Immigrants fleeing their homeland will become a burden, and many harbor an intent to harm the United States.

Closing our borders will force those fleeing theirs to remain in their respective countries and ameliorate their differences rather than burden us through their collective cowardliness.

So says Jan Richardson, your commissioner on the Clallam County Parks and Recreation District 1 board of commissioners (“Shirking duty,” Feb. 12 Peninsula Voices).

With poet Emma Lazarus [whose sonnet appears on a plaque on the Statue of Liberty] in mind, harken back to May 1939, when the transatlantic liner St. Louis embarked from Hamburg, Germany, carrying a cargo of Jews fleeing the Nazis before Germany closed its borders.

Like Germany, anti-Semitism in the United States prevailed and our borders were closed as well.

The Jews were returned to sender for the same pronouncements we hear today.

Did the unfortunate souls on that ill-fated ship shirk their duty to control their corrupt government by taking the path of least resistance?

Roger B. Huntman,

Sequim