Texas Monthly Talks

Betty Flores

Betty Flores on border security—and insecurity.

Interview by Evan Smith

June 2006

(Page 2 of 2)

It’s interesting that you bring up five years, because a little less than five years ago was September 11, when we suddenly began thinking about homeland security, including border security. Theoretically, your calls for increased action on border issues should have coincided with this increased activity. There should have been more money and more manpower available.
For years we’ve been advocating for the Border Patrol and Customs to get the funding they needed. They have X-ray machines because we helped get them. We, the border communities, said, “You need to have better equipment.” But this was before September 11. Before September 11 the federal government didn’t understand the need for border security. After September 11 they understood it, but they didn’t do anything about it quickly enough. So we had to step up to the plate. Right after September 11, my police and fire budgets went up. We raised property taxes by 2 cents so that we could put more money into police and fire protection.

How did your community react to the tax increase?
They said, “Absolutely.” They said, “Yes.” Nobody complained.

Let’s talk about immigration, which is so much in the news right now. Some people see it as an economic issue. Other people see it as a security issue. How do Laredoans see it?
We don’t think immigration is a security issue. We’ve had immigration issues in Laredo in the past, and we’ve learned how to work through them. We already have a guest-worker program. I wish people would come and see how we’ve handled it. It’s very humane. People who cross over can see their country, and they want to go back to their families. Legal or illegal, they want to go home every opportunity that they can. Some do it every day, some do it every week, some do it every month. But they do it on their own. Nobody forces them, nobody stops them, nobody questions them. And that’s the kind of immigration bill that we should be looking at. We should be letting people come to work here and go home when they want to.

How do we prevent terrorists from sneaking into the country through Laredo?
We need the cooperation of Mexico! They have to better protect their own borders. Why do we have to wait for someone to come to the northern border of Mexico before we can stop them?

What about the economic argument that’s been made—that illegals are taking jobs that would otherwise be filled by Americans?
I can tell you from my own personal experience that the few times it has been hard for Mexicans to cross over because of September 11—because of long lines, because of new procedures, because of an immigration policy change, because the Border Patrol is stopping buses—there have been no Americans jumping up and saying, “Oh, the Mexicans aren’t coming? I’ll do the job for you.”

Those jobs are going unfilled?
They’re unfilled! So that’s a complete misconception in my opinion. The other thing is that people say, “How can you give these people amnesty when they’re breaking the law?” They don’t come to the United States with the intention of breaking any laws! In fact, they’re probably the most law-abiding residents that we have. What they come here to do is simply to find a better life, to do a job nobody else will do. If there was no job opportunity here, they wouldn’t be coming. There are villages in Mexico that only have women and children because the fathers are somewhere else, trying to make a living. If I were [Mexican president] Vicente Fox, I’d be damn worried about a workforce drain.

What about the argument that the people who cross the border illegally end up being a drain on our health care system, on our education system? Do you see a noticeable impact on the emergency rooms and the public schools in Laredo?
We do. But it has pretty much become a way of life for us. If we require everybody, including the illegals, including the people who we say are causing this drain on our system, to pay something, whatever they can afford, then they add into the system eventually. A lot of these people, because of where they’re working and whom they’re working for, are paying into Social Security but are getting no benefits and will never get benefits.

Because they’re not legal?
Because they’re not legal. What happens when all of that goes away? What happens to our Social Security system?

You told me previously that a high percentage of citizens of Laredo are school-age.
Thirty-six percent. The reason Laredo is adding schools all the time is because we also have a lot of children whose families have come across the river. Those children are American citizens; their mothers paid to have them in a U.S. hospital. We have cultivated a culture of “border residence” in which people live on either side and have dual citizenships. There’s Mexico, there’s the United States, and there’s the border. The border has found a way to handle it. Is it a drain on our health care services? Yes, a little bit. But we’ve found a way to use federal funds and state funds to help the American citizens, and then the American citizens pay into a pot that’s used to help anybody else who may not qualify. Of course, we do not ask for citizenship. We provide a service, because disease knows no borders.

You said that we hear only the bad news about Laredo. Tell me the good news. What are we not hearing?
What you’re not hearing is that we’re carrying the NAFTA burden. We’re helping to provide jobs for people deep into the heartland of the United States by everything that we’ve done to improve the infrastructure in our community, including building our bridges. One of the proudest moments in my life was when we started construction of our World Trade Bridge. It’s one of the few bridges for commercial traffic only in the United States, and it has been a success like no other success.

Also, Laredo and other communities along the border have a large number of people living in poverty. Government can only help to a certain degree. What can we do that’s long-term and sustainable? Facilitate jobs and job training. So that’s what we’ve done. We now have a four-year university [Texas A&M International]. We kept telling our kids to stay in school and go to college, but they didn’t understand what that looked like. Now they can look at it, they can visit it, they can imagine it. It’s had a real effect, and it will have more of an effect as we go on.

We also started looking for businesses that would give us value-added jobs. We said, “You bring value-added jobs to our community, we’ll give you tax incentives for five years.” That’s how Convergys, a call center, came to Laredo. I think they’re almost up to one thousand employees. They’re one of the biggest employers in the city. They pay well above the minimum wage. They have benefits for their full-time employees. They reimburse for college tuition. They have flexible work schedules. Those are the kinds of jobs that we went after. From the time I took office, our unemployment rate has gone from double digits to single digits—at or below the state average!

Let me ask you, finally, about changing demographics and the changing culture of Texas. We’re now a minority-majority state and will soon be majority Hispanic. This must be a major issue for a city like Laredo.
Well, we’re already 97 percent Hispanic, and we have been for a very long time.

You can’t get much more Hispanic.
And those people who don’t speak Spanish want to [learn the language]. In Laredo it’s a way of life. Do we accept everybody else? Of course. We don’t look at color, we don’t look at religion, we don’t look at economic means. Laredo is a real laid-back, accept-everybody kind of place. One of the most unique things about the city is that I can go to any restaurant and see the president of the bank or the guy from the country club and the neighborhood people all together, all sharing conversation, because they all know each other.

That’s the nature of the community.
It’s very intimate. You know, I have family in California. They deal with Hispanic issues there in a very different way. My cousins in California are probably lighter-skinned than you, with clearer eyes and blonder hair, but they feel like they need to fight for their Hispanic rights every day. And I feel that’s so strange, because in Laredo we don’t do that, and I really don’t feel that in Texas as much. My brother, who lives in New Braunfels, is integrated into his community very well. It’s just a matter of getting to know each other and what we’re all about. At the end of the day, we’re all the same. We really are. We’re all immigrants.

Pages: 1 2