects of the program have been quite satisfactory...
...Are they all where they should be...
...Simpson is a senator from Wyoming and a member of the Senate Committee on the Judician...
...Eighty percent of all applicants have filed directly with the INS instead of utilizing one of the many ethnic, community, or religious organizations that the law allowed to submit applications...
...Slam dink About Jonathan Rowe's "The Greek Chorus" [April]: I couldn't understand the drastic need for the firing of "Jimmy the Greek" Snyder...
...Secret Service Uniformed Division...
...Money" might have been a factor if the application period had been only a few weeks long, but amnesty applicants had a full year to save the money needed to apply...
...Cooper...
...Your implication that somehow Department of State Personnel would send a FS spouse to another post to work temporarily and that that position would become a fulltime position does not reflect how Personnel functions...
...Certain Nailotics, for instance— the Nuer and the Dinka of the Sudan come to mind— have been breeding true for thousands of years without the help of slavery or indeed any other form of social engineering, and producing with great regularity a physical type—sparely built, long-muscled, extremely tall—perfectly suited to a game like basketball...
...That's why it's so disconcerting that he has closed his mind to the flaws in its implementation...
...The Uniformed Division has one primary mission— protection...
...Actually, I've heard M...
...The men and women of that Secret Service Uniformed Division deserve more than the shots volleyed by Mr...
...But this is quibbling...
...Therein lies the shortfall...
...Buckley's phone book Secret Agent Man I am writing about Matthew Cooper's article ["Why Washington's Best Cops Walk Its Safest Beat," April] on the U.S...
...To argue that the Uniformed Division should shift its focus not only ignores the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police but the ever-present threat to public figures...
...Buckley say on more than one occasion that he would much prefer a government run by the first 400 people in the Boston telephone directory than one run by the faculty of Harvard University...
...Cooper infers that the Secret Service avoids publicity for less than honorable reasons...
...I would like to address three points that he failed to grasp...
...within the conservative movement, he has consistently shied away from the populists (including his own publisher at National Review, William Rusher...
...The corresponding figures for groups who played in the thirties and forties are 64.2 and 58.3...
...In contrast, it is the formidable task of the Metropolitan Police Department to protect District citizens from street In his review of John Judis's biography of William F. Buckley Jr...
...STEPHEN THROOP Grover, North Carolina The editor replies: In 1940, the average professional football player was probably around 25 years old, having spent four years in college and played in the NFL for a while...
...JOHN C. STEPHENS Lewiston, New York The editor replies: I applaud these temporary jobs if they are truly temporary and involve doing only things that really need to be done...
...Judis's book is filled with quotations from Buckley throughout his career that prove that Buckley is a heartfelt elitist who wouldn't consider the term a pejorative one...
...To date, no illegal family members have been deported...
...In fact, INS conducted a regulation-writing process of unprecedented openness in the spring of 1987, sending out "draft" regulations for public comment before moving to "proposed" and then "final" regulations...
...I am convinced that there is no justification for such an extension, and that the costs associated with it are excessive...
...The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that 1.4 million persons would apply for the general legalization program, and that 250,000 would apply for the agricultural legalization program...
...If you find these figures hard to believe, perhaps you will be surprised to learn that, of the generation born after World War II, nobody has yet survived to the age of 45 years...
...The average age at death of a group who played in the 1920s was 77.4 years...
...Finally, the Secret Service is not without public scrutiny...
...As he mentions in his article, they are: manpower, equipment, methods, and cost...
...ALAN K. SIMPSON Washington, D.C...
...Formally created by Congress on July 1, 1922, it is mandated by law to protect the White House complex and other presidential offices, the president and immediate family members, the official residence of the vice president, the vice president and immediate family members, foreign diplomatic missions in the District's metropolitan area, and elsewhere as prescribed by statute...
...My only reservation would be with his comment that dogmatic politics "turn people into bullies...
...As you may know some countries do not grant permission for Americans to work in the private sector...
...Holly, New Jersey crime...
...Cooper can afford to be cavalier in his comments, but the Secret Service cannot...
...We are all Buchanans in one way—Charles Peters on school teachers for instance...
...DeParle claims that the INS has not properly distributed information concerning the legalization program to potential applicants, and that this deficiency alone warrants an extension...
...This is dog bites man news...
...area are reluctant to give those jobs up to accompany their spouses overseas...
...ALAN H. LUXENBERG Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Nicholas Lemann replies: As John Judis points out, Buckley's famous remark about the names in the phone book is not at all representative of his thinking...
...but then I couldn't understand the drastic need for hiring him either...
...The political dialogue today will lead to political "gridlock" unless something scares us...
...No one seems willing to recognize that an extension will likely result in less border enforcement, longer waits for naturalization, and increased delays in petitioning for legal immigrants, as funds are transferred to finance the extension...
...But the same GAO testimony he approvingly quotes concluded that these were "major factors precluding people from applying ." Fear of having one's family members deported is an emotion that flows quite palpably through the hovels of Houston or San Antonio...
...Jason DeParle replies: Senator Simpson rightly regards the amnesty program as an act of American generosity, and he ‘is justifiably proud of the key role he played in creating it...
...The Conservative Mind: William Buckley," April], Nicholas Lemann says of Buckley that "his dream was a country run by thinkers...
...ROBERT R. SNOW Washington, D.C...
...The more pertinent figures come from the INS, the government's true immigration experts, which estimated a turnout of between 2 and 3.9 million (excluding agricultural workers...
...Each force has its own responsibility...
...DeParle cites "fear of INS" as a major factor in discouraging applicants...
...The Immigration Service should be complimented for a job well done, and we should not waste taxpayers' money on an extension that will bear little fruit...
...I have provided the "data bank" information on my skills, background, and experience in the event I wish to work in a post where my wife is assigned...
...GEORGE WARREN Pacific Grove, California Spat about Pat James Fallows's thoughts on what makes Pat Buchanan tick ["The Conservative Mind: Patrick Buchanan," April] seemed right on target concerning what's wrong with "true" believers like Buchanan...
...Not true...
...I don't, however, think this is traceable to "breeding for size" during the slavery period...
...The second point that needs to be addressed is the statement that the Uniformed Division is cloaked by "a tarp of secrecy...
...My culprit in this is the antipolitical, prejudicial attitude exhibited by the so-called liberal...
...Today, if he is still alive, he is 73...
...Snow is assistant director of the Office of Government Liaison and Public Affairs for the Secret Service...
...But it would be foolish to deny that a man whose genetic inheritance included Dinks, Tutsi or Nuer blood had a distinct advantage, where basketball was concerned, over the average Old World Frenchman...
...These claims are mistaken...
...No matter how right the particular judicial decision may be, without political compromise the losers will eventually come back to haunt the winners...
Vol. 20 • June 1988 • No. 5
