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SIERRA VISTA - Border security was a surprising part of the last presidential debate Tuesday in Tempe.
And what surprised two local men the most is that debate moderator Bob Schieffer said most of the e-mails he received from the American public was about what Republican President George W. Bush and his Democratic opponent John Kerry would do to address the border issue with Mexico.
The Rev. Tom Buechele, who supports a more open door border policy, and Glenn Spencer, who wants the border controlled, said it was interesting to hear Schieffer start his question about immigration by saying it was the area the public apparently is concerned about the most.
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Schieffer asked the two candidates the immigration question at Wednesday night's presidential debate at Arizona State University in Tempe.
Bush and Kerry said they support a new guest worker program. The president said he opposes amnesty. Kerry indicated he could support a plan to legalize those who enter the United States illegally through some kind of review of their lives in the nation.
Buechele, the vicar of St. John's Episcopal Church in Bisbee and the border "missioner" for the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, said the reason the debate moderator brought the immigration issue up one time was because the public apparently senses "no political will" to address the problem.
While the president said he is against amnesty, Buechele said that is an unrealistic stance to take in face of the number of illegal immigrants who live in the United States and have been paying taxes, social security and sending their children - who were born in this country - to public schools.
Many illegal immigrants have lived here for 25 years, the vicar said.
"I would support gradual legalization," he said, in agreement with Kerry's stance.
Buechele also said he likes Kerry's idea of going after employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, something Bush did not mention in his response.
When he was a priest working in Iowa, Buechele said he saw incidents of misuse of people who were illegal border crossers. In some cases, they were denied their pay. He said most were fearful of reporting the problem because they could be deported.
"That kind of things goes on all the time," he said.
Business and corporate officials are glad they are not investigated for hiring illegal immigrants "because they want cheap labor," Buechele said.
Spencer, who heads the American Border Patrol, a nonprofit organization that is not associated with the U.S. Border Patrol, said Schieffer's lead in to his question and the question itself were extraordinary.
"This was by far the most telling question," he said, because it was the American public that highlighted immigration issues as a top topic.
The president misspoke when he said the federal government is still flying unmanned aerial vehicles, when the truth is the test use of the pilotless planes recently ended, Spencer said.
The only organization using UAVs along the border now, which started before the federal program, is the American Border Patrol, he added.
As for Bush touting the assignment of 1,000 more federal Border Patrol agents along the international boundary, Spencer said "that's a drop in the bucket."
Although there was a decrease in the number of illegal immigrant apprehensions after the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, the number of those taken into custody is creeping up again, he said.
According to an end-of-the-fiscal year report by the U.S. Border Patrol, and reported in the Sierra Vista Herald/Bisbee Daily Review on Oct. 5, 491,514 illegal immigrants were apprehended in the Tucson Sector from Oct. 1, 2003, through Sept. 30, this year. The sector includes all of Arizona except for the far western area near Yuma. Of that number, 235,379 were taken into custody in Cochise County.
For the previous federal budget year - Oct. 1, 2002, through Sept. 30, 2003 - 347,263 illegal immigrants were apprehended in the sector of which 178,854 were taken into custody in Cochise County.
It is difficult to measure if the border is more secure, Spencer said.
Others have said if "you can't measure it, you can't improve it," he said.
Neither Bush nor Kerry are right when it comes to a guest worker program, Spencer declared.
Such a proposal will fail in the U.S. House of Representatives, "falling like a lead balloon," he predicted.
Bush and Kerry have no real solution to the immigration border problem, Spencer said. But he said he was surprised by Kerry's view that employers who hire illegal immigrants have to be gone after, a program he supports.
To him, the only solution is to completely control the border, stopping all illegal incursions before looking at any new proposals
Four years ago, Bush said he was going to control the border and now he wants more time, he said.
"The border is still out of control," Spencer said. "There is nothing new in what President Bush or Kerry said."
HERALD/REVIEW senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615.
Ezai I. Martinez wrote on Jun 24, 2009 7:58 PM: