Mayor Borane: Ashcroft ‘didn’t scratch the surface’
05/09/01
Bill Hess

DOUGLAS, AZ — Republicans like Democrats are “frightened to death to really look at the country’s illegal immigrant problem,” Douglas Mayor Ray Borane said Tuesday.

Even though the current national leadership is in Republican hands, it is handling border issues the same way Democrats did when they had control of the White House, Borane said. While U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft visited the border — from Texas to Arizona — in four days, Borane said that like his Democratic predecessor Janet Reno, who also toured the international line, Ashcroft has “myopic vision.”

The vision translates into only seeing a need for more federal law enforcement officers and equipment along the border, the mayor said the day after Ashcroft left Arizona. The Douglas area and the rest of Cochise County are considered the region where the most illegal immigrant traffic occurs along the entire border between California and Texas.

“The only focal point they (the federal government officials) can show the American people is using law enforcement to handle the illegal immigrant problem,” the mayor said. Illegal immigration is a national problem because those who enter improperly scatter throughout the United States become a major part of the country’s work force, Borane said. For the past few years, establishing a new guest worker program has been the mayor’s goal, but his pleas continue to fall on deaf ears at the national level, he said.

National leaders of both political parties “have no commitment to resolve the problem,” he said.

To Ashcroft and others, the way to solve the problem “is the big charade of law enforcement,” Borane said. What is not being recognized is that major industries in the United States depend on cheap labor, much of it provided by illegal immigrants, he said.

The hotel and motel businesses, along with agriculture, construction, landscaping, clothing and textile mills and meat packaging, would have hard times if it were not for illegal immigrants, the mayor said.

Those industries have owners, unions and lobbyists who work hard not to have their businesses looked into, Borane added. Of course, if illegal immigrants were not working in those industries the costs to the American consumer would increase, Borane said.

With a new guest worker program, costs could be kept down while allowing legal immigrants to cross into the United States to fill jobs Americans do not want to do and would allow the then legal immigrants to be paid better and allow their children to go to school, he said.

Right now many illegal immigrants refuse to send their children to school in fear of being found out and not allowing their children to be educated only feeds the cycle of poverty, Borane said. He pointed out that even children who are born in the United States to illegal immigrants, and therefore are citizens of the country, do not attend school because their parents are afraid of being found.

As for Ashcroft’s visit to Douglas on Sunday, Borane said, “He didn’t scratch the surface. All he did was ride a motorcycle and pat some (U.S. Border Patrol) agents on the back. It was a laugh,” Borane said, adding he was not invited to meet with Ashcroft.

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