Illegal immigrants

Editor:

In your 23 April edition, readers are hard put to discern the truth of several allegations about illegal immigrants. In the story by James Lamb on pp. 1 and 5, Border Patrol Tucson Sector Chief Robert Gilbert reports 122 apprehensions in the Tucson station, whereas your editorial claims 122 arrests in “the Green Valley area alone.” Which is it?

In addition, in Mr. Lamb’s story, Don Severe is quoted as claiming that “there were 600 cases of leprosy in the United States last year,” as critical to his concerns about illegal immigrants. I wonder where this figure comes from, since the director of the National Hansen’s Disease [leprosy] Program was quoted on 30 May 2007 as saying that there were only 137 cases in 2006 (“Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs” in a N.Y. Times story by David Leonhart), and no official figures are available for 2007.

In this day of careless use of figures and factoids, it is too easy to slip into fiction. Witness Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly, among others.

Beverly J. DeLong-Tonelli, Green Valley