The Home Office is looking for 550 new (junior level) people to manage its borders. Applicants must be UK nationals with an added criteria of having previously served in the police or the army (who don’t restrict their posts to UK nationals only). So as an Irish passport holder, living in the UK for the last 30 years, I’m considered good enough to shoot, or be shot at for the country and even represent its people as an MP in the UK parliament but I’m not to be trusted with opening a passport or a suitcase – I despair!

Sara Coakley

London

• Theresa May can sneer all she likes about antisemitism in the Labour party, but I’m much more alarmed at the refusal to acknowledge the pervasive racism in her own (Mother says Windrush stress caused son’s death, 19 April).

Fr Julian Dunn

Great Haseley, Oxfordshire

• Was it a coincidence or was there something more sinister about the fact that Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech was delivered on 20 April – Adolf Hitler’s birthday?

Phil Garner

Derby

• Please will you stop illustrating the Proms – the world’s greatest music festival – with a picture of the only event out of over 90 concerts at which people wave flags (Report, 19 April).

Colin Matthews

London

• I couldn’t agree more (Pupils’ poor reading habits blamed for limited vocabularies, 19 April). I have rarely heard a young person say “I said” or “He/she said”. It’s nearly always “I was like” or “He/she was like”. What is it with the “like” word?

Peter Ward

London

• Gordon Bennett! We never seem to hear from Ian Grieve and his boat on the Shropshire Union canal when the warm weather arrives.

Ivor Morgan

Lincoln

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters