LETTERS: Citizenship, politician-speak, pool permits, noise factors

Border crossing not earned citizenship

I fully support the right of legal immigrants to strive for the quality of life that generations before have achieved, including my own ancestors. However, I fail to understand how an attorney such as William Ferro ["Long Island Latinos need support now," Opinion, Aug. 5] would not support measures to control our borders and guide immigrants towards a legal means of joining this great nation. Does merely passing over our borders allow one the rights of a citizen? What about the quality of life of those already here, including legal immigrants and naturalized citizens? Don't we belittle their efforts towards citizenship by allowing anyone who illegally crosses our borders to enjoy protections they haven't earned?

Robert Gordon, Lynbrook

Silver on SUNY: Found in translation

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was quoted as saying "That SUNY empowerment bill is a tax on the middle class and we are not prepared to provide that tax..." ["4 months late, NY has budget," News, Aug. 4].

If I can take the liberty of translating Silver's comment from Orwellian to standard English, he is really saying: "We politicians prefer to continue to micromanage the SUNY budget as an electoral tool. We recognize that we are starving our research campuses. We also know that this will soon degrade these once-proud institutions. We really don't care that middle-class New Yorkers who want their children to attend a first-rate research university will then be left with no choice but to pay the extravagant tuition of private research universities, rather than the much lower rates of a properly state-supported university."

Even by the darkly cynical standards of the politics of higher education funding in New York, this is a new low.

Paul M. Bingham, Stony Brook

Pool permits

Islip holds the contractor, as well as the homeowner, responsible for approval of pools, by fining the contractor if work is performed in the absence of required permits ["Riverhead tracks pools with Google," News, Aug. 1]. While the contractor may not be at fault in every case, it is reasonable to hold them responsible too.

John H. Edwards, Islip

Editor's note: The writer is an Islip town councilman

What's noisier

After reading ["FAA plan in the air," News, Aug. 7] I took my decibelometer out into the yard and waited. Sure enough, about four hours later, a helicopter came by. Just as it got overhead, four guys on Harley Davidsons went by, blew the meter off the scale and I couldn't hear a thing for 5 minutes. I bet there are many more Harleys on LI that helicopters.

Alan Threadgould, Northport