Editor, the Times:

The only painful truth in what Matthew Claxton wrote (Tamils are met with racism, Times, Aug. 31) is that he is so far off base that he'd need a GPS to find his way back to reality. Spare us, Mr. Claxton, your bleeding heart on the matter of this shipload of illegal refugee claimants.

I've had a track record of supporting equal treatment before the law for all groups and I have supported multiculturalism up to a point.

And that point is reached when we continue to actively support turning this country into a collection of small countries, like a tossed salad.

But to get back to the Tamils specifically, Mr. Claxton, it is in no way racist for any sovereign country to decide who shall come here and who shall not.

A sovereign country also decides the method by which immigration will be legal and which methods are not, such as when a boat load of phoney refugees shows up on our shores.

The fact remains that last year over 17,000 legitimate Tamils went through the proper channels to claim landed immigrant status.

We are, as the truism goes, a nation of immigrants.

So yes, I and a lot of other Canadians want those people on that ship sent back to the end of the line. Or are you comfortable with knowing that many on board that ship paid up to $50,000 each for the privilege of flouting our immigration process?

They could have saved money and bought a one-way cruise ticket here and jumped ship, but then people like Mr. Claxton might not get out the violins.

Mr. Claxton, your last paragraph about somehow linking this shipload of illegals to immigration to this country in the colonial days and what the local natives thought is absurdly childish.

Robert Rock

Mission