McCamley joins national powerhouses in televised immigration and border security debate

Doña Ana County Commissioner Bill McCamley will take part in a live, televised debate on immigration and border security Monday with three national figures who are at the forefront of discussions on this issue.

Joining McCamley on “It’s Your Call with Lynn Doyle,” a nightly show on the Comcast Network, will be conservative politician and author Pat Buchanan, Minutemen president Chris Simcox and immigration rights activist Ricardo Diaz. The show will be broadcast at 7 p.m. Mountain Standard Time.

Doña Ana County residents, however, will have to visit the network’s Web site to watch live video of the debate. Though Comcast is the local cable provider, the company’s network isn’t televised here. The network reaches the homes of more than 9 million viewers in 20 television markets that are primarily on the East Coast.

I had to wait several minutes for the Internet video of the network’s programming to load, so be patient.

McCamley, who is 28 and currently serving his first term in an elected office, said he knows Diaz, who is the director of the Day Without an Immigrant coalition in Philadelphia and is from Doña Ana. When the show’s producers told Diaz they wanted someone who lives on the border to join the debate, he suggested McCamley.

A producer called to talk with McCamley, then invited him to take part.

McCamley said the debate is timely because of the recent deliberations in Congress about immigration and border security, but particularly because President Bush just signed the border fence bill.

“I think that we need more security, but that security should be in the form of personnel,” McCamley said. “I think a fence would be very ineffective. We have a fence now in El Paso, and it isn’t very effective. It’s a waste of money.”

Buchanan, who has run for president three times, recently came out with a book titled “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.” Simcox’s group is in the process of building a small, private fence along a stretch of the border in Arizona and plans to construct many more to help stop illegal immigration.

Though he is young and relatively new to politics, McCamley has become a local powerhouse. He was elected chairman of the commission at his first meeting in 2005 and served for one year before the leadership position rotated to someone else.

Gov. Bill Richardson has recognized McCamley as being instrumental in helping resolve a decades-old water battle that hampered growth in the southern part of the county, and in promoting the development of Spaceport America.