The next time you see several Sonora license plates in the parking lot of a Tucson store, you’re seeing your taxes being cut.

The Tucson area reaped $968.7 million in direct economic benefits from July 2007 through June 2008. That’s up from $280.2 million in 2001, according to a University of Arizona study released this week.

Dollars that Mexicans spend in Tucson boost our economy and are responsible for employing many Tucsonans.

Sales and other taxes paid by those shoppers are taxes that don’t have to be collected from the rest of us.

Many complain about the problems of living close to the international border. But there is a substantial upside.

In his budget for fiscal 2010, President Obama has proposed that the federal government stop reimbursing border states for jailing illegal immigrants.

That would be a patently unfair slap at states – such as Arizona – that through geographic happenstance, are unduly impacted by the federal government’s failed immigration policies.

Under the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, states and counties are reimbursed for jailers’ salaries for holding illegal immigrants with at least one felony and two misdemeanor convictions.

In the past two years, $27.1 million has been sent to Arizona under the program, with about $1.3 million of that coming to Pima County. That is far short of the actual costs for jailing and prosecuting illegal immigrants.

Every dime of those costs not reimbursed by the federal government must be paid by state, county and local taxpayers. That is simply unfair.

Obama must include funding for the SCAAP program in his budget.

These mule deer, photographed in or near the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in late 2007, clearly won't be able to go farther, whether to reach food, water, other members of their herd or a haven from predators. President Obama's budget proposal means no more border wall will be built.

President Obama has taken steps to halt construction of the medieval fence on the Mexican border – a move that brings to an end a chapter of pointless environmental devastation in the southern United States.

In his budget proposal for fiscal 2010 released last week, Obama canceled plans to extend the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

So far about 624 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing has been built along the nearly 2,000-mile border Another 46 miles of fence had been planned, but what has been built so far may be the end of the project.

Instead, there are plans to switch to a “virtual” fence – towers holding sensors, cameras and communications equipment to detect smugglers and people entering the country illegally. Work on that far-less-offensive fence is set to begin this week.

Fences and walls were ineffective when they were built by the first Emperor of China, they were ineffective when built by the communists in East Germany and they have been and would have been ineffective in the southern U.S.

This was noted by Janet Napolitano when she was governor of Arizona. “Show me a 50-foot wall, and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder,” said Napolitano, now secretary of Homeland Security.

Fences have their place in urban parts of the border, but are useless in isolated areas where smugglers go over, under and through them with impunity. The fence cost an average of $3.9 million per mile to build and a Border Patrol official called it only “a speed bump in the desert.”

The fence also has divided and irreparably harmed some of the richest biodiversity in the world that lies along both sides of the border.

The Bush administration ignored the Clean Water, Clean Air and Endangered Species acts, and three dozen other laws to build the fence. We are glad no more will be built.

The first version of the virtual fence built and tested in southern Arizona west of Tucson was not successful. But problems that came up with the various systems have been resolved.

Groundbreaking is to begin this week in southern Arizona for the virtual fence project’s first permanent detection towers. The towers are to be built first in Arizona, the busiest corridor for illegal entries.

Plans call for also placing such towers – along most of the Mexican border – in New Mexico, California and almost all of Texas within five years.

That type of fence will be more effective, less offensive and less environmentally disastrous. It’s a laudable change of strategy.

Pima Conty Sheriff Clarence Dupnik

To our chagrin, normally levelheaded Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has floated a cockeyed idea tainted with stereotypes.

The sheriff suggested that illegal immigration could be deterred and the border secured if schools were required to check citizenship status when students enroll.

At one point, he even suggested Arizona should challenge a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that bars such status checks at schools. But he later said he wouldn’t push for a challenge.

Dupnik’s idea is pure poppycock.

Even if the Supreme Court hadn’t already ruled on this issue, the idea that schoolchildren cause our broken immigration policies is ludicrous.

The federal government has failed repeatedly to reform our dysfunctional system, and that festering failure is the reason our nation cannot control immigration.

The idea that overburdened school personnel should suddenly be responsible for righting this wrong is preposterous.

Anyone who thinks barring immigrant children from our schools would solve our border problems isn’t thinking clearly.

Dupnik deeply disappoints us, too, with his stereotypical comments about the children of illegal immigrants; the South, Southwest and West sides of Tucson; and the Sunnyside School District.

He said social problems in those neighborhoods – failing schools, high dropout rates and gang affiliation – are caused by illegal immigration.

That is a spurious claim.

High dropout rates have plagued the entire state of Arizona, and many children of illegal immigrants have excelled academically and qualified for full university scholarships.

Failing schools have been identified throughout southern Arizona and the rest of the state, not just in some Tucson neighborhoods.

As for gang affiliation, any cursory check of upscale neighborhoods reveals gang graffiti and crime.

Indeed, all Tucson neighborhoods – including the ritziest – have “social problems,” as Dupnik puts it.

And U.S. citizens had plenty of those problems long before illegal immigration became a major trend.

Equally ridiculous is Dupnik’s contention that 4 in 10 Sunnyside students are here illegally.

By law, Sunnyside cannot make that determination. For our sheriff to spread such rumor and speculation is troubling, to say the least.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his reliance on racial profiling are an embarrassment for Arizona. Dupnik, by contrast, long has been regarded as the voice of reason.

He should apologize to those he has besmirched and refrain from such incendiary comments. He is supposed to uphold the law, not second-guess it.

Mexican drug cartels are increasing operations to the south, complicating coordinated U.S.-Mexico efforts to break the backs of the smuggling rings.

“We’ve seen running gunbattles in places like Guatemala and Honduras between rival Mexican cartels,” reports Anthony Placido, chief of intelligence for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Increased U.S. border enforcement likely is a factor in this development, and now nearly 500 more federal agents are en route to the border, along with more X-ray machines and drug-sniffing dogs, thanks to President Obama.

We’re grateful for the help, but the war isn’t over. The cartels haven’t dropped their U.S. trade; they’ve merely expanded their territory.

Only international cooperation with all affected nations is likely to bring this blight to a halt.

A year ago this month, Sgt. Joel Sainsbury, from the Minnesota Air National Guard, was on "observe and report" duty for 90 days on a hilltop overlooking Nogales, about a half-mile east of the Mariposa Port of Entry. Sainsbury's usual job is navigator on a C-130 Hercules aircraft. It's time to bring the Giard back to the border.

One year ago, we were happy to see National Guard members leaving our border with Mexico to return to their regular lives.

That was then. This is now. Dramatic, terrifying violence has erupted and intensified along our border over the past year, as heavily armed drug cartels and human smuggling rings jockey for dominance in their lucrative, criminal trades.

Previous concerns about impoverished immigrants sneaking north for jobs now pale in comparison with the beheadings, gunfights and other barbaric acts occurring regularly just across the border.

Related kidnappings have become commonplace in Phoenix, making Arizona’s capital second only to Mexico City for such crimes.

This scenario is unacceptable – which President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano surely realize.

So today, we echo the plea by Govs. Jan Brewer of Arizona and Rick Perry of Texas; by Republican U.S. Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain of Arizona; and by Democratic U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico.

We join them in urging the federal government to send in the National Guard to help batten down our border.

The Posse Comitatus Act, passed after the Civil War, bars the military from involvement in local police matters. An amendment in 1981 permits support of drug interdiction and other law enforcement activities, but not performance of that work.

Nonetheless, when President Bush launched Operation Jump Start in 2006, guardsmen’s work in nonpolice chores – monitoring cameras, building roads and fences, etc. – freed up the Border Patrol to provide more border enforcement.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that since the National Guard left the border last summer, criminal activity there has heated up radically.

As Kyl noted Wednesday, “There is something about the U.S. military that (smugglers) don’t want to mess with.”

Napolitano said Obama is considering the request but questions, “Where would they go, what missions would they perform?”

“In other words,” she added, “don’t just throw something like the National Guard at a place. They have a mission and a job to do.”

Indeed they do. The Guard – the only military branch required by the Constitution – has a duty to protect and defend American interests, often responding to natural disasters and civil emergencies.

U.S.-Mexico border conditions today constitute an emergency of a kind unprecedented in modern times.

Deploy the Guard to support the Border Patrol and show force on our troubled border. They are needed here now more than ever.

Alan Bersin, named border czar by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, has his work cut out for him.

We welcome added attention to our border with Mexico, but we also hope Bersin learned something from Operation Gatekeeper.

He was the Southwest border official for the Department of Justice when Operation Gatekeeper brought massive enforcement to the San Diego area – a move that spurred illegal immigrants and smugglers to instead cross the deadly Sonoran Desert in Arizona.

Death did not prove to be a deterrent for desperate immigrants. Rather, hundreds have died each year in Arizona’s badlands ever since.

As Bersin works to increase safety on the border now, we hope he uses the lessons of yesteryear to bring not just more enforcement, but also smarter enforcement – with policies that save lives rather than cost them.

Obama is right to focus attention on broken immigration system

Border Patrol pilots followed tire tracks and found these 78 illegal immigrants hiding under trees in a wash near Arivaca in 2005 - a common occurrence in a land with a badly broken immigration system.

The controversial work required for immigration reform has been foiled and put on the back burner again and again.

Decades of negligence by this country and by Mexico have resulted in raging border violence; unprecedented levels of smuggled drugs, guns and immigrants; shattered families; and hundreds of deaths in our desert every year.

Now President Obama has announced he will begin to tackle this cantankerous topic in May.

Naysayers in both parties insist he should focus on other priorities – the economy, energy, health care. But Obama knows our broken immigration system cannot wait longer for a fix.

So does Felipe Calderón, the first Mexican president with the courage and audacity to do serious battle against the drug cartels that have overtaken his nation and have been infiltrating ours, as well.

With presidents of like mind on both sides of the border and with a House and Senate willing to work with our executive branch, the United States finally has a real opportunity to address this increasingly critical problem.

And with former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano now in charge of Homeland Security, border issues finally are being given the long-overdue attention they require.

In addition, southern Arizona Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords are keeping this issue in the spotlight in Congress.

Immigration reform efforts two years ago failed despite the best bipartisan efforts of Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, both R-Ariz.; Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.; and others.

We cannot afford another failure now, however. Returning this issue to the back burner is not even an option.

Dozens of beheadings south of the border, hundreds of migrants’ corpses scattered across the desert north of the border, gunfire erupting all along the border, pieces of broken families separated by the border – all semblance of civilization has been shattered here.

All of us in southern Arizona are well acquainted with the human suffering and loss of life in our backyard and the fear gripping ranchers, residents and outdoor enthusiasts, all vulnerable to smugglers’ violence.

Even while arrests of illegal immigrants are down, the number of deaths in the desert is up – underscoring the reality that increased enforcement has not thwarted our border problems.

We need a sane guest worker policy, strong security to combat drug smugglers, compassionate family reunification and reasonable immigration guidelines – not endless layers of conflicting and impossible bureaucracy, which only fuel illegal rather than legal immigration.

On this issue, we bid godspeed to Obama, to Congress and to Calderón. Americans have waited too long.

The time for immigration reform is now.

Border fence doesn’t keep out people or things it’s supposed to, but does impede wildlife

These mule deer, photographed in or near the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in late 2007, clearly won't be able to go farther, whether to reach food, water, other members of their herd or a known haven from predators.

A notorious waiver that allowed Homeland Security to run roughshod over pristine areas, ignoring every clean air, water and environmental law, marked its first anniversary this week – on April Fools’ Day, appropriately enough.

But the lawbreaking waiver is worse than foolish; it has been extraordinarily expensive and extremely injurious.

The unprecedented free pass to ignore longstanding U.S. laws was pushed through by Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security chief.

He was determined to erect a high wall along our border with Mexico, and damn the consequences.

And what consequences have been wrought?

At least 601 miles of border fencing have been erected to date – at a cost averaging $3.9 million per mile. That’s more than $2.4 billion, and intrusions into our country continue unabated.

Migrants hoist one another over the fence regularly and even a Border Patrol official quipped, “The border fence is a speed bump in the desert.”

Alas, while it may be a mere speed bump for migrating human beings, it’s a deadly blockade for migratory species, including one of Arizona’s most endangered animals.

In the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, overlapping ecologies result in some of the richest biodiversity in the world.

But Chertoff fended off protests a-plenty to ensure that a 15-foot-high steel border wall would bifurcate the officially recognized conservation refuge.

That wall has stranded mule deer, javelina, mountain lions and others from reaching their water source or other destinations, photographs show.

Indeed, wildlife biologists report, the border enforcement infrastructure and activities now join our long-running drought as the top two threats to Arizona’s endangered Sonoran pronghorn, the fastest land mammal in North America.

The problems aren’t confined to Arizona. El Paso, Texas, officials have urged President Obama to tear down the wall that bars endangered ocelots, jacarundi and other species from accessing the Rio Grande.

The walls should be removed from areas where they threaten flora, fauna and waterways. But that’s only a start.

Congress must obliterate the ridiculous waiver it enacted.

The very idea that one official could cavalierly waive our Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act and three dozen or so other laws is shocking, despite the alarmist attitudes over illegal immigration.

The rule of law must be upheld, and the Obama administration and Congress should waste no time righting this egregious wrong.

Security of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano

Help for our violence-wracked border with Mexico finally is on the way, thanks to President Obama and, especially, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano.

Arizona’s former governor has fought for stronger border protections for years, and her appointment to Homeland Security in January presaged the long-overdue action announced Tuesday by Obama.

Murderous gunbattles, beheadings and attacks on law officers have exploded along our border, enabled by decades of federal neglect.

Now, the president said, more than 360 officers and agents from several agencies will be deployed to the border, with more biometric-ID technology, mobile X-ray units, upgraded license plate readers and inspection equipment to screen rail traffic into Mexico.

As the drugs flow north, weapons and cash are flowing south. Both flows must be blocked.

And this “very robust” addition of forces is merely “the first wave of things that will be happening,” Napolitano said.

Along with the beefed-up enforcement, Obama also promised more collaboration and information-sharing with Mexican authorities and a renewed U.S. commitment to address our nation’s demand for illegal drugs.

We hope that means more opportunities for rehabilitation of drug addicts, more programs to prevent drug experimentation by our youth and more money for local law enforcement agencies.

The seemingly ubiquitous methamphetamine rings spreading across our nation mark a particularly pernicious trend, as meth is especially addictive.

Local law enforcement needs extra funding to combat that problem at home, while beefed-up border forces should help to stanch the flow of meth northward from Mexican factories.

This serious attention to our southern border is long overdue, as residents of Arizona and every other border state know all too well.

The security forces clearly come at Napolitano’s request, supported by southern Arizona’s U.S. Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords, among others in Congress.

Now Gov. Jan Brewer, along with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, want the federal government to also deploy more National Guard troops to protect the border.

Like many, we once opposed the use of such troops, deeming it excessive militarization of the border.

But the border no longer is merely the passage point for impoverished migrants seeking work. It has been overrun with narco-trafficking, gun smugglers and coyotes, with rapes, kidnappings and murders marking their prominence.

At this juncture, the more security forces our government can send, the better off we all will be.

The U.S. Border Patrol this week has begun poisoning vegetation along the Rio Grande riverbank in Texas – a move that makes little sense environmentally or economically.

If smugglers and illegal immigrants are hiding in dense foliage there, then by all means eradicate the flora.

But why not do so with manual labor, which is faster and far more effective than herbicide?

As any gardener knows, pulling weeds and other plants out by the roots is a sure way to eliminate them. And with unemployment skyrocketing during this recession, the Border Patrol could hire Americans to do this work, thus providing at least temporary jobs.

Of equal importance is the danger to the Rio Grande and any other river where the Border Patrol may decide to apply poisons.

The chemicals being used have been compared by some environmental activists to Agent Orange, the defoliant used widely during the Vietnam War but now blamed for seriously sickening thousands of soldiers, even causing the deaths of many.

If the Border Patrol’s herbicide is remotely as dangerous, it should not be used. The health of the river, the region and of Border Patrol agents themselves could be jeopardized by this clumsy move.

The Laredo (Texas) City Council, as well as officials in adjacent Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, oppose this $2.1 million pilot project – and so do we.

It’s a terrible precedent that likely will cause far more harm than good. Buy some Weed Eaters and hire some workers. But pack away that poison.

Trucks wait to enter the United States from Mexico south of Nogales. A U.S. decision to prohibit Mexican trucks from traveling more than 25 miles north of the international border has sparked a trade war.

For 14 years, the United States has ignored a key provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement – a move that has harmed Mexico’s ability to ship its products into the United States.

Now Mexico is retaliating, slapping tariffs on a wide variety of American goods shipped from the United States to Mexico.

The United States is clearly wrong in this international trade war, which will produce no winners. The battle will mean higher costs for Mexican products in the U.S. and decreased demand for American products in Mexico.

At the core of the agreement is a NAFTA provision that allowed trucks from the United States and Mexico to cross the border and deliver goods in both countries beginning in 1995.

Both nations agreed with the provision and Mexico has complied, but the United States has not. This is the kind of contempt for international law that isolated the United States and marked the last few years of the Bush administration. And now it is being continued by President Obama.

A provision of NAFTA allowed U.S. and Mexican trucks reciprocal access to each other’s markets, saving fuel and money as produce and other products would not have to be unloaded and reloaded near the border before reaching their final destination.

When the U.S. refused to allow Mexican trucks to travel more than 25 miles north of the border, an international arbitration panel ruled against the United States. The Teamsters union fought to keep the ban in place, citing safety and environmental concerns.

To allay those sometimes-legitimate worries, the Bush administration allowed a pilot program under which some Mexican trucks, screened by U.S. officials, were allowed into the United States. A review of the program showed those trucks had a safety record equal to that of American trucks and met the same environmental standards.

Yet the Teamsters were not mollified. Despite their stated safety concerns, they clearly were more worried about a threat to Teamster jobs. So recently Congress passed and Obama signed legislation to ban Mexican trucks from the United States.

Last week, Mexico struck back, imposing higher tariffs on $2.4 billion worth of U.S. exports. The list of about 90 U.S. items affected is diverse, including Christmas trees, sunglasses, strawberries, toilet paper, pet food, pears, onions and soy sauce.

Americans who grow or manufacture those products will be hit hard, as the goods will cost more and be less likely to be sold in Mexico.

This standoff must be resolved. The United States should abide by terms of NAFTA, allowing Mexican trucks to enter the United States providing they meet all standards imposed on U.S. trucks. Mexico should then drop its tariffs on U.S. goods.

Mexico is our No. 3 trade partner. It benefits neither country to engage in a retaliatory trade war that ends up increasing prices for consumers in both countries.

The U.S. Border Patrol now gets to use “see-through technology” to conduct X-ray detection of hidden compartments and contraband in vehicles.

And what’s even better, the device is mobile, mounted on a pickup truck much like a camper shell, and can scan any vehicle in minutes for explosives, plastic weapons, nuclear, radioactive or organic threats in addition to drugs.

As drug and weapons trafficking across our border with Mexico continue to erupt in more and more deadly violence, the use of such high-tech tools should help immensely in at least slowing the narco-trafficking.

Many critics view these see-through devices as an invasion of privacy. But when used appropriately to target criminal smuggling, the nonintrusive technology should be a great boon to our quest to provide security on our very volatile border.

In this Nov. 7 photo, soldiers stand guard during a presentation of weapons seized during an operation against the Gulf cartel in Mexico City. Mexico insists the U.S. do more to stop a little-publicized form of border smuggling that is arming the world's most powerful drug cartels with U.S. assault rifles.

It is “one of the most serious organized crime threats of the 21st century,” in the view of Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard.

It is not taking place in Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan or any other distant hotbed of violence. This takes place every day less than 100 miles from the front doors of Tucsonans.

The organized crime threat referred to by Goddard, by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and by numerous other law enforcement authorities is the burgeoning violence in northern Mexico – violence unrestrained by the international border.

But it appears the Obama administration, prodded by former Arizona Gov. Napolitano, is ready to crack down on American money and guns that drive violence in Mexico.

In interviews last week with USA TODAY and The Wall Street Journal, Napolitano said the United States soon will send a large contingent of federal agents to the border area.

These agents will not be looking for illegal immigrants entering the country – a job already assigned to thousands of Border Patrol agents.

These new agents will be stepping up searches of vehicles headed from the United States to Mexico, looking for the guns and money that arm and fuel drug and human smugglers.

The new deployments will be dangerous, requiring agents to be equipped with better body armor to face ruthless, well-armed criminals determined to get their cache back to Mexico.

But this is a war the United States must not shy from. Law enforcement authorities say dealers in Arizona and other southern border states provide three-quarters of the black market guns to Mexico – a nation that has strict controls on gun ownership.

Those guns led to the murders of more than 6,000 people in Mexico in drug violence last year – including the killing of 2,000 Mexican police officers.

Napolitano was not specific about how the southbound vehicles checks will work, which agencies will conduct them or when they will start. That will come when she appears before the Senate Homeland Security Committee next week.

Goddard testified before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday and detailed his office’s efforts to combat border crime by going after money wired from the United States to Mexico.

Although Goddard has seized more than $17 million in wire payments and arrested more than 100 smugglers, that represents only a dent in the illegal border business. The only way to have a real impact is to get the federal government involved – as Napolitano has promised.

“Every American has a stake in this,” Napolitano said last week. Indeed we do. Violence in Mexico seeps across border and into communities such as Tucson. A multiagency federal attack focused on illegal shipments headed both ways across the border is the only answer.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard (from left); Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Assistant Director for Field Operation William Hoover and Drug Enforcement Administration Assistant Administrator Anthony P. Placido, testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, during a hearing on law enforcement responses to the Mexican drug cartels, on Capitol Hill, Tuesday.

Arizona’s employer sanctions law lets the state suspend or revoke licenses of businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Yet business and contractor groups keep appealing the statute, claiming it’s unconstitutional.

Monday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to further review the case, after a three-judge panel of the court already upheld the Arizona law in September.

We hope the Arizona Contractors Association, Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Chicanos Por La Causa will take the hint and stop appealing this statute.

While our nation is overdue for a guest-worker program to let foreigners be employed here, the lack of that program doesn’t excuse businesses that hire illegally on purpose.

That’s how immigrants get exploited and lawful businesses undercut. Stop the appeals. Let the law stand.