CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY : Race-Baiting in Sacramento : Anti-immigrant bills ignore reality: Our multiracial economy is dependent on workers from abroad.

If the steel-mesh curtain that federal authorities have raised between San Diego and Tijuana were to spread like a Berlin Wall all along the border, sealing off the state entirely from new immigration, California’s already stumbling economy would be brought to its knees. Our state’s economic health is, and for the foreseeable future will remain, heavily dependent on immigrant labor.

Apparently, these indisputable realities are beyond the comprehension of certain lawmakers and their conservative supporters. Or, perhaps the concerted legislative attack on the very people who must ultimately help solve California’s economic problems is merely cynical political posturing. After all, several of the 21 anti-immigrant bills these lawmakers have introduced this year in Sacramento would almost certainly be judged unconstitutional if enacted. Yet considerable public resources have been expended on promoting them anyway.

No matter the motivation, the practical effect of these politicians’ actions has been to encourage intolerance against anyone who looks or sounds “foreign.” Inevitably, this will lead to a further widening of the chasm that separates California’s economic “haves” from its “have-nots.”

By the end of this decade, California will have become the first state (Hawaii excepted) in which the Anglo proportion of the population will fall below 50%. Whether or not any of the 21 racially divisive bills introduced by mostly Republican, mostly Southern California legislators ultimately becomes law, it is California’s destiny to be the nation’s first truly multiracial state.

This fact is already evident in the state’s public schools, whose enrollment during the 1991-92 school year was about 45% Anglo, 35% Latino, 11% Asian/Pacific Islander, 9% African American and 1% Native American. By the 1997-98 school year, Latino children--a significant proportion of them immigrants or the children of immigrants--will make up 40% of total public school enrollees, replacing Anglos as the largest single racial group in the state.

Our long-term prospects as a state will be bleak in every respect if California’s policy-makers don’t begin to embrace these children as our own, as our key to a bright future, rather than continuing to stigmatize them and their parents as enemies and liabilities.

Clearly, the underlying intent of the 21 bills in question is to stigmatize all undocumented immigrants and, by implication, the immigrant community as a whole, as detriments, parasites, even criminals. In some instances, the bills would attempt circumvention of existing federal law in order to deprive undocumented people and their children of the most basic human services. There is a glaring contradiction knowing that these same legislators stand ready to support expenditures for these same basic resources to far-away lands in the form of humanitarian aid, but not for people who live and work among us.

Two bills introduced by Assemblyman Richard Mountjoy (R-Arcadia) embody this contradiction while posing long-term negative effects for the economic future of California. His Assembly Bill 149 would have denied state funds to pay for the education of children who could not provide documentary proof that they are legal residents or citizens. Recognizing that the bill would stigmatize and punish children for circumstances over which they have no control, fair-minded lawmakers voted to kill the bill. Similarly, Mountjoy’s AB 150 sought to deny safety-net health services--including emergency and prenatal health care--which creates possible long-term implications on general public health.

Other pieces of legislation, such as AB 299, authored by Bill Hoge (R-Pasadena) seek to deny access to public housing by immigrants. This would subject hundreds of thousands of low-income legal residents and citizens to potential housing discrimination just because they look and sound foreign. Another bill, AB 87, from Mickey Conroy (R-Orange), would, incredibly, authorize a study to assess the feasibility of building a prison in Baja California; the premise, that there is a proliferation of Latino foreign malefactors invading our borders, is offensive and criminalizes an entire community.

The two last examples, Mountjoy’s AB 151 and SB 733, sponsored in the Senate by Newton R. Russell (R-Glendale) and San Francisco independent Quentin L. Kopp, would limit legal protections for immigrants in the work force and their access to job-training opportunities. Again, these laws invite discrimination against legal residents and citizens as well. What’s more, such laws would codify the dehumanizing and exploitative historical precepts that were present in the bracero program, Operation Wetback, the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Japanese internment.

As the nation’s first truly multiracial state, we cannot afford to foster new opportunities for discrimination and intolerance. As a state, we have two choices. Taking the lead from conservative legislators, we can continue to scapegoat the youngest and most vibrant women and men in our work force--the key to our economic future. Or, we can choose to commit our resources to preparing for the approaching day when only 25% of California’s work force will be Anglo males.

To be prepared to take California’s economic, social and political well-being into their hands, the other 75%--women and men of other races--will have to be well-educated. To deal effectively with a work environment demanding adjustments to new tasks, even new careers, several times during their lifetimes, tomorrow’s workers will require the versatility that comes with a solid mastery of the analytical, quantitative, verbal and technical skills needed for prosperity in the next century.

As the gateway to the Pacific Rim and Latin America and home to immigrants from throughout the world, California has grown to reflect the heterogeneity of the global community. Our ability to empower and incorporate these newcomers into the fabric of American society is the key to restoring California’s economic, cultural and political vitality.

We must begin this work now by making it clear to lawmakers on the political fringe that we will no longer tolerate their flooding the Legislature with impractical, expensive, unconstitutional bills designed to curry favor with a vocal minority whose agenda is to foster racial division and intolerance.