It is perfectly legitimate to point out that some aliens take advantage of ill-conceived and poorly enforced immigration laws, and that real people suffer as a result.

As Mary Sanchez noted in her June 8 column, "Candidate Kobach should choose his friends carefully," immigration is a legitimate and timely campaign issue.

Sanchez then levels charges against a wide array of immigration reform organizations, based on tenuous or nonexistent relationships.

By carefully culling selected passages from selected publications, Sanchez attempts to associate Kris Kobach with individuals and groups that promote extremist agendas and blame immigrants for all the ills of society.

John Tanton and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, on whose board of directors he serves, have never asserted the inferiority or superiority of any racial, ethnic or religious group. Never. Eugenics is pure junk science, and it is utterly unrelated to FAIR's efforts to bring order to immigration in America.

Sanchez's other assertion—that FAIR and individuals closely (or even distantly) associated with FAIR blame a wide array of social ills on immigrants—is similarly incorrect.

It is perfectly legitimate to point out that some aliens take advantage of ill-conceived and poorly enforced immigration laws to perpetrate heinous crimes, and that real people suffer as a result.

The author of the essay Sanchez cites merely asserts that those foreigners who come here to engage in criminal activities (and no one would deny that there are such people) will encounter little difficulty.

That does not suggest that all, most, or even a significant minority of immigrants engage in that sort of deviant behavior. They don't. But the gaping holes in our policies that allow criminal aliens access to our country are legitimate issues.

Similarly, terrorists represent only a tiny fraction of the aliens who enter the United States. Nevertheless, several of the Sept. 11 terrorists were able to exploit lax enforcement of our immigration laws and overstay their visas. By all accounts, our nation remains vulnerable to terrorist infiltration.

If Sanchez had taken even a cursory look at FAIR's 25-year public record, she would have found that the objectives of the organization are clear and simple: We believe that America's immigration policies are failing to serve the interests of the American people and should be changed.

Dan Stein is executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, based in Washington, D.C.