Fight Vowed on HUD’s Illegal Alien Fund Ruling

Southern California immigrant rights advocates vowed Friday to fight any attempts by cities to withhold federal grant money from programs that aid illegal aliens, saying the efforts will only heighten already growing animosity toward them.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development said Thursday that the City of Costa Mesa can enact a policy denying funds to charities and other groups if they refuse to bar illegal aliens from their programs.

Immigrant rights attorneys denounced the HUD opinion as “legal chicanery” and predicted that attempts by Costa Mesa to enforce such a policy would be quickly overturned in the courts.

“I think it would be an easy case,” said Vibiana Andrade, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles. “It is clearly a misinterpretation of immigration statutes. The HUD opinion is creating new eligibility requirements for services and delegating to the cities the right to create those new requirements. If (a city) enacts a policy like this they are violating federal law.”

City officials in Costa Mesa had rescinded the policy, initially passed last summer, pending HUD’s review. But upon receiving the legal opinion from HUD General Counsel Frank Keating, city officials declared that they will seek to have the policy reinstituted.

Immigrant rights advocates said the conflict in Costa Mesa is only the latest indication of a growing friction in Southern California between long-established residents, many of them Anglo, and the steady influx of new immigrants from Latin America and Asia.

“We clearly see a siege mentality developing among certain residents and communities that have been heavily impacted by immigration,” said Linda Wong, president of California Tomorrow, a group studying how the state is handling its ever-greater ethnic diversity.

“Some people have the perception that they are losing control over their communities because of the large influx of newcomers. . . . The changes are occurring at such a pace that people don’t have the time or psychological abilities to adjust. A lot of them feel that they’re strangers in their own land.”

Despite their belief that the opinion does not pass constitutional muster, many immigrant rights advocates voiced fears that the ruling will open the floodgates for other cities trying to deal with large immigrant populations.

“One of our main concerns is that this kind of policy will be popping up all over the place,” said Rebecca Jurado, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles. “It seems to be moving toward allowing a more discriminatory impact in providing services.”

In the HUD opinion, Keating raised the possibility that the agency might adopt such a policy for all of its programs, but Keating said Friday that no decision is pending.

“If the intent of Congress is clear and it is brought to our attention that HUD grant funds should be restricted to citizens we would change the policy,” Keating said. “However, we have not begun a review at this time.”

Keating said he based his opinion on a reading of immigration reform laws, which provide that aliens granted lawful temporary resident status are not eligible for five years to receive benefits from programs of federal financial assistance.

Carlos Holguin, an attorney for the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, questioned how far local governments would take such policies.

“Is a firefighter going to ask for someone’s papers before putting out a fire?” he asked. “Maybe the seats in the back of public buses will be cheaper and reserved for undocumented people to ride back there. It really does become quite absurd.”

Legal experts described the HUD opinion as precedent-setting in the scope given to local communities to regulate illegal aliens.

In the northern San Diego County city of Encinitas, Councilwoman Marjorie Gaines said officials may now consider adopting a similar alien-funding ban.

“I don’t think there should be government funding of groups that are assisting people in breaking the law,” said Gaines. “I think there’s an out-and-out conflict there.”

However, other Southland city officials voiced caution.

In El Monte, a San Gabriel Valley city of about 100,000 with an estimated illegal alien population of 15,000 to 25,000, Asst. Community Development Director Juan Mireles said withholding HUD money or any other assistance to undocumented immigrants would hurt the city’s economy.

Mexican and Central American immigrants “are beneficial to us,” Mireles said. “They help the labor market. They find construction work, restaurant work, gardening jobs, lots of jobs.”

Officials in several cities in Southeast Los Angeles County said they were unaware of the HUD ruling, or of the attempt by Costa Mesa to withhold funds from programs that serve illegal aliens. But most said they would resist any effort to pass such a policy.

“It’s immoral,” said Bell Mayor George Cole, who is also the director of a nonprofit agency that receives block grant funds. “When Jesus told us to minister to the sick, and feed the poor, he did not say only if they have a green card.”

In cities such as Cudahy and Huntington Park, where the population is predominantly Latino, city leaders readily admitted that residents occasionally express resentment toward illegal aliens. But officials said there is no easy way to tell who is an illegal alien, who is a legal resident, who is in some phase of the amnesty program and who is a citizen. They also said it is not their responsibility to find out.

In Cudahy, City Councilman Alex Rodriguez said he believed his colleagues would be willing to crack down on illegal aliens because the city is the third most crowded in Los Angeles County and its services are strained by the influx of immigrants. A policy such as Costa Mesa’s might make the illegal residents move on faster, he said.

Compton City Councilman Maxcy D. Filer, however, said Costa Mesa’s policy is not only unenforceable but, “It’s a great vehicle for discrimination. Who would you ask? Would you ask someone just because of the color of the skin, the makeup of the nose or the face. I assume they would ask every Hispanic. What about Caribbeans, Haitians, people from Liberia, people with an accent?”

Indeed, many immigrants rights advocates said the Costa Mesa policy--and HUD support of it--will only worsen the tensions between immigrant and non-immigrant communities, especially in Southern California.

They pointed to Costa Mesa as a prime example of the kind of atmosphere created when residents perceive that a particular population is the cause of problems.

Supporters of the measures in this mostly Anglo, middle-class community--home to one of the largest and most exclusive shopping centers in the nation and numerous arts groups--contend that the city has become a mecca for illegal aliens who exploit the community’s social service providers.

“When there are not enough funds for services for legal residents, we should certainly not be dispersing funds to illegals,” said Costa Mesa City Councilman Orville Amburgey, who proposed both the funding policy and the day-worker solicitation ordinance.

“I think we are all aware of persons coming into our borders or the perception that people are streaming across the borders,” countered the ACLU’s Jurado. “As a society the feeling is: ‘This is mine now and anybody new can’t take it away from me.’ The HUD opinion feeds into that feeling.”

Noted Dennis Rockway, senior counsel for the Legal Aid Foundation of Long Beach, which serves mostly poor people, including some undocumented immigrants: “None of these are luxury services, they are all basic survival services that affect the well-being of the community at large. This (policy) is an example of the rising tide of racism in Southern California, aimed mostly at Latinos.”

Carla Rivera, Maria Newman and Mary Anne Perez reported from Orange County. Staff Writers Irene Chang, Kenneth Garcia, Tina Griego, David Haldane and Deborah Schoch contributed from Los Angeles and Patrick McDonnell contributed from San Diego.