Republicans have written to your newspaper claiming that President Barack Obama, former Gov. Martin O'Malley and other Democratic elected officials are trying to "give voting rights to millions of undocumented immigrants who came here illegally and don't belong in this country in the first place" ("Obama's disastrous immigration policy," April 15).
Really? That is such a baldfaced lie I'm surprised your newspaper even printed it. Don't you have to become a citizen to vote?
The truth is no politician not in his cups is advocating that undocumented immigrants be granted the right to vote before citizenship is granted.
It seems clear from this paranoid fantasy that what Republicans justifiably fear is a backlash among New Americans who can vote — and who have every right to go to the polls and vote against these creeps.
Why else would a Religious Right sycophant like conservative columnist Cal Thomas want New Americans to waive their right to vote for the first 10 years after becoming citizens?
You'd think by now Americans would have learned their lesson about not treating anyone as a second-class citizen.
As for the purportedly shameful act of "millions of child immigrants" being educated for free "in our schools on the taxpayer's dime," that is the result of a 1982 Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe.
Overturning it would require a constitutional amendment, something I think most nativists wouldn't understand because their civics education didn't do them a bit of good.
Paul R. Schlitz Jr., Baltimore