COLUMN LEFT / KEVIN de LEON : Soon We’ll All Be Dependent on Immigrants : How they and their children fare as workers will be crucial to future tax revenues.

Make no mistake, 1993 is--as was 1992--the year of the immigrant. Whether they are newly legalized residents or recently arrived undocumented immigrants, they are the subject of heated debate in Sacramento, local city council meetings and dinner-table conversations throughout California.

In 1986, at the behest of then-President Reagan, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), easily the largest and most ambitious immigration law in the nation’s history. Approximately 3.1 million residents--1.6 million in California alone--took advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to legalize their status.

As a society, we have tended to have a love/hate relationship with immigrants who do not culturally and linguistically resemble mainstream America. As post-Cold War economic times get tougher--and as more U.S. citizens lose jobs--so does anti-immigrant xenophobia. Regrettably, politicians and special-interest groups continue to target immigrants as fiscal scapegoats for California’s declining economy.

If one were to rationalize the anti-immigrant hysteria in purely Machiavellian terms, the reasons would be simple. Immigrants do not have powerful lobbyists or political action committees to represent them in Sacramento or Washington. Immigrants are not organized (although this is changing; witness the drywallers in Santa Ana and Justice for Janitors in Los Angeles). More crucially, most immigrants do not vote--yet. Thus, representation and accountability among politicians is virtually absent. In essence, immigrants are at the bottom of the pecking order.

Simplified arguments that immigrants burden government services or do not carry their fair share will not suffice. According to surveys by the California Health and Welfare Agency and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, newly legalized (IRCA) immigrants represent at least 14% of California’s work force; 85% hold at least two jobs and 90% work more than 49 hours a week. Simply stated, the immigrant economic base in California grows larger and more powerful.

Taxes paid by immigrants, like all taxes, go mainly to provide for defense, costs of government bureaucracies, national and state debt, police and fire protection and public schools. In fiscal 1991-92, immigrants in Los Angeles County contributed more than $4.2 billion to federal, state and local coffers. If Los Angeles County were a nation, it would have the world’s 13th-highest GNP.

As funny as it sounds, a senior citizen on Social Security who lives in rural Kentucky is indirectly being subsidized by an immigrant who washes dishes in a chic restaurant in Santa Monica or La Jolla.

This situation is what ultimately makes the topic of immigrants and immigration policy so complex: While local governments are burdened by immigrant services because of disproportionate sharing of state and federal revenue, our state and national budgets are becoming more dependent on immigrant taxes. According to the state Department of Finance, because of the economy, more prime wage-earners left California for other states in 1992 than entered. The overall majority of new prime wage-earners who entered the state were immigrants.

While the Anglo population in California is aging rapidly, the largest population entering California’s work force consists of young, hard-working, entrepreneurial immigrants. It follows that, as retirement age comes closer, the baby boomer generation will be dependent on these immigrant workers to sustain Social Security and Medicare. California’s economic future will become more heavily dependent, not just on immigrant agricultural, manufacturing and domestic labor, but more importantly and strategically on immigrants who will enter the high-skilled labor markets such as the complex technological industries in Silicon Valley and similar areas.

Obviously, we should be looking at immigrants not as the problem but as part of the solution. Incorporating them and their children into the fabric of our society will be a major factor in restoring California’s economy. Politicians who find it easy to make immigrants the scapegoat today should be reminded that they’re talking about 1.6 million people, new Californians on whom we’ll be relying in a tomorrow that’s not so far off in the future.