To the editor:

Tuesday’s editorial “Dealing With Young Immigrants” ended with the statement “Americans are not the sort of people to let the problem go unaddressed.”

A bill (S.3036) to address the problem of family separation, which the president says he hates, many Republicans don’t agree with, and Democrats want to change, has been sitting in the Senate Judiciary Committee waiting for a hearing since June 7. The Republican chairman could have the committee take it up for discussion at any time. The bill has 48 co-sponsors (Democrats and Independents) and they have reached out to Republicans to join them. But today Republicans are talking about writing a bill and settling this ASAP.

Hello! The process started 13 days ago, but has been ignored by the president and Republicans. Worse yet, when a bipartisan bill reforming immigration — solving DACA and putting $46 billion toward border security — passed the Senate in 2013 with 52 Democratic and 14 Republican votes, the Republican Speaker of the House refused to even bring the bill to the House floor. God forbid they do anything to allow compromise or solve a problem while Obama was in the White House.

Think of the problems we could have solved in the last eight years if only the Great Opposition Party had put people and country before party and politics. They wrote the book on letting problems go unaddressed.

Patricia Missling

Springfield