Banner Graphic, Volume 10, Number 135, Greencastle, Putnam County, 11 February 1980 — Page 7

opinion

LARRY GIBBS Publisher

Letters to the Editor

None of the public present was in favor

To the Kditor: Considering the confusion and complexity of the Greencastle Economic Development Commission meeting Friday, Mr. Grimes did a good job of reporting it. It was legally a "public hearing” and no other agenda was announced to the public. The secretary was absent when the group gathered 10 minutes late. The president did not appoint someone to take minutes. Dr. Haggerty and guest, Mr. Carlson, presented themselves before the board with the proposal requesting $450,000 revenue bond issue with 20-year maturity. Plan drawings of some sort were shown to the Commission members but not us in attendance. After questions and discussions, they were dismissed. Then Jerry Calbert. attorney for R & H Realty, presented proposed forms of the loan agreement, the bond and other documents, including proposed form of the city ordinance and form for the minutes of the present meeting and proof of the legal notice. It was after looking through these documents and the suggestion by Mr. Knights that the term “skill-care” be consistently used instead of “nursing home”, that they remembered the “public

Ape-human link is 'just plain hogwash'

To the Editor: Well,' it’s happened again. They have found the oldest relative to man ever. In the article appearing recently in the Banner-Graphic, “primate oldest ape-human link,” it all sounds like a broken record. Taking the chance that I will be thought an old-fashioned idiot, I feel I must ask some questions about the article. The learned doctors are no doubt too busy out in the boneyard of antiquity to answer my questions, so I will direct them to you, the reading public, who deserve the chance to hear the other side. Who was there 30 million years ago to say what it was? What is the error factor of the dating process? (There is, you know.) Can they honestly tell all that from just a “handfull of bones”? Now, if this thing was a common ancestor to man as our infallible doctors claim,

Illegal aliens: How much will they distort the 1980 census?

By ROBERT REINHOLD c. 1980 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON - The State of New York is pitted against its good neighbor the state of Vermont. Blacks are pitted against their fellow minority group, the Hispanic-Americans. Congressmen from downstate Illinois are at odds with their colleagues from the upstate Chicago area. The bone of cohtention is the census, or how the next one should be taken. From the time of the first census in 1790, censustakers have tried to list every warm body in the country. In a land of immigrants, foreigners have always been included in the count no matter what their legal status, except tourists and diplomats. But in the decade since the last decennial census in 1970, the country has experienced a large influx how large is debatable of illegal immigrants from Mexico, the Caribbean and elsewhere. They have concentrated in places like southern California, New York City and Chicago, where they have begun to have a significant effect on the local economies. Estimates of their numbers vary from as few as 1.5 million to as many as 12 million. Some observers have wondered if a full count of these people would distort the next reapportionment of Congress and alter the flow of funds from Washington to local governments The issue has been brought to a head now by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which has filed suit along with 26 congressmen to force the Census Bureau to keep a separate count of illegals.

ERICBERNSEE Managing Editor

hearing” and asked if anyone present had anything to say. Mr. Grimes covered that portion well Then the president. Mr. Monnett, announced that they should have an election of officers and made the nominations. Mr. Coppinger said his term would be up and he would be out of town, so the motion was amended to read: President, Dan Smith; vice-president. Norm Knights, and secretary, Dick Sunkel. The motion passed and these men were considered elected. Again, I’d like to make my point: This was a public hearing. No minutes of the last meeting were read. No one seemed to be taking extensive notes of the meeting at hand. How could they conduct regular business at an unannounced meeting? Mr. Ellis of the City Council, Ms. Schroeder and I were the public and we were not speaking in favor of the city issuing revenue bonds and loaning the money to R & H Realty. Where was the public in favor? I hope that a full set of minutes will be available to the public before the City Council meeting Wednesday night. Marv Frances Strain Greencastle

they also claim that the size of the teeth indicate that the male developed them to defend his troops and fight for a mate. Maybe the female actually was ruling the roost, if it is any relation to modern man. Is there a difference between male and female teeth? What happened to all the troops and mates while these long-lost ancestors were developing their fangs. I’m sure it must have taken millions of years to develop such a set of fangs. Also, who chose which animal to perform the most complicated tasks? I may sound a little mixed up. Who wouldn’t after reading such a mixture of assumptions, probabilities and just plain hogwash as this? Well, that’s all until the next big discovery of our long-lost relatives hits the press. Pastor Joe Martin Greencastle

Their suit, which is expected to be resolved before census day on April 1, is scheduled to be heard here Thursday by a special three-judge federal court. The judges must decide these questions: Should illegal aliens be included in the population count for purposes of reapportioning Congress and doling out federal revenue sharing funds and other aid? If not, is there any practical way to exclude them? The Background The Constitution, as modified by the 14th Amendment in 1868, states that congressional representation shall be based on the “whole number of persons” in each state. But that was written at a time when the sparsely populated new nation was begging for settlers; the concept of illegal immigration meant nothing. The Census Bureau has traditionally read the Constitution literally, taking “persons” to mean everybody, not just proper legal residents. As a practical matter, it probably never did get a very good count of illegals because they generally shun officialdom. This time, under intense political pressure from HispanicAmericans and other groups, the bureau has mounted an elaborate effort to persuade the illegals to respond. The questionnaire does not ask legal status, so that it will be impossible later to distinguish a legal immigrant from his brother who may have crawled in under a border fence Against Counting Aliens The main argument made by the plain-

Olympics boycott The humiliation will cut the Soviet Union deeply

By ANTHONY LEWIS c. 1980 N.Y. Times News Service BOSTON Before the 1936 Olympics in Berlin some Americans tried to keep our athletes away from an event that would give a lift to the Nazi regime. They lost. Avery Brundage, a panjandrum of international sport then and for decades after, commented: “Certain Jews must now understand that they cannot use these games as a weapon in their boycott against the Nazis.” The quotation comes from Red Smith, the incomparable New York Times sports columnist, who has watched the Olympic bureaucrats at work for years. Again and again they have turned a blind eye to racial and political savagery, insisting that it would be unsporting to be moved by such things. Smith’s conclusion is that their insensitivity stems not from evil but from stupidity. The history is worth keeping in mind as the International Olympic Committee now insists that nothing can keep the Games away from Moscow next summer. That would be allowing politics to intrude in sport, the lOC says in horror. Its president, Lord Killanin, has called the United States Olympic Committee’s attention to the rule that “political, religious or economic” pressures must be resisted. Killanin and his colleagues must be the last people on earth who think the Moscow Olympics would be non-political if only concerned people in the West would keep their hands off. No such illusion is possible in the Soviet Union, where the official

tiffs is that including illegals would cause a decade-long malapportionment that would undermine the constitutional principle of “one-man, one-vote.” They maintain that the voting power of citizens in areas with large numbers of illegals would be exaggerated, while other areas would have their representation diluted. California, they calculate, could get six more seats in the House than it would otherwise, and New York, three. Much of the argument turns on the “Great Compromise” by which the drafters of the Constitution gave equal representation to each state in the Senate but proportional representation in the House, with members chosen “by the people of the several States” as it is written “according to their respective numbers.” In a brief filed to the court, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, called FAIR for short, stated: “The ingredients of this compromise cannot be seen to allow for, much less dictate, a wooden requirement of congressional apportionment on the basis of an enumeration including those unlawfully in this country, subject to immediate deportation and wholly unentitled to join in selection by the people of the several states of elected representatives.” Moreover, the group’s executive director, Roger Conner, maintains that “including them would require elimination of restrictions on immigration because it says if they can get in they can be

billboards and posters for the games feature such non-political faces as Lenin’s and Brezhnev’s. The original decision to hold the games in Moscow was treated by Soviet propaganda as a victory for communism. An official handbook for Communist Party activists says the Olympics will be a test of strength between socialism and “decadent capitalism.” All aspects of the games, the handbook says, will be affected by “the acute ideological struggle between the two opposed social systems.” Apart from the sports bureaucrats, there are differences in the West about the wisdom of responding to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan by moving, postponing or boycotting the Moscow Games. Some think that response is too weak, too symbolic. Ronald Reagan said “we are in a power poker game with the Soviet Union,” and such things as an Olympic boycott “are not responsive to the Soviet call of our hand.” But symbols are important in life, and the Soviets have made it overpoweringly clear that this one would be extremely important. Soviet commentators have gone all-out in their denunciation of President Carter and others who do not want the world’s athletes parading in Moscow next summer. The Soviet reaction has been angry and alarmed. The reason for the agitation in Moscow is not hard to understand. That such a great international event was to be held for the first time in the Soviet Union had been taken as a symbol of legitimacy: a sign

recognized.” He points to the “paradoxical conclusion” that a visitor from Colombia on a one-month tourist visa would not be counted by the census, but that if he overstays his visa he would be counted because he is here illegally. Further, Conner argues, states with large numbers of illegals stand to gain a “windfall” in added federal aid. such as job training funds under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, for which illegal aliens are ineligible. The State of Vermont is arguing that its largely rural population will lose representation and even that the outcome of a presidential election in the Electoral College could be altered if substantial numbers of illegals are counted. Some parochial concerns motivate the congressmen joining the suit. For example, three Illinois Republicans from areas outside Chicago fear that their districts will be squeezed if Chicago gets more seats. And the Committee for Representative Government, a largely black group based in Los Angeles, fears that blacks will lose some of their hard-won representation. » For Counting Aliens The Justice Department, representing the Census Bureau, argues that the “plain language” of the Constitution, as well as the Census Act of 1929, which calls for a “tabulation of total population,” established that all inhabitants must be counted. The government brief argues even that “nothing in the Constitution forbids a state from permitting even illegal

that the world accepted the Soviet system That meant a good deal to people who, despite their military power, display a continuing sense of inferiority, of defensiveness about the legitimacy of their system. If the Games are moved or postponed, or if American and many other athletes stay away, ordinary Soviet citizens will know exactly what has happened. Propaganda will not be able to mask the reality of opposition to Soviet aggression. The humiliation will cut deep. The likely impact of not going to Moscow also seems to me to answer another argument against disturbing the Games. That is that millions of Western visitors pouring into the Soviet Union for the Olympics would tax the suppressive capacity of the secret police, so that Russians would be able to mix freely with outsiders and the whole apparatus of control might be threatened. I wish I could believe that. But the Soviet leadership has already demonstrated a ruthlessness ample to deal with such threats, moving dissidents out of Moscow and preparing other stern measures to maintain law and order during the Olympics. Western scholars on Soviet affairs overwhelmingly believe that the Kremlin would find a boycott of the games far harder to bear. The conclusive argument, for me, is that going to Moscow next summer while Soviet forces remain in Afghanistan would be to show that our attention span is short. The West would be signaling the Soviets that we were ready to resume business as

aliens from voting for Representatives.” Moreover, the government maintains that illegal aliens “impose the same burden upon local government” in the form of fire, police, emergency and other services as legal residents and therefore their localities deserve additional representation and aid. New York State and New York City, which are jointly trying to intervene in the suit, contend that they will suffer grievous political and economic damage if the large numbers of illegals in the state are excluded. As it is, they say, the population in the state and city is undercounted because there are so many poor persons and linguistic minorities that are overlooked in the census. Mayor Edward I. Koch says that “any reduction in the formula-based federal grants threatens to plunge the city back into economic crisis. ” Hispanic-American leaders maintain that the illegals pay taxes but do not dare collect refunds, or apply for Social Security, unemployment insurance or other benefits due taxpayers. Not counting them amounts to “taxation without representation” said Esther Estrada of the Mexiean-American Legal Defense and Education fund. “We are not concerned with people’s status,” said Grace Montanez Davis, deputy mayor of Los Anngeles, “just that they are here and we have to provide services to them.” The Census Bureau argues that it cannot possibly ask every resident to prove immigration status, and that any attempt to

February 11,1980, The Putnam County Banner Graphic

usual as we did, to our shame, six months after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. That is why I found especially com pelling a statement on the Olympics byCzech dissidents, published by the Palach Press in London. Speaking of 1936. they said “the moral boost which Hitler Germany received by the organization of the games drowned the warning voices for a long time to come.” The statement went on: “We would be happy to live in a world where sports could be separated from politics. But we do not live in such a world. .. In the Soviet concept the Olympic Games are above all a political matter.. Prompt moral sanctions the most moderate of all sanctions ha ve a greater value than a host of declarations. They will prevent the aggressor from donning a halo of peace; they embody the hope of averting dangerous future developments.”

Their opinions are their own All columns appearing on the Opinion Page reflect the views of their authors and are not necessarily the opinions of the Banner-Graphic or its individual employees.

do so might even reduce the count of legal residents The Outlook Since Census Day is April 1, a speedy decision is expected. Each side says it will appeal directly to the Supreme Court if it loses. Even if the plaintiffs win. the question remains whether there is any way to achieve a separate count of illegals, given the shadowy existence of this populace. The FAIR group says it is not necessary to ask directly, that a rough estimate can be obtained by inserting a “leaf" in each census questionnaire they are already printed asking everyone to be listed as citizen or noncitizen. From the total of noncitizens, they say, substract the number of legal aliens who register every January with the Immigration and Naturalization Service; the result should approximate the illegal total. But many demographers say this is very unreliable, that the immigration service figures are notoriously poor. If this technique is applied to the 1970 Census totals, according to the Justice Department. the number of illegal aliens comes out as minus 623.000. If the courts reject this method. Conner says, he will turn to the "census wizards” to come up with a "procedure for estimation " But if many of the experts are right and the census fails to find many of the illegal aliens, then the whole argument would be considered moot

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