AP prison article unfair
The Associated Press (AP) article you published on illegal immigrants and the private prison industry in the US (“Detaining illegal immigrants a booming business in US,” Aug. 8, page 9) relied on selective information and speculation to advance a misguided hypothesis about the impact our company, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), has on US immigration policy.
CCA does not and has never lobbied for or endorsed immigration legislation under long-standing corporate policy.
In reality, we have financially supported a number of individuals and organizations that run contrary to the examples provided in the report.
For instance, we are a member of the US Chamber of Commerce, which vehemently opposed Arizona’s controversial immigration legislation.
CCA exists because we provide solutions to the government to help meet our nation’s detention and corrections challenges.
We have been innovators in everything from rehabilitation programming to facility design, and we do so at independently verified cost savings of between 5 and 15 percent.
Mike Machak
Public Affairs, CCA
Acknowledging realities
This month is the 60th anniversary of the 1952 “Treaty of Taipei” between Japan and the Republic of China (ROC), and it is time to reflect on the treaty’s significance (“Treaty clear on Taiwan, Ma says,” Aug. 6, page 3).
It was certainly a critical first step in normalizing post-World War II relations between Japan and Taiwan, resolving the nationality status and the disposition of properties of Japanese and Taiwanese, and laying the legal groundwork for future fisheries, travel, civil, air, maritime and commercial interactions between the two countries.
The Treaty of Taipei played an important role in keeping Taiwan integrated within the community of non-communist Asian nations in the early Cold War era.
However, let’s acknowledge what the Treaty was not. It was not an instrument of territorial disposition. And the Treaty’s language is clear that it, in no way, recognized Republic of China authority over any part of China not actually under the control of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
The scope of the treaty was delimited by a letter from then-Japanese prime minister Shigeru Yoshida to the senior US peace negotiator, former US secretary of state John Foster Dulles, on Dec. 24, 1951, in which Yoshida acquiesced to Dulles’ recommendation that Japan conclude a treaty with Taiwan that covered only the territories under the actual control of the KMT government in Taipei.
On Jan. 28, 1952, Yoshida said: “Japan is prepared to write a treaty to establish good-neighbor relations with Taiwan on the basis of the reality that the Taiwan Government is at present in control of certain territories.”
Japan subsequently limited the scope of the treaty to “Taiwan and Penghu,” a formula that the Taipei side expanded in an exchange of notes to read: “all the territories which are now, or which may hereafter be, under the control of [the ROC] Government.”
Yet, even that formula was the subject of much negotiation between the Japanese and ROC treaty negotiators.
The US envoy in Taipei, Karl Rankin, reported on April 14, 1952, that “it became evident that the Japanese delegation was reading much into this choice of words regarding the future of Formosa and possibe sovereignty over such islands as Kinmen.”
Taipei’s negotiators in April 1952 fought long and hard to keep the “under control” clauses out of the Treaty proper because they believed it derogated the ROC government’s sovereignty.
In fact, at one point in the Taipei government’s early contemplation of a treaty with Japan, the ROC foreign ministry proposed an annex that read: “It is mutually understood that the present treaty shall be applicable to all territories which are now and may hereafter be under the actual control of either high contracting party.”
Washington quietly vetoed this wording under the misguided impression that “the implication might be given that Japan would at some time in the future once again take expansionist measures.”
Too bad. If that language had been kept, Taipei and Tokyo would not be arguing sixty years later about the Diaoyutais (釣魚台).
John J. Tkacik, Jr
Alexandria, Virginia
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