EL PASO

THIS YEAR MARKS the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which separated the part of Berlin that was part of West Germany, allied with the West, and the part that was in East Germany, part of the Soviet bloc.

Now under construction along the U.S.-Mexican border from San Diego, Calif., to Brownsville, Texas, is a 1,400-mile double metal fence designed to separate one nation from the other.

To try to keep out illegal Mexican immigrants, the United States is spending $3 million to $5 million a mile for this 18-foot high fence, according to El Paso’s mayor, John F. Cook. Instead of spending millions of dollars on a fence at this time of U.S. economic difficulty, America should be thinking about a holistic approach to the immigration problem, the Brooklyn-born mayor — the son of Irish immigrants who met on Ellis Island — believes.

“What we need is a decent guest-worker program or permanent-worker status,” he says. “At least 90 percent of the people coming across, legally and illegally, are economic immigrants who don’t want to be U.S. citizens. They just want to work. They’re willing to be hotel bellhops and housekeepers and meatpackers and chicken-pluckers — jobs the U.S.-born population scorns. We have a demand for half a million such workers a year here in the United States.”

The nation needs such immigrants, he says, but it is virtually impossible for them to come to this country legally nowadays, since our visa system is still based on quotas, he adds. He notes that the cost of a “green card” to let an alien work is $1,000 and $7.50 a day is the average Mexican salary. And now there’s a requirement for an AIDS test, too. “We have an antiquated and artificial quota system,” the retired U.S. Army intelligence officer says.

John Cook has been mayor of this border city of 700,000 for the past three years. Its Mexican counterpart, Juarez, just across the Rio Grande, has a population of 1.7 million. Mayor Cook has been invited to Washington to discuss immigration several times.

“But Washington has no understanding of life on the border,” he says with a sigh. Eighty percent of the population in El Paso is Hispanic, according to Cook. There are 2,500 Mexican students a day who come over to the University of El Paso and pay tuition. All they have to do to apply is to have a relative on the United States side who pays taxes or a utility bill. Then they can give that person’s address as their own. With a shopping visa, a Mexican woman can cross the border and arrive just in time to have her baby at El Paso’s Thomason Hospital and no proof of citizenship can be demanded before she is admitted.

“Of course, some people take advantage,” the mayor says, “but not that many. Maybe it does increase local taxes a little since the hospital is supported by local taxes, but it doesn’t make for a sizable national tax increase,” he points out.

And even with a fence, John Cook asks, what are you going to do about the 12 million to 20 million people already illegally in the United Sates, with many of them employed? Are they going to be sent back? That isn’t going to happen, he is sure. There simply has to be a pathway to legalization for them, he insists.

“Right here in El Paso, we need more bridges to Mexico, not a wall between us. We have 20,000 pedestrians coming from Juarez just over the border to El Paso every day — some to buy; some to study; some to work. We do $50 billion worth of export-import trade with Juarez annually. We export to Mexico and they to us.” In Juarez, the mayor points out, Electrolux has its largest refrigerator-manufacturing plant. The parts are made in the United States, but the refrigerators are put together in Mexico. Many other American companies do the same.

“No, don’t give me a wall between here and Mexico. But I could use some of that $50 billion a year we make in trade to build more bridges to make it easier for Mexicans to come here to work and to buy. It’s hard-working economic immigrants who have made this country strong. We should find a good way to keep the Mexicans coming, not waste our nation’s money trying to stop them.”

Phyllis Méras, an occasional contributor, is a Martha’s Vineyard-based former Journal travel editor.