Citizenship Curb Backed by Beilenson : Politics: Congressman joins bid to change 14th Amendment, denying legal status to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. He draws immediate criticism.

Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles), a longtime civil rights advocate running for reelection in a more conservative district, has announced his support for a controversial constitutional amendment that would deny U.S. citizenship to the American-born children of illegal immigrants.

“It won’t solve the problem; it will solve a tiny part of the problem,” Beilenson told constituents at a town hall meeting in Canoga Park last week. “I came to the reluctant conclusion that was the only way we could solve that problem.”

At the same time, Beilenson acknowledged that the prospect of the proposed constitutional amendment winning the approval of two-thirds of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states was “not good.” The proposal calls for revising the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to all people born in the United States.

Beilenson’s announcement immediately drew criticism that he was modifying his longtime values to attract votes. Beilenson has served eight terms in Congress, representing parts of the Westside and the western San Fernando Valley. But he has been forced by redistricting to run in a newly drawn and Republican-leaning District, which extends from the southern and western San Fernando Valley through Agoura Hills and Calabasas to Thousand Oaks in Ventura County.

One opponent of the proposed amendment immediately accused Beilenson of pandering to the mostly Anglo, middle-class voters of the new district.

The proposed amendment sparked intense reactions when it was introduced by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) last fall along with five other bills intended to curb illegal immigration to Southern California and elsewhere. Gallegly said he received a tremendous outpouring of public support; Latino rights activists blasted it as a politically motivated bid to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment.

Gallegly said the bill would save taxpayers billions of dollars a year in welfare payments and benefit poor residents who compete with illegal immigrants for jobs. Under the measure, children of illegal residents would be given due process in court and deported with their families.

Beilenson recently became one of 14 co-sponsors of the proposed constitutional amendment, one of only two Democrats to do so. The other is Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).

“The authors of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution clearly believed that U.S. citizenship should be considered a privilege--to be granted to all American-born children of U.S. citizens and others residing here legally,” Beilenson said in a news release. “The citizenship clause was never meant to apply to children of individuals who entered the country in violation of the law.”

Beilenson said that such children cause enormous expense to taxpayers. “Two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles County’s public hospitals last year were to illegal immigrant mothers--at a cost to the county of $30 million,” Beilenson said. And, he added, under the federal Aid to Families With Dependent Children welfare program, for which these children are eligible, the cost to Los Angeles County is nearly $250 million a year.

Beilenson also supports four Gallegly bills that Gallegly says would nearly double the Border Patrol, require tamper-proof registration, identification and Social Security cards and impose new sanctions on employers who transport illegal migrants to day laborer jobs.

Beilenson refrained from co-sponsoring a Gallegly measure that would prohibit giving federal benefits to illegal migrants.

Opponents of Gallegly’s proposals say that the identification documents he wants to improve are already tamper-resistant and that illegal immigrants are not eligible for federal benefits other than emergency medical care, including childbirth. They contend that the constitutional amendment has no chance of passage.

Beilenson is “pandering to anti-immigrant feelings in Agoura Hills and Thousand Oaks and maybe other areas of his district,” said Marco Antonio Abarca, a California Rural Legal Assistance lawyer in Oxnard.

“Being anti-immigrant is what the people there want. It’s good politics.”

Abarca noted that the Agoura Hills City Council has banned day laborers from soliciting work in the city and the Thousand Oaks City Council passed an ordinance to require landlords to get a permit when renting houses to four or more adults. He said both were aimed at Latin-American immigrants in those communities.

The Agoura Hills ordinances are being challenged in court.

Beilenson could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Gallegly, whose 21st District presently includes some areas with conservative voters who will be in the new district that Beilenson seeks to represent, said the Democrat’s co-sponsorship of his bills shows that they have broad appeal.

“It’s a very significant issue and it’s going to be a more significant issue as time goes on,” said Gallegly. “It’s an issue that a lot of folks are afraid to touch because a lot of people are going to try to paint them as something ugly.”