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Make visas and immigration easier

Letters to the Editor

Why are we wasting hundreds of millions of dollars building concentration camps? Why are we not helping undocumented workers get visas to continue working? Why are we not working to make immigration easier? When my grandparents came here from Italy around 1910, all they had to do was come. Restrictive immigration laws were passed in the 1920s due to nativism, economic concerns and fears of radicalism following WWI. These laws aimed to limit immigration and favor those from northern and western Europe. A anti-immigrant sentiment, known as nativism, prevalent in the 1920s, was fueled ...

State needs to address child care crisis

Other Commentaries

By Anne K. Ard and Heather Smoyer Pennsylvania’s children and families are facing a crisis. Parents are unable to find reliable and high-quality child care due to a critical shortage of child care workers, Early Intervention providers and pre-K educators. Most Pennsylvanians believe that the well-being of all children is important to the health of communities. Parents know that laying a strong foundation for children while they are infants and toddlers is critical to their long-term health and thriving. Early intervention for children and families provides critical support and ...

Broad Avenue building's woes could be worse

Editorials

If there is one positive thing that can be said about the now-condemned apartment building on the 200 block of Broad Avenue, across from the front of the Jaffa Shrine Center in Altoona, it’s that it gave a warning before reaching a moment of disastrous collapse. Having extended that consideration to the neighborhood and the city as a whole, the building allowed all residents of the seven occupied apartments to leave safely — and take most, if not all, of their possessions with them. Had the situation played out in a more negative way, only one’s imagination can project what the ...

Faith in 911 system needs to be maintained

Editorials

We take some things for granted. Turn a faucet, and water will pour out. Flip a switch, and lights will come on. Those can be interrupted by circumstances. Don’t pay a bill, and the water or electricity can be cut off. But there are some services we rely on so much that we really can’t imagine them not being there when we need them. Perhaps the service we depend upon the most is 911. On Friday, Pennsylvania’s 911 system began experiencing what was termed “intermittent outages.” They were reported to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency around 2 p.m. Around 3:25 ...

Athletic differences between men, women

Letters to the Editor

Some Democrats are still promoting trans athletes, men, competing in women’s sports. If those men have passed puberty, it is unfair. I will present some examples of world records by both sexes. First, we’ll start with April 4, 2017, when the U.S. women’s soccer team played a U15 boys team in Dallas and lost 5-2. On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister was the first person to run the mile in less than four minutes. It was only by a few seconds, but he managed to do it. The current men’s record for the mile is 3:43:13. The current women’s record for the mile is 4:06:12, which means ...

Williamson case destined to be a mystery

Editorials

It’s an almost universal reality that when a news report deals with a crime or criminal court case, that account either explicitly reports, if it’s been confirmed, or at least hints about, what efforts there might have been — or probably were — to conceal the crime and/or protect its secrecy for evermore. A major mystery or puzzle in Gallitzin’s nearly 45-year-old Stella Williamson case, in addition to the current mystery about where some of the remains of the five infants found in her attic might be today, is that there apparently were no efforts to forever guarantee that the ...