Dear Editors,

What a heartless attitude you take on the issue of Health Tourism (Keep out health tourists, 16 June 2003; The immigration paradox and dilemma, 2 June 2003)).

Surely sending someone back to a 3rd World country who arrives here with AIDS is at least every bit as bad as sending an asylum seeker back to a country where he is liable to suffer political persecution. In fact, is it not worse? Since we are condemning him to a far worse fate, to inadequate medical treatment and premature death.

At the same time, who could blame any one of Africa's millions of AIDS suffers for trying to get to Britain in order to obtain treatment and a reprieve of their death sentence, which they will certainly not get in their own country?

My purpose is to point out a dilemma it is time we faced up to. There are 100's of millions of people in the third world, who, if they managed to get to our shores, we should take in and help. But already there are parts of Britain which will soon have larger immigrant than indigenous populations, with all the problems that is liable to cause. And besides, as you point out, it is the British population, its taxpayers and those who have lived here for generations and made it the Great and prosperous country that it is, who should be given priority, instead of being made to feel by idiotic liberals, multiculturalists and some of the immigrants who are already here, that they are being racist if they put themselves and their own people first.