Immigration's bedfellows find they actually can share the blanket

By Daniel Scarpinato

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

PHOENIX — Talk about strange bedfellows. Consider Barry Goldwater Jr.; Minutemen founder Chris Simcox; Democratic State Rep. Pete Rios; and Carlos Flores, head of the Mexican General Consulate, together at a table to talk immigration over sandwiches.

What on Earth could this group agree on?

As it turns out, a lot.

Even the participants, who often land on opposite sides of the hot immigration debate, were surprised.

At the tail end of a daylong immigration symposium in Phoenix sponsored by the California-based Communications Institute, the Arizona Daily Star and several other state organizations including the University of Arizona, interests as polar opposite as those of Simcox and Rios were able to find common ground.

"When I sat down at the table and saw the makeup, my first question was: Why did they put me at this table?" Rios said.

"I had pretty much written him off," Rios said of Simcox.

Rios and Flores were willing to concede the border needs to be secured for a guest-worker plan to work.