Posted on 09/07/2005 12:15:14 PM PDT by TERMINATTOR
The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to keep paying $25,000 annually for a nonprofit group's effort to use water stations to prevent illegal border crossers from dying in the desert.
Republican Ann Day became the first supervisor to oppose the annual payment since the board first approved it in 2001. Day said she's now is questioning whether payments to Humane Borders put the county in conflict with U.S. immigration policy and could encourage illegal immigration.
"I feel there is a lot of ambiguity and unanswered questions," Day told the board. After the vote, she said board members know the stations save some lives, but "do we not know that it increases the dangerous conditions because smugglers say: 'Don't worry. . . . Go ahead and walk here. You'll be OK'?"
Supervisor Richard Elias said he didn't see any ambiguity.
"It is a matter of right and wrong," Elias said. "It's a question of whether we follow our moral and religious beliefs, to find and help people who are suffering and to keep them from dying. . . .
"There are a lot of questions about a failed federal policy on immigration that brings people into this country," Elias said.
Day agreed, but she said other moral issues come into play, led by the question of whether the water stations aid illegal activity. Other critics of Humane Borders have said that a rising number of desert deaths each year shows the water tanks aren't helping.
The county money will help Humane Borders pay for a fourth vehicle to haul water to the desert tanks, said Robin Hoover, the group's president.
John Yoakum, a member of First Christian Church in Tucson, where Hoover is pastor, said: "Federal policy is in conflict with federal policy. Federal agencies approve in writing where to put the water stations. But we wouldn't be putting the stations out if it wasn't for federal policy causing the deaths."
In other action, the board unanimously agreed to cut economic development and tourism financing to nonprofit groups from $2.851 million in fiscal 2003-04 to $2.596 million in fiscal 2004-05. The Greater Tucson Economic Council and the Southern Arizona Tech Council absorbed the largest cuts, from $490,000 to $200,000 and from $223,500 to $135,000, respectively. The Southern Arizona Institute for Advanced Training reaped the biggest increase, from $150,000 to $200,000.
The board also unanimously agreed to build a five-mile-long dirt road leading from Arizona 86 west of Three Points to private land on the New Hayhook Ranch. The road will benefit owners of 76 parcels, including 53 with construction on them. The work, costing $750,000 to $1 million, will not be done until it can be shown that the property owners will be able to repay the costs without causing unbearable increases in their property tax rates, said Kurt Weinrich, the county's transportation director.
The landowners have until September 2006 to get a new road to replace Coleman Road, which passes through Tohono O'odham land and which the tribe plans to close at that time.
Stop the deaths, CLOSE the borders, and jail the coyotee's! Edit/Delete Message
I see no problem with putting water stations in the desert. Surrounded by underground sensors, of course ...
Can the state issue a state of emergency then have the cities go against it?
The Council for Foreign Relations has designated illegal aliens as 'trusted travelers'.
How about water stations on the Mexico side of the boarder, a big "No Trespassing" sign in Spanish and an Israeli style Security Fence from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific.
I see no problem with putting water stations in the desert. Surrounded by underground sensors Claymore mines, of course
The same people who say illegal immigrants are only coming to do jobs no American wants are the same ones who say we need more government programs (read, they want my paycheck!)for the poor, downtrodden, disadvantaged welfare cases.
I don't doubt for one second that you really do believe that.
They are terrorists. Deal with terrorists accordingly.
What about the Al-Qaeda caught in Nogales? Ok, by you?
Dang criminal invaders can't get no respect, Boo Hoo!
You seem to beleive illegal immigration is OK. How can you think like that? What about the poor & unemployed on welfare who need jobs. We saw them by the thousands looting NOLA.
Illegals manage to find jobs, how come these people can't? Oh, yeah, the illegals stole them.
Ohhh! I LOVE the way you think!
Thank you. Clearly, some people have no problem letting in the terrorists.
Source?
Oh, no source...just making it up...
Due to our idiotic family reunification policies Mexicans are already the largest group of legal immigrants. But that's not enough for you and these criminal intruders
They are the people cleaning your hospital restrooms, feeding your children at day cares, changing the sheets in nursing homes, patching the potholes on your streets, removing the whiskey dings from your cars, cleaning your sewers, picking up trash alongside your highways, repairing your roofs, mowing the common areas in your subdivision, washing dishes at your restaurants, sweeping filings at your family owned machine shops, washing your city police cars, picking your vegetables...
All this and more while the anti-immigrant losers are sitting at home playing Gameboys and telling their parents/wives that they can't find a job because the Mexicans stole all of them.
If we had no one on welfare and it WASNT simply about lowlifes willing to break the rules for ill-gotten profit, i might agree with you. There is a reason the are called ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.
Which job did an illegal alien take away from you?
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