Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
OTHER VIEWS
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
JENNINE PERKINSON
Advertising Director
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
OUR VIEW
It’s time to bring
illegal immigrants
in from the cold
Donald Trump raised a lot of
$ll have violated federal law
eyebrows with his comments on
by entering the country illegally.
illegal immigration.
Millions have further submitted fake
“When Mexico sends its people,
papers to employers.
they’re not sending their best.
More than 300,000 are classi¿ed
... They’re sending people that
by the U.S. government as “criminal
have lots of problems and they’re
aliens,” having been arrested and
bringing those problems with us,”
convicted here or in their home
he said during his announcement
country of a crime.
that he was running for president.
The vast majority have not
“They’re bringing
committed other
drugs, they’re
crimes, let alone
bringing crime,
felonies.
Congress must violent
they’re rapists, and
They are regular
offer illegal
some, I assume, are
people trying to
good people.”
escape intolerable
immigrants
Trump was
conditions at home.
roundly criticized
Otherwise good
temporary
by the left, and by a
people. Probably.
legal status
fair number on the
We equivocate
right who feared his
because we don’t
and a path
harsh rhetoric might
know who they are,
to permanent
harm the eventual
or what they’ve
Republican nominee
done at home.
residency.
next fall. Business
The empathy
associates dropped
we may feel for
contracts with Trump as Hispanic
their situation, or the sincerity of
groups and the Mexican government their intentions does not, dare we
yelled for his head.
say, trump the legitimate security
It looked as though Trump and his concerns their presence raises.
outsized ego would quickly become
It’s time to bring these people in
a footnote in the 2016 campaign. But from the cold.
then Kathryn Steinle, a 32-year-old
Congress must offer illegal
woman, was shot to death by an
immigrants temporary legal status
illegal immigrant as she walked with and a path to permanent residency
her father on a pier in San Francisco. after 10 years if they meet strict
Her accused assailant, Juan
requirements — no prior felony
Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, has a
convictions, no violations while
history of drug-related felonies. He
awaiting residency, learning to speak
has been deported ¿ve times, and
English and pay a ¿ne and back
has returned ¿ve times. $rrested this taxes. We think the border should
spring for selling marijuana, he was
be secured. $ viable guestworker
set free by San Francisco of¿cials
program must be established, and
rather than being turned over to
employers must verify the work
federal immigration of¿cials to be
status of their employees.
deported a sixth time.
It’s time we allow our neighbors
“The crime is raging and it’s
to come out of the shadows and
violent,” Trump told Fox News after introduce themselves.
the killing. “$nd if you talk about it,
Once vetted, the country can
it’s racist.”
fully appreciate their cultural and
Trump’s rhetoric is inÀammatory. economic contributions, and they
He’s wrong on so many levels, but
can enjoy both the responsibilities
he’s not entirely incorrect.
and bene¿ts of legitimate residence.
There are some 12 million illegal
$nd maybe we can put an end to
immigrants in the United States.
the charged rhetoric.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher
Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
OTHER VIEWS
9accination bill has merit
The (Corvallis) Gazette-Times
You can be sure that many of the
issues that got hashed out in the 2015
Oregon Legislature will stage return
engagements during future legislative
sessions.
$mong them likely will be the issue
of childhood vaccinations, an issue
that prompted some passionate (and
sometimes ugly) debate
during the course of
the 2015 session. The
opposition was enough to
persuade Sen. Elizabeth
Steiner Hayward, a
Democrat, to drop a
proposal to remove all
nonmedical exemptions
for vaccines.
Instead, Steiner Hayward, a
physician, wound up promoting Senate
Bill 895, which requires schools to
publish available immunization data.
The bill (which also applies to other
facilities that serve children) would
require the information to be posted on
school websites and also included as part
of the school performance reports that
are sent to parents and guardians.
That bill passed the Legislature,
largely (but not completely) on party-
line votes. It awaits the signature of
Gov. Kate Brown, who hasn’t given any
indication that she plans to veto the bill,
which is good: Senate Bill 895 makes
sense and should be signed into law.
Steiner Hayward is clear about her
motivation for the legislation: She wants
to ¿nd ways to improve the state’s rate
of vaccination for children, which is too
low. $s that rate drops, it jeopardizes the
herd immunity that helps to protect even
people who aren’t vaccinated.
Naturally, Senate Bill 895 attracted
some of the same opponents who fought
against eliminating the nonmedical
exemptions. Some opponents of the bill
claimed that the requirement to share
the information could set the stage for a
“social bullying atmosphere” at schools.
“We’re going to create gossip,” said one
opponent.
The argument struck us as a hollow
one then, and it still seems that way.
For starters, the information does
not identify individual children, just
overall vaccination rates.
$nd this information
already is publicly
available through health
authorities.
$nother argument
against the bill — that
it provides only an
incomplete picture of
vaccination rates at any
individual school — has somewhat more
merit, but still is outweighed by the
bene¿ts of the measure. In some cases,
parents elect to stretch out vaccination
schedules to minimize any potential
risk, no matter how slight; that would
tend to depress a school’s vaccination
rate. Parents would need to take that into
account as they analyze the numbers.
But all of the other measures included
on a school’s performance report are,
by nature, incomplete: None of them
tells the whole story about a school.
They do, however, suggest areas where
parents can start to ask questions about a
particular school.
We understand why the vaccination
issue tends to be emotional. $nd while
our position on the issue is that parents
should vaccinate their children, we
are uncomfortable with the idea that
government should force parents to
vaccinate.
Senate Bill 895 doesn’t do that. But
it still has merit in offering another
tool parents can use to help guide their
informed decisions.
Photo contributed by Angelika Dietrich
Chief Joseph Days is one of Joseph’s premier events. It kicks off July 21 and runs
through Saturday, July 25.
Heritage and healing in Joseph
U
nhappy small towns are all
graves ¿ghting to hold on to the valley.
alike — claustrophobic,
In 1877, after being forced out of their
gossipy, dying. The elderly live
homeland by a fraudulent rewrite of
away their days in a haze of 1950s
a treaty, the Nez Percé tried to Àee to
nostalgia and Fox News-induced
Canada. Their route, a journey of epic
paranoia. The cops harass the young,
heroism, is now commemorated in the
while the meth lab at the edge of town
1,170-mile-long Nez Percé National
produces poison for those not clever
Historic Trail.
enough to leave.
Captured just short of the border,
Timothy
If you live in cities, as most
young Chief Joseph and his band were
Egan
$mericans do, you don’t have much
never allowed to return to their Oregon
Comment
trouble believing the above notion
home. Joseph famously died “of a
of small towns. Many of them are
broken heart,” in 1904, in a distant
dying — nearly one in three counties, mainly
reservation that still holds his bones. His
rural, now experience more deaths than births. father was buried on a knoll overlooking Lake
They can be insular, though perhaps no more
Wallowa.
so than a high-end subdivision. $s for gossip,
But other than the grave of old Joseph,
yes it’s toxic — but you can ¿nd a variant of
perhaps the most visible hint of an Indian
that in any Manhattan apartment building.
presence in the area was a sign put up by a
Hello ... Newman.
local high school, welcoming people to the
Still, unlike big cities, where anonymity
“Home of the Savages.”
allows a citizen to disengage, small towns
The Savages are now the Outlaws, per
force people to live in close contact with
a vote of students. $nd the Nez Percé have
dissonant parts of the past. You not only
returned as a cultural and economic force,
know the loser down the street who once
after working with whites in the area to
dated your mom, but you’re
purchase land at the edge
also painfully aware that
of the Wallowa River.
the Civil War statue in the
This weekend, they host a
town square honors a man
public celebration, called
whose family enslaved your
Tamkaliks — “a recognition
ancestors.
of the continuing Nez Percé
I recently went back
presence” in the valley, as
to the isolated, alpine
the tribe puts it. It’s a big
hideaway of Joseph,
tourist draw. The Indians
Oregon, a little town I’d
are also working to bring
spent some time in 17 years
sockeye salmon back to the
ago, and was pleased to ¿nd
lake.
a laboratory of hope for
Next week is rodeo,
small-town $merica.
celebrating the cowboy
Joseph is a stunning
traditions of the town,
place — set in a cradle of
though named the Chief
grass and forests in the
Joseph Days Rodeo. The
Wallowa Mountains of
two cultures exist together
eastern Oregon. The county,
in a little valley, even feed
Wallowa, is much larger
off each other. $t the town’s
in size than the state of
new arts and culture center,
Delaware, with the continent’s deepest river
ranchers whose great-great-grandparents may
gorge, Hells Canyon, on one side, and a string have stolen land once vital to the Nez Percé sit
of peaks that could be Switzerland, the Eagle
side by side with Indians at brisk discussions
Cap Wilderness, on the other.
of the past.
With 7,000 residents, the county has fewer
Small-town Joseph has become a thriving
people now than it did in 1910 — similar
arts town, with galleries, music festivals and
to hundreds of other rural areas. Joseph, at
probably the best handmade chocolates in the
the head of the midsummer night’s dream of
West. It’s no $spen, Colorado, or Sun 9alley,
Wallowa Lake, has just over 1,000 people.
Idaho, which is a good thing in some ways.
When I ¿rst took a look, the people of
But the poverty rate is well below the national
Joseph and the surrounding area were at war
average for rural areas.
with one another. The white ranchers and
“$merica has been erased like a
loggers who long had control over the place
blackboard, only to be rebuilt and then erased
were losing ground to global economic forces, again,” W.P. Kinsella wrote in the baseball
and changes in how the federal government
book that was made into the ¿lm “Field of
managed the big swath of public land in the
Dreams.” Native $mericans, more than others,
area.
have been the erased. To see a restoration of
Things got very ugly. $ group of grim-
them, in a valley where they had lived well for
faced men hung ef¿gies of a pair of local
hundreds of years, is no small miracle.
environmentalists. Death threats Àowed.
Ŷ
$t one public meeting, as county of¿cials
Timothy Egan is a New York Times
were heralding their cultural rights as fourth-
columnist and best-selling author who lives
generation landowners, a dissident voice asked in Seattle. He is a graduate of the University
about the Nez Percé Indians.
of Washington and also holds honorary
Oh, THEM. The town is named for Joseph
doctorates from Whitman College, Willamette
of the Nez Percé — a Christianized name
University, Lewis and Clark College, and
for both a father and a son who went to their
Western Washington University.
Ranchers whose
great-great-
grandparents
may have stolen
land once vital
to the Nez Perce
sit side by side
with Indians at
brisk discussions
of the past.
Naturally,
Senate Bill
895 attracted
opponents.
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