If ever a letter to the editor deserves a rebuttal, it’s the missile of Earl Morse in the Sun Journal on Aug. 13.

Mr. Morse, in berating those around him for being intolerant of immigrant ethnic groups, exhibits a fair amount of bias himself, and appears to be paralleling the words written by an immigrant Muslim in another newspaper several months ago. I would ask him to cite his source in claiming Maine has had the largest Klan membership per capita of all the states, and also insist he apologize to all those of French and Anglo Canadian heritage whose ancestors he labeled as “poor rabble looking for jobs.”

They were responding to the call for workers to take the hundreds and thousands of jobs in the blossoming textile, shoe and paper industries across the state due to the insufficient number of locally born workers to fill them.

Those who didn’t speak English, learned. They dressed in the manner of those born here, paid rent, taxes, bought homes, and contributed much to building the communities we know today. And yes, they built churches, as did later immigrants from Europe and Asia.

Most importantly, they didn’t ask for or receive welfare, seek special privileges, nor would they have received a religious exemption from the Affordable Care Act had it existed back then as do the current inundation of immigrant/refugees from the Middle East and North and Mid-Africa Muslim countries.

John R. Davis, South Paris

Editor’s note: Maine once had more members in the Ku Klux Klan than any other state in the country and the highest per capita participation in the U.S., according to Ben Levine, filmmaker of the documentary “Awakening.”

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