Giffords, citizens share ideas on immigration reform

SAHUARITA - U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords touted a comprehensive immigration reform bill here Tuesday during a town hall-style forum that featured comments from concerned farmers, conservative ranchers, humanitarian workers and even a former political foe.

Giffords, the Democratic representative from Arizona's 8th congressional district, told the reported 175 attendees that a bill introduced March 22 in the House of Representatives offers a realistic solution to the problem of illegal immigration.

"I believe this bill to be tough, practical and effective in terms of realizing that we have to secure our borders, that high-tech security is important (and that) we need a guest worker program," Giffords said.The bill, known as the Strive Act, also may represent the nation's last chance at comprehensive immigration reform for the near future. The consensus in Washington, Giffords said, is that if a bill is not approved by August, immigration reform will be tabled for at least 18 months due to upcoming elections.

The Strive Act, which Giffords co-sponsored, would increase the number of federal agents on the border, punish employers who knowingly hire illegal workers, open 20 new detention centers to house criminal border-crossers and create a guest worker program for up to 400,000 immigrant laborers.

The plan also would force those already in the country illegally to pay a fine before they could apply for a legal work visa, and it would force them to leave the U.S. before they could become citizens.

"This bill is not amnesty," Giffords said. "It is not what we set up in 1986 under Ronald Reagan. There are fines, there are background checks and there are tremendous thresholds (that applicants must clear)."

One local citizen who disagreed, however, was Giffords' Republican opponent in last November's election, Green Valley resident Randy Graf.

"There's a lot of doublespeak in the bill," Graf said, pointing to a clause that reportedly allows certain restrictions on guest workers to be waived. "It is an amnesty and it says so right in (the language)."

"The place to stop illegal immigration is at the border," said one man.

Richard Humphries, an Elfrida resident who has lived near Border Patrol checkpoints, agreed that checkpoints drive human and drug smugglers into surrounding areas.

And that's just the point, he said.

"That, my friends, is our opportunity to assist the Border Patrol to catch them, not to hide under our couches," Humphries said.

Giffords, like her Republican predecessor, Jim Kolbe, had initially opposed permanent checkpoints in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector. But a recent visit to a high-tech post near Laredo, Texas, had her suggesting that modern checkpoints could provide security and efficiency.

U.S. Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar, who appeared with Giffords at the event, agreed.

"Arizona doesn't like checkpoints because you only know inefficient ones," Aguilar said.

Dick Walden, a large-scale pecan farmer from the Santa Cruz River Valley, and Ed Curry, a chili grower from the Willcox area, applauded the guest worker component of the Strive Act, but both men thought that 400,000 workers was too few to meet the demand.

"I'm telling you folks, there are not enough legal workers," Curry said. "American agriculture is in trouble."

Bisbee resident Tom Carlson, who is active in humanitarian border efforts, said he was concerned with the way aggressive workplace enforcement has disrupted immigrant families.

Recent raids, Carlson said, created "a crisis of children left without their mother, father or families, without help or income to survive."

One woman praised the proposed reform bill, but wondered why it didn't call for more pressure on the Mexican government to promote economic development south of the border. Another speaker argued that the plan lacks adequate funding for English language training for new immigrants.

During a question-and-answer session with reporters after the event, Giffords was asked if she supported the Border Patrol's decision to return Agent Nicholas Corbett to active duty at the Naco Station three days after he fatally shot Francisco Javier Dominguez-Rivera, an illegal Mexican immigrant.

Giffords said she had seen recent reports in the Herald/Review and Arizona Daily Star suggesting that Corbett shot an unresisting, kneeling victim, but she said she was not familiar enough with the case to comment.

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She better have an F on her immigration score card.

Dixie