Evolution of a Political Issue: Immigration

The illegal immigration issue is a persistent undercurrent in this election.

You hear it in races for the U.S. Senate and in the less-publicized hand-to-hand combat for control of California’s congressional delegation and state legislative seats, especially in Southland areas struggling with the recession.

That’s because economic hard times have transformed attitudes many Southern Californians have toward those who’ve come here without benefit of the documents and red tape required by the federal government.

It used to be more of a theoretical issue, in the domain of academics who worried about overpopulation. Concern over immigration, heavily tinged with racism, gave birth to odd intellectual movements, such as zero population growth and English only.

Many of L.A.’s elites welcomed the immigrants, legal or not. Toasts were raised to “multiculturalism.” Restaurant critics discovered the latest storefront ethnic restaurants on Beverly Boulevard. The 1984 Olympics launched an intermittent series of multicultural art festivals, featuring plays that nobody could understand. We were going to be the city of the future, the civic version of Joseph’s coat of many colors.

Attitudes began to change. The change could be seen in South Los Angeles’ post-riot disputes between African-Americans and Latinos over reconstruction jobs, focusing public attention on the growing ill feeling.

Saturday, I saw how hard feelings had spread into middle-class white neighborhoods where layoffs and firings are becoming commonplace as the once-limitless aerospace industry declines.

I was at a pancake breakfast for Democratic Assemblyman Bob Epple of Norwalk, who is in a tight contest against Republican Phil Hawkins in a Southeast Los Angeles County district.

Pancakes were sizzling on the grill in Downey’s Apollo Park. About 50 people were seated at picnic tables, digging into breakfast. I sat down with Harry Hartmann, a retired Los Angeles firefighter, and his wife, Marjolean. “What’s the biggest issue for you this year?” I asked.

“We’re concerned with the problems of Downey,” Marjolean Hartmann said. “It’s the open borders.”

Hartmann said, “We have several street corners where people are afraid to walk by.” These are corners where day laborers gather, looking for work. His wife said “people are getting pistol-whipped there, or in their yards. Hartmann said, “There is a legal system of coming into the country and when you break the legal system, you are breaking the law and ought to be sent back. . . . They’ve taken the jobs away from kids coming out of high school.”

Epple came by. He is short and stocky, a friendly man whose style is as plain as the solidly middle-class district, with its large number of working men and women with roots in the South, Southwest and Midwest. The Hartmanns told him what they’d told me.

Epple said he sympathized with their feelings. But he didn’t pander to them. “These people commit crimes in the same proportion as anyone else,” he said. “Those people who are out on the corners who are here illegally, we can do something about,” he said. “But in this economy, some of them are legal.” The real answer, he said, is “to stop the flow” of illegal immigrants and you do that by stopping employers from hiring them.”

The conversation continued. “The world is screwed up,” Hartmann said. “It’s because we’re in a recession, or a depression,” said Epple. “It’s a depression if you’re involved.”

After the picnic, I accompanied Epple to a barbecue lunch at the American Legion Hall in Norwalk. We sat down at a long table covered with butcher paper and ate beef, beans and coleslaw. An old college friend of Epple’s came by to say hello. He’d been out of work for several months.

I told Epple that the conversation about immigration was interesting, and surprising. Did he think I was making too much of it?

No, he said. “Jobs are the No. 1 issue but when they start talking about jobs, immigration always comes up. They see it as a reason why they don’t have jobs.”

I could see the political result if the recession continues.

More city governments may be pressured to ban day laborers from gathering at street corners. This could be an issue in next year’s Los Angeles mayoral election. Overcrowded state universities and community colleges will hear more demands for limits on enrollment of illegal immigrants.

We’re seeing the evolution of a political issue from the realm of safe theory into the more volatile territory of earning a living. What is an undercurrent this year could be a dominant part of the dialogue in years to come.