Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Many people want to immigrate to this country from various countries around the world. It is fair to say that most of these immigrant countries are poor relative to the United States or the living conditions are unsafe due to armed conflict or lawlessness.

Many Americans feel we cannot absorb the vast number of these potential immigrants without drastic changes to our way of life. We have not been able to come up with a good solution to this problem for many years.

But enacting and enforcing more restrictive immigration laws will require more border walls and hugely expanded border patrols. All such efforts will ultimately fail because many of these would-be immigrants are desperate and willing to lose their lives in the attempt to immigrate.

The only real solution to this problem is to remove the causes that compel these would-be immigrants to risk everything to get into this country. This effort will require all the power and influence America ha...