Charity supports local DREAM Act

Like the editorial, “Help students get UH resident rates,” (Star-Advertiser, Our View, March 22), Catholic Charities Hawaii strongly supports House Bill 1457 SD1, which is the Hawaii version of the DREAM Act — providing opportunities for undocumented youth to pursue higher education.

The bill requires that eligible youth must have attended for at least three years, and graduated from, a Hawaii high school. These are youth who have grown up in our state and have much potential to become contributing members of our community. Through no fault of their own, they find themselves trapped in a very difficult situation with very little hope.

Catholic Charities Hawaii believes in building a community of hope where all people have the opportunity to become self sufficient — and the responsibility to contribute to our community. The bill provides opportunities for our youth to become self-sufficient so that they may reach their goal of becoming contributing members of our island community.

Jerry Rauckhorst
Catholic Charities Hawaii

Don’t reward illegal immigrants

Families come to Hawaii, overstay their visas and become illegal immigrants. Their children graduate from Hawaii high schools. Because the children are here illegally, the state rewards them with resident tuition rates of $4,200 and possible state welfare. The children also have to kind of promise to apply for legal status soon.

A family immigrates to the U.S. mainland through the normal legal channels, on the road to citizenship, and the children graduate from high schools on the mainland. One of these children wants to attend the University of Hawaii. The legal immigrant is allowed to pay $11,616, and can apply for her own student loans because she is probably not eligible for state welfare.

Are we to penalize the legal immigrant on the way to becoming a taxpaying citizen, but reward those who chose to not participate in U.S. citizenship?

Richard Hurd
Kailua

Steve Case looking a lot like a Scrooge

Regrettably, the state House Committee on Housing tabled for one year the 25-1 Senate-approved resolution asking that Steve Case’s Grove Farm halt the evictions of its senior citizen tenants in Koloa Camp and to seek a win-win with the tenants. The evictions are set for April 9.

Grove Farm owns 40,000 acres on Kauai, but insists that the 12-acre, flood-prone and access-compromised parcel is so far superior to any other site that it must displace its senior tenants in order to build prefabricated housing.

Forbes magazine lists Case as the 331st most wealthy American with a net worth of $1.5 billion, yet his company demands the eviction of 60-, 70- and 80-year-olds to enhance its coffers.

The disgrace of the House committee is as great as the size of the Case fortune.

John Patt
Koloa, Kauai

Mosquito’s return  ominous for Hawaii

By the late 1940s, the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti, a major vector for dengue virus worldwide, was eradicated from Oahu.

Since the 1960s, this species has been found on only Hawaii island, where recent studies in my laboratory reveal it is relatively common on the dry leeward coast.

A related species, the Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus, is found throughout the Hawaiian islands and can also transmit dengue, though less efficiently than Aedes aegypti. All recent cases of dengue, including those in the 2001-2002 epidemic and in 2011, were in areas where only Aedes albopictus occurs.

If Aedes aegypti were to re-establish in Oahu or elsewhere in the neighbor islands, it would increase the risk of dengue transmission significantly, since it is an aggressive biter of humans.

This highlights the importance of restoring the state’s recent cuts to mosquito surveillance to monitor and prevent the accidental introduction of Aedes aegypti from its last stronghold on Hawaii island to the remainder of the Hawaiian archipelago.

Durrell D. Kapan
Pacific Biosciences Research Center, University of Hawaii-Manoa

Businesses ruining Kailua Beach Park

More than 100 residents recently turned out for a meeting in Kailua to protest commercial activities at Kailua Beach Park. The promotion of Kailua in the tourist media has spurred a feeding frenzy by some who think it is right to use public recreational property in residential, non-resort areas for their own profit.

City parks rules are being violated daily. Tour buses illegally park and destroy grassy areas, and dangerous kite boards chase sunbathers away from large areas of the park. Flat Island and the Mokulua Islets — bird sanctuaries that are legally closed above the high water mark — are overrun by hundreds of tourists each day. Emergency vehicles have problems accessing surrounding residential areas.

Our city general plan designates specific areas for resort uses, and Kailua is not one of them. It is time to declare and enforce a total ban on commercial activities at Kailua and Kalama Beach Parks, as well as the public beach access ways in the area.

Chuck Prentiss
Chairman, Kailua Neighborhood Board