Immigration column has prompted e-mail flood

• "You could have pointed out that in July of 1847 when Brigham Young entered the Salt Lake Valley he was actually illegally entering the country of Mexico without proper documentation and brought with him thousands of illegal immigrants."

• "The empire of the Aztecs never extended more than 250 miles north of what is today Mexico City. The Apache, Comanche and Navajo are unrelated to Aztecs or Mayas in the same way as Basques are unrelated to Latvians. Not only did Mexico never have effective control over the lands north of the Rio Bravo, those lands were never referred to as 'Mexico' prior to 1824 . . . because Americans are so ignorant of the history of their own country the myth that we 'stole' something from Mexico has gained credibility."

• "My question is how do we preserve our national identity, strength and vitality without becoming ethnic monsters? Is that possible, or is there place for some degree of righteous anger in the defense of our country against invaders?"

• "Your column confirms the point I made in my article which appeared on 2/9/06 in Harvard Law School's newspaper 'The Record,' entitled 'Examine Mexico's Real Intent Before Reforming Immigration.' . . . The recent massive demonstrations of people with many carrying Mexican flags support the point I tried to make in the article." (From Yeh Ling-Ling, executive director of the Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America, Oakland, Calif.

• "We can't still be fighting over who took what land from whom. The Croats, Bosnians and Serbs have been doing this for centuries, as have the Hungarians and Romanians, and it hasn't gotten them anywhere or resolved anything. The borders are where they are and all of us need to obey the laws of the country we are in."

• "As you know, England, Spain, France, etc., sent explorers, I'll call them plunderers, to the new world and they went ashore and arrogantly stuck a flag staff into the ground and claimed it in the name of the country from which they came, disregarding the rights of the existing inhabitants as if they did not exist."

• "We just did to the Mexicans 150 years ago what they (and the Spanish) did to the Native Americans 300 years ago."