To the editor:

In 1944, my wife Suzanne (age 10 at the time), her parents, sister and an uncle escaped from their village in Hungary less than 12 hours ahead of the advancing Russian army. They packed all their goods into two horse-drawn wagons and a small European car. Before they could leave, the retreating German army took the horses so they had to abandon the bulk of their possessions. They piled into the small car and drove across Austria into Bavaria. The infrastructure had collapsed — no schools, no police, no local government, no open stores, no transportation. They literally lived in huts in the woods begging food from the local farmers (who were very generous, although most had barely enough for themselves). Eventually Bavaria became part of the American Occupation Zone, and the Americans began restoring the infrastructure.

They applied for permission to emigrate to the United States and learned that there was a wait for processing. Also they had to find a “sponsor” in the U.S. who would personally guarantee that the family would never require public assistance and that they would have employment. Eventually, a sponsor was found — a wealthy New Yorker of Hungarian extraction who had never met the family. Even so, it was nearly four years before they were finally all cleared and could go on to the U.S. The first and only time they met their sponsor was when they landed, and he met them to sign all the necessary documents. He had arranged for the parents to be hired by a wealthy family in New Jersey as a butler and a cook.

Suzanne, age 15 at the time, had missed more than two years of schooling in Bavaria before she and her sister were enrolled in a Catholic boarding school in Simbach, Germany. The nuns were hard task masters. The girls took eight or nine subjects at a time and attended school for eight hours a day, five and a half days a week. Suzanne was accepted as a junior in the local high school in New Jersey and found that, despite missing about two years of schooling in Bavaria, she was easily able to do the work. She eventually received a full scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, earned a master’s degree in chemistry, and came to work for The Dow Chemical Co. in Midland, where we met and married.

Sue’s father was a graduate engineer and had been chief of forestry for a major land owner in Hungary. The family spoke English (as well as German and Hungarian) and were practicing Christians. They had undergone extensive background checks and personal interviews. They had a sponsor who personally guaranteed that they would not require any public assistance, and they had assured employment awaiting them. Yet it still took nearly four years of waiting before they were permitted to enter the United States. Now it is proposed that tens of thousands of immigrants, mostly Muslim, without background checks, who mostly speak no English, whose women are strictly limited, who do not respect our Christian values and heritage, who have no employment prospects and who will require extensive public assistance should be admitted immediately?

Madness!

RICHARD HEINY

Midland