Border ills can't wait for feds
Mar. 5, 2007 12:00 AM

Gov. Janet Napolitano and I agree that the current immigration system is broken. We don't agree on how to deal with it.

First, we cannot give a person an incentive to come to America illegally. This means you do not give them a chance to get legal status at the same time they are breaking the law.

We are paying an "illegal immigration tax," but the governor does not count all of the costs. There is the cost to the schools, the jails, and the health care system.

And I don't mean just in money. In the cases of schools, it is the child in the overcrowded classroom who is given an education that is not what it could be. In the health care system, it is all of the Americans who must wait to be treated in the emergency rooms.

The problem is moving up from the border and now is on our highways and streets. The "coyotes" who are doing this are scum. The heavy traffic of illegal border crossers just gives them more people to control. This has to stop.

What Napolitano has done so far is not enough. She seems to think this emergency is the federal government's problem. She is right, but the federal government is not taking care of it.

The governor has to do more. She has to decide whether she wants to shift some money addressing the issues illegal immigration causes in schools, jails and health care to efforts to stop the problem at the border rather than waiting for it to come to Tucson and Phoenix.

I did not vote for Napolitano, but she is my governor. I challenge her to prove me wrong. This problem is too important to count on someone else to take care of it. - Scott Bergren, Chandler


http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... ts054.html