Letters.(Letter to the Editor)

--"Baffled rage, awe, and gratitude"- -- Rob Long ("Uncle Sam WaWants Them," March 25) sums up a whole family's range of reactions in those words. I am a mother of six -- two of whom are 20-year-old twins who serve in the United States Marine Corps.

In a family that includes children born between 1970 and 1986, you can imagine the polarity of views on not one, but two siblings joining the Marines. Yes, rage and awe, respect, and now during war, gratitude and fear.

Mr. Long's piece accurately describes my boys -- having endured a turbulent adolescence, they were turned by the Marines into trim, respectful men. My gratitude goes to my boys for signing on the dotted line and to the Marine Corps for the superior training; and my prayer goes to God for their safety. After all, I'll always be a mother first, and then a patriot.

Thea J. Bohannon

Virginia Beach, Va.

-- National Review has succumbed to another bout of anti-immigration fefever. In his April 22 article ("May We Get Serious Now?"), John O'Sullivan declares that "the [Sept. 11] hijackers were all immigrants." Wrong; none of them was. Like most foreigners who enter the country, they were all here on temporary "non-immigrant" tourist or student visas. They never applied to the INS for green cards or any other permanent status.

In a typical year, about 24 million foreigners enter temporarily as tourists, another 5 million as business travelers, half a million as students, and half a million as temporary workers. All of them enter on temporary visas and almost all of them leave the country after a few days or weeks. The additional million or so who enter each year to immigrate make up only about 3 percent of the total number of foreigners who typically enter the country annually.