Nogales, Sonora Mayor Marco Antonio Martinez Dabdoub knows that although Nogales, Sonora faces many problems, Arizona state lawmakers are mostly powerless to help him. That didn't stop him from telling a handful of state senators about the issues in his city.

"Mexico City says we have 200,000 people in Nogales, Sonora although the number is closer to 300,000," he said. "The fact is, people in Mexico are coming north and as a result two trends are developing."

Those trends represent the best and worst of a border community. Martinez said that some people who go to the United States to work lose their Mexican cultural identity, but fail to gain an American one.

"These are people without a country," he said. On the flip side, some regular border-crossers become bi-cultural. This provides them with a unique insight that makes them an invaluable resource to legislators addressing border issues, Martinez said. Several state senators came south to Santa Cruz County Friday to tour the border and hear Dabdoub and others' concerns of those who call it home.

The 11 senators led by Tim Bee (R-Tucson), held a short luncheon, then toured the Mariposa Port of Entry before attending a meeting with various community leaders.

The senators got an earful. In the packed chambers at Nogales City Hall, representatives from Ambos Nogales, Patagonia, Santa Cruz County, Yuma, the Tohono O'odham Nation and San Luis educated the senators about the issues they would like addressed at the state Legislature.

Terry Shannon is the chairman of the Nogales Santa Cruz County Port Authority. That organization is comprised of representatives from several local entities. The idea, Shannon said, is that the weight of all the organizations combined carries more weight with the state Legislature than any individual part would. Shannon's chief concern is that the Mariposa Port of Entry is handling far more traffic than it was originally designed for.

"The port was designed to handle 400-500 trucks per day," he said. "Right now, 1,500 are passing through." To that end, the port needs money to expand.

"288,000 trucks carrying 2 billion pounds of produce pass through the port each year. That is 48 percent of all the produce consumed in the United States," he said.

Olivia Ainza-Kramer is the chairwoman for the Nogales Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce. She touched on an issue that also affects the Yuma representatives.

"Please eliminate liability for small business owners who unknowingly employee illegal immigrants," she said.

Paul Muthart of Western Growers in Yuma addressed this issue much more forcefully. Growers in Yuma need 25,000 workers per day to harvest winter crops that cannot be grown in any other place in the United States, he said.

"Our most significant issue is access to labor," he said. He said that all of the farmers he knows in Yuma stand for national security and never knowingly employ an illegal immigrant. To this end, a reliable database is necessary for all the legal Mexican workers in the United States.

The current Social Security system isn't efficient because of the Hispanic practice of using two last names. This is commonly confused when a name is searched in the Social Security records, he said. Farmers end up turning away legal field hands.

Second, Muthart said, most of the workers in Yuma would prefer to return home to Mexico at the end of the day.

"They shop in Mexico, they take their health care there and they live there." The wait at the border for these people can back up for hours, Muthart said. He personally knows workers who get up at 2 a.m. every morning to cross the border and take the bus to their fields. Like Kramer, his industry would suffer dire consequences if employers were penalized for unknowingly hiring illegal workers, he said.

Carlos Lopez, the Director of Economic Development at the City of San Luis as well, as Gilbert Lara the director of Public Safety in the city echoed Muthart's concerns.

Representatives from the Tohono O'odham Nation addressed the issues raised by living on an extremely rural section of the border.

"Our officers investigate about 60 deaths per year of people who die trying to cross our desert," said Ed Reyna, the Director of the Department of Public Safety Tohono O'odham Nation. "About 60 percent of our officers' time is used investigating border-related issues." The immigration has caused a permanent effect on O'odham culture, the representatives said. Although the federal government has helped protect O'odham cultural and burial grounds, some residents feel unsafe.

"We used to like to walk in the desert," said Ethel Garcia, a councilwoman of the Tohono O'odham Nation Legislature. "Now, we can't do that."

Another rural representative, Gary Gay, had mostly praise for the senators.

"We have 920 people in town but we get the revenue we would get if we had 1,500," the Patagonia mayor said. With that money, we hired a consultant and an attorney to protect our water rights. We were also able to give raises to our city employees."

Gay pointed out that although the town is not a border community per se, its location along a major smuggling corridor plagues it with many of the problems a border community faces.

"Many of the people who don't go through the ports of entry come through our town," he said.

Ironically, the only presenters who did not specifically address border issues were the hosts of the border tour, Mayor Ignacio J. Barraza of Nogales and Chairman Manuel Ruiz of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors.

Both pushed the need for alternatives to higher education in the county. Santa Cruz County is one of three counties in the state that don't have a community college. To this end, both officials have been meeting with others in higher education in the hopes of establishing an outreach or community college to complement the Cochise Community College branch already in the county.

The border did, however, play into both their presentations.

Ruiz addressed the enforcement issue.

"Illegal immigration is a federal issue," he said. "It is unfair to burden our sheriff and police department with a problem that should be handled on a federal level."

Barraza addressed commerce.

"We have more people pass through our ports of entry than LAX and JFK combined," Barraza said. "Fourteen billion dollars worth of trade and commerce comes through our city, but we see very little of that. It's important to remember that the port of entry is not owned by the City of Nogales. It benefits the entire state of Arizona and the nation."

As well as Bee, senators on the tour were Paula Aboud, Robert Blendu, Bob Burns, Jorge Luis Garcia, Pamela Gorman, Chuck Gray, John Huppenthal, Charlene Pesquiera, Victor Soltero and Jim Waring.