Having recently returned from a trip to Washington, D.C., I can certainly say that the old axiom “Charity begins at home” should really have meaning to anyone serving in the Congress of the United States and the president himself.

There are approximately 20 million people who visit our nation’s capital each year and half a million who commute in and out of the city each day. At this time of the year the cherry blossoms are out in force and every schoolchild over the age of 10 is walking around the capital. But also out in force are those individuals that we as a people, for the most part, do not want to recognize, and I’m talking about the homeless in D.C.

There are three major shelters within the city and they alone cannot handle throngs of people (and mostly blacks) that sleep in Union Station and in and around our nation’s monuments. There are people out on the road dividers holding signs for money and begging from car to car. How do you think that must look to visitors who come from overseas to see people begging on the streets?

Something is terribly wrong with our system of government when we cannot take care of our own, and yet this president is determined to bring thousands of refugees from the Middle East into our country, at the expense of the American taxpayer.

There is one positive note I discovered while in D.C. and it deals with blacks who have come from Africa. Those that work in the various food-court spots within the city speak broken English with a heavy accent, but they are speaking English while working. In my experience, those who are Hispanic, Latino or Mexican don’t give a darn and speak Spanish among themselves in public behind the counter of a fast-food enterprise.

—Jim Garvey, Kalispell