The Big Story: Napolitano to Congress: ‘Time is running out’

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat whose state is the No. 1 entry point for illegal immigration, implored Congress Tuesday to fix the nation’s broken immigration system before the year’s end.

“We’ve heard too much talk about border security and not enough action,” Napolitano said in a speech at the National Press Club.

She urged Congress to “end the rhetoric, stop the politics, provide sustained funding and turn away from extreme, unworkable solutions that solve nothing and only delay the benefits of real reform.”

“All of America is waiting—and time is running out,” said Napolitano, who is in Washington for the National Governors Association winter meeting.

The solution, she said, is a combination of border enforcement, a temporary worker program to deal with the demand for workers to fill jobs in the U.S. and strong cooperation with Mexico and other trade partners, she said.

An estimated 11 million illegal immigrants live in the country now.

4,000 a day

Last year, nearly 4,000 attempted to cross into Arizona every day, and as many as 3,000 got past border checkpoints and survived harsh desert conditions to make it to jobs in the U.S., she said.

While Congress has spent months debating a solution, efforts to solve the problem have stalled as lawmakers bitterly debate the issue.

President Bush signed a bill last year supported by conservatives who want to tighten border enforcement. The bill calls for a 700-mile fence at the U.S./Mexico line.

Lawmakers this year hope to revive a measure, which failed last year, to create a temporary worker program and a path to citizenship for some of the illegal immigrants already in the country.

Meanwhile, states have borne too much of the responsibility, Napolitano said. That includes crowded jails, hospitals and morgues and overworked judicial system workers.

Owed $350 million

She estimates the federal government owes Arizona $350 million for the cost of holding illegal immigrants in jail.

For that amount “we could pay for all-day kindergarten for every 5-year-old in the state,” she said.

Napolitano, a moderate who won re-election in a conservative state with 63 percent of the vote, said Congress must get realistic about its approach and reject those who say the best solution is enforcing the border and ordering all illegal immigrants in the country to leave.

“What a joke,” she said of those plans.

“I ... refuse to concede that illegal immigration is a political winner for those who simplistically suggest we can just ‘seal’ the border,” she said

The evidence in Arizona, she said, is that in November, she and newly elected Democratic Reps. Gabrielle Giffords and Harry Mitchell all defeated Republican opponents who had made tough border restrictions a central campaign issue.

Fences alone won’t solve the immigration problem, she said. But Congress needs to do something.

“The continued failure to act will be worse than almost any legislation that can be passed,” she said.