Cowboys Call for Immigration Compromise

Joaquin Morales, 12, plants a Mexican flag in the ground before a Cinco de Mayo immigrants' rights rally at Chicano Park in San Diego on Friday, May 5, 2006. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy) (Denis Poroy - AP)

He fears his cows will eat a plastic water bottle and tear up their insides; he's got one lying in agony at this very moment, sick from he doesn't know what. "She's blind. She's not eating."

All of this, Strom accepts, is what he signed up for when he signed on as a rancher on the Arizona-Mexico border 16 years ago. Illegal immigration isn't unlike his constant struggle with drought _ sometimes eased but never ended.

Still, he wonders if this problem could be solved, if only the politicians would "stop bickering."

"I'm violently against amnesty, but I do think there's got to be a process worked out because the growers and the pickers in our country have got to have help," he says. "I would like very much to go down to Naco (Mexico) and get a team of workers who can legally come across ... and have them rebuild some of my adobe walls."

But walling-off the border, as the U.S. House proposes in its immigration bill, reminds him of Berlin during his Army days.

"No," says Strom, "I don't want that. ... It just doesn't seem like a very American thing to do."

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"My wife's family initially settled this ranch in 1896."

Jack Ladd is rocking in a plush recliner next to the picture window that frames the San Jose Mountains a few miles south in Sonora, Mexico. He is 79, with hearing aids in both ears, a mild voice, gentle blue eyes. Each word is chosen carefully, because Ladd is nothing if not a thoughtful man. He spent years as director of labor relations for Phelps Dodge Mining Co. He knows a bit about compromise.

He holds a pile of papers _ six 8 1/2-by-11 pages of single-spaced, neatly scribed reflections on illegal immigration and what might curb the problem and help bring some peace to his final years on the family cattle ranch.

He has titled this, "Jack Ladd Observations." It describes the three groups of 15-20 migrants he saw crossing his ranch in broad daylight not long ago. "I dread the flood of illegals that would result if amnesty was actually granted ..." he writes. But he also bemoans as "just for show" politicians' proposals for more walls, more lights, more agents. "They are not the answer," he says.

Nor is any absolute ban on the employment and presence of illegal workers in the United States, he says. "I don't believe this is realistic, possible or humane."