Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9410220007
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEOFF SEAMANS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
At roughly 400 miles, this Arizona-Sonora border is about four times as long as the one separating the Mexican state of Baja California Norte from California, where Republican Gov. Pete Wilson complains vigorously of the harmful impact of often-illegal immigration on the cost of providing essential state services like public education.
And unlike Florida, where Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles offers laments similar to Wilson's, Arizona is not separated by ocean and sea from international neighbors.
Yet Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, at a National Conference of Editorial Writers convention in Phoenix the other day, did not talk about immigration problems.
He talked, rather, of the benefits from bordering Sonora, of the historic links between Arizona and Sonora, of the rapidly rising value of the two states' trade ties.
Symington is a business Republican who, without having held other public office, defeated an impeached former governor weirdo in a 1990 GOP primary and went on to a narrow victory in the general election. The gov is running this fall for a second term; maybe his account of Arizona's good relationship with Sonora, and of his state's (and Sonora's) good fortunes under the North American Free Trade Agreement, should be given a campaign discount.
Even so, Symington's analysis was in accord with what other, nonpolitical speakers had to say. And in any event, the fact that it came from a governor running for re-election reinforces the point: Political mileage is thought in Arizona to be gained not by stoking anti-immigration fears but by extolling international friendship.
Arizona, in short, is a state with a foreign policy, centering not on Mexico generally but on Sonora specifically.
Accustomed to the wrangling among the Balkan republics of the Roanoke Valley, I was shocked - shocked! - to learn that the respective Cabinets of Arizona and Sonora meet together regularly, and have done so for years.
And to be told that the Sonoran government, as a pollution-control effort, has installed equipment to monitor the quality of air and water flowing into Arizona. That there's a Peace Corps-like Border Volunteer Corps. That work is proceeding at the University of Arizona's International Law Center to standardize contractual and commercial documents needed by businesses operating in two states with disparate legal codes.
And to be informed that, above all, Arizona and Sonora are committed to a regional strategic plan which recognizes the artificiality of a political border bearing little relation to geographic - and thus, in the end, economic - reality.
One goal, for example, is for Arizona and Sonora to forge a reputation as a "two-nation destination," with Arizona's Grand Canyon in the north and Sonora's beaches in the south complementing each other.
For the future, Symington said, planners envision development of a natural trade corridor, using several modes of transportation, from Sonora through Arizona to Canada. With NAFTA, U.S.-Mexico trade already is escalating, much of it passing - both ways - through the expanding border port of Nogales.
But Symington's and other Arizonans' emphasis on the benefits rather than burdens of bordering Latin America isn't wholly a reflection of better sense on their part than on the part of Californians or Floridians.
For one thing, the seeming permeability of the Arizona-Sonora border is deceptive. It's a long land boundary, yes. But it lies in searing desert that discourages human traffic except on highways, where border crossings can be controlled. Symington is not confronted with the immigration numbers that bedevil Wilson and Chiles.
Moreover, Symington, a developer by trade, and other Arizonans seem still enthralled by growth in and of itself.
Boomtown Phoenix, with only 107,000 people in 1950, had grown to 984,000 by 1990, making it the ninth-largest city in the United States. The metro area's population, 971,000 in 1970, had by 1990 grown to more than 2.1 million, making it the 20th-largest metro area.
But the boom has come at a steep price.
Pardon my Portugese, but ecologically and aesthetically speaking, Phoenix is a dump. The natural beauty and ecosystem of the desert is destroyed by urban sprawl, strip malls, auto exhaust and the infusion of massive volumes of water from the Colorado River, hundreds of miles away. The water is not simply to slake human thirst, but also to keep swimming pools full and to nourish exotic flora (like grass for yards) imported from moister climes.
As a rule, Arizonans don't seem to have learned that growth's benefits aren't unconditional; when they do, as has happened among Californians and Floridians, their benign attitude toward immigration may change.
That would be unfortunate, because growth - whether in Arizona or in Sonora or in Southwest Virginia - should be neither deified nor demonized. It should, rather, be planned for and channeled, rather like the open aqueducts from the Colorado.
NAFTA-spurred economic growth gives hope that Mexico can raise environmental standards to levels sought in a U.S.-demanded side agreement to the trade pact. Can the United States make similar use of the fruits of increased trade?
by CNB