New INS Ruling Far Too Limited

I’m as delighted as the next man with your news that “Abused Illegal Immigrant Wives Find New Hope,” as your Jan. 6 headline put it, recording an Immigration and Naturalization Service ruling that “battered wives,” though immigrants, may seek legal redress without fear of deportation.

But I read the story in utter amazement.

For it’s with a grandiose air of generosity that INS extends this limited protection: The husband must be a legal resident. The ruling “does not apply,” The Times blandly informs us, “if both victim and abuser are here illegally.” Further, this is all OK with the Department of Justice (of which INS is a part).

Lawyers have evidently [approved] it, but in ruling after ruling the courts have told us that the U.S. Constitution protects all of us here--and equally, under the 14th Amendment.

True, we have a weak governor, willing to use racist scare tactics to get elected or reelected, appealing to the vote of the rednecks among us.

Now this ruling seems to indicate that INS is running scared before the likes of Newt Gingrich and his kind, including candidate Bob Dole, who, in his recent desperation, endorsed the racist but weasel-worded Proposition 209.

DAVID ALAN MUNRO

Laguna Beach