AZ - Candidates for Congress in the East Valley spar over immigration

Rebekah L. Sanders, The Republic | azcentral.com 10:11 a.m. MST June 29, 2016

Two Republicans running for Congress in the East Valley don't believe building a wall the length of the U.S.-Mexico border as Donald Trump has proposed is practical.

Instead, securing the border with a combination of additional fencing, Border Patrol staffing and technology like drones is needed, said Christine Jones, a former technology executive running in Arizona's 5th Congressional District.

"We don't need the Great Wall of Mexico," Jones said. "What we need is to finish the fence in highly trafficked trafficking lanes. ... There are many, many miles on the border … that don’t need a fence because the terrain is not passable by human beings and that we ought not to be worrying about so much."

Don Stapley, a former Maricopa County supervisor, agreed.

"Mexico is the largest trading partner here in the state of Arizona. The last thing we need is a trade war with Mexico," Stapley said. "... I do not agree with the idea that we need to build the wall across the entire border. I think it sends a terrible message. But I think it's effective in urbanized areas and with technology and other tools. We need to get control of the border, and that's a priority."

Improved fencing

State Rep. Justin Olson, R-Mesa, and state Senate President Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, talked about completing fencing along the border. Biggs said the barrier in areas like Nogales needs to be higher.

"If you're a nation without borders, you're not really a nation," Biggs said, echoing Trump, in a group interview Tuesday with The Arizona Republic editorial board.

Not contiguous to the border, the Republican-leaning 5th district includes parts of Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert and Queen Creek.

Immigration advocates targeted retiring U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., during the 2013 push for comprehensive reform. He stood fast with conservatives opposing a path to citizenship and the U.S. Senate's "Gang of Eight" compromise, which was led by Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake. Flake represented the area in the U.S. House before winning election

Jones, Biggs and Olson said they favor a piecemeal approach over comprehensive reform. But Biggs and Olson seemed to take a harder line than their opponents.

Biggs called for the end of automatic birthright citizenship, another Trump proposal. Granting citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. encourages undocumented immigrants to cross the border to have children, critics of the policy say.

Though many experts believe it would require a change to the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Biggs said other interpretations are that Congress could simply pass a bill to stop the practice.

Proposed crackdowns

The country could also crack down on visa overstays and federal tax benefits that some undocumented immigrants may receive, he said.

"When you do enforce the law, it causes some self-movement, self-regulation to come into the country or to seek some other safe harbor," Biggs said, revisiting the "self-deportation" argument associated with 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Olson proposed a nationwide employer-sanctions law, similar to Arizona's, that would punish businesses that employ undocumented immigrants.

"The potential of losing one's license for hiring someone who's not here legally has had the impact of decreasing illegal immigration," Olson said. "That is something that we can do to decrease that incentive for folks to put themselves in harm's way" by crossing the desert or paying a coyote to smuggle them.

He blamed President Barack Obama for causing the 2014 surge of unaccompanied minors at the border. The president's executive actions to protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation sent a message to Central American families to send their children, he said.

Though Jones said she doesn't support citizenship for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants already living in the United States, she added that mass deportation isn't possible either, logistically or financially.

"You could put truckfuls and trainfuls of people, it's not happening," she said.

Instead Jones called for deporting immigrants with criminal records and considering visa extensions and legalization for others.

"Is there a way that we can help those people coexist peacefully without giving them citizenship because we know giving them citizenship rewards bad behavior?" she asked.

Stapley: SB 1070 a mistake

Arizona's attempt to crack down on illegal immigration through Senate Bill 1070 six years ago was a mistake, Stapley said. Parts of it were ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court to be unconstitutional, and it spurred an economic backlash, he said.

Instead, Stapley advocated encouraging immigration by highly educated workers.

"We should staple a green card to the Ph.D.'s of Arizona State University graduates who are not citizens of the U.S. but choose to stay here and build the economy," he said. "... How many of these young people are we sending back to India or Japan or England or Canada who would rather stay here and build our economy but because of archaic and broken immigration laws are forced to go back? Common sense tells you that we need to fix these issues."

Two Democratic candidates running in the conservative 5th district, Talia Fuentes and Kinsey Remaklus, said they support deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions. But for the rest, the candidates believe in a path to citizenship.

Fuentes advocated social programs to integrate immigrants, while Remaklus called for expanding the agricultural guest-worker program.

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