To the Editor:

“Go back to where you came from” (Reader Center feature, July 23 ) was a scary and depressing series of firsthand accounts of bigotry in America .

Let me suggest to all who are told to “go back” that they adopt a reply my doctorate-holding friend used when we lived in Europe. Asked where she was from by a woman on a trolley, my friend replied, “I’m an American.”

The woman said: “No! Where are you from?!”

My friend replied, “I’m an American.”

The woman stopped asking, and we went on with our day. (No, you don’t have to know what my friend’s ancestral nationality was. My friend was an American.)

Sharon Barber

Georgetown, Tex.

To the Editor:

In the course of cataract surgery at one of New York’s best hospitals, I became aware that almost everyone working there, from the nurses, nurses’ aides, administrative staff and even my anesthesiologist, were foreign-born. An entire staff of immigrants saw me through the procedure beginning to end.