Wilson Urges Stiff Penalties to Deter Illegal Immigrants : Government: Under his sweeping proposal, children born on U.S. soil to unlawful residents would be denied citizenship. Some federal benefits would be cut off.

Declaring that California’s quality of life and economic recovery are “under siege” from illegal immigration, Gov. Pete Wilson on Monday proposed a sweeping program to deny citizenship to children born on U.S soil to unlawful residents and to cut off health and education benefits to those immigrants.

Except in emergencies, state and federal assistance would go only to those immigrants who could prove that they were in the state legally by presenting a tamper-proof identification card similar to a California driver’s license, the Republican governor proposed during an intensely promoted news conference in downtown Los Angeles.

The governor, a longtime supporter of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), also said the trade deal was in jeopardy because of the pace of illegal immigration. He said he would urge President Clinton to use U.S. ratification as a lever to secure the cooperation of Mexico in halting the nightly flow of illegals crossing the Mexico-California border.

Immigration is expected to play a major role in the 1994 gubernatorial campaign, and Democratic critics accused Wilson of partisan motivation in taking such aggressive stands on issues largely beyond his control. Several of the proposals Wilson made Monday have been raised without success in Congress and in at least one case would require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Wilson packaged his proposals in an “open letter on behalf of the people of California,” faxed to the White House on Monday. Wilson used political funds to reprint the letter in full-page ads scheduled to run today in West Coast editions of the New York Times and USA Today and in the Washington Times. He planned a series of campaign-like appearances today and Wednesday to draw attention to the issue.

White House aides had no official reaction to Wilson’s proposal late Monday, saying they had not had time to study it. Unofficially, however, several aides were sharply critical, suggesting that the governor was seeking to use public concern about immigration to help his reelection campaign.

“It’s a perfect issue for him,” one White House aide said. “Immigration is primarily an area of federal responsibility, and Wilson loves to blame the federal government for state problems.”

In effect, the governor cited illegal immigration as a cause of many of the problems facing California as he prepares to seek a second four-year term with the lowest approval rating of any modern California governor. At the end of May, only 15% of Californians statewide told the Field Poll that they thought Wilson was doing a good or excellent job.

“We do not exaggerate when we say that illegal immigration is eroding the quality of life for legal residents of California, is threatening the quality of education that we can provide our children, the quality of care to our needy and blind, elderly and disabled,” the governor said, describing immigration as a bipartisan issue.

Although the national debate about immigration has been heating up for months, Wilson is the most prominent public figure to endorse such a severe package of proposals. In doing so, the governor has aligned himself with restrictionist groups seeking to portray illegal immigrants not as eager job-seekers, but as opportunists anxious to capitalize on welfare and other social services.

“We must end all the incentives that that now entice immigrants to enter the U.S. illegally,” the governor said in his letter.

Wilson’s matter-of-fact delivery of a lengthy prepared statement belied the sharpness of his proposals. Wilson raised the specter, for example, of pulling illegal immigrant school children from classrooms immediately rather than applying a ban in the future.

To immigrant advocates, such arguments make immigrants scapegoats for the difficulties confronting California, which absorbs as many as half of the nation’s new arrivals, both legal and illegal. Critics likened Wilson’s efforts to so-called nativist movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries that targeted newcomers from China, Ireland, Italy and elsewhere.

“The governor is using this as a convenient distraction from the real problems facing California: global recession, rising crime, a shrinking tax base, etc.,” said Charles Wheeler, directing attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, a Los Angeles-based group that represents immigrants.

“I’m disappointed but not surprised that he would try to exploit nativist fears for his own political gain. . . . He’s got very low ratings and he sees this as something he can use for his own political purposes,” Wheeler said.

Wilson claimed that an estimated 2 million of California’s more than 31.5 million residents are in the state illegally and that the services they use, under congressional and Supreme Court mandate, eat up $2.3 billion in state funds annually.

Wilson said Clinton--as a new President--is not at fault for the problems of illegal immigration. But he bluntly told Clinton that he is responsible for doing something about it.

“You must put a definite end to . . . incentives to illegal immigration, and you must do so clearly and unequivocally or you will encourage continued illegal immigration,” the governor wrote.

In fact, both Congress and Clinton would have to deprive illegal immigrants of certain services, in contravention of a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing public education to all. Further, to keep anyone born on U.S. soil from achieving citizenship would require a change in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1868.

State Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) said Wilson’s proposals wrongly focus on government services as the principal magnet that lures illegal immigrants to this country, rather than the attraction of jobs.

What is needed, Torres said, is vigorous enforcement of sanctions against employers who hire low-wage illegal immigrants in violation of federal law.

“The issue of citizenship is a red herring that clouds the real issue, which the governor is trying to hide, and that is he doesn’t want to go after his friends in big business or in agriculture because that’s where the real problem is,” Torres said.

The governor’s plan drew sharp criticism from state Democratic Party Chairman Bill Press.

Press claimed that as a U.S. senator in 1986, Wilson sponsored, on behalf of California agricultural businesses, an amendment to the immigration reform bill that allowed as many as 1 million farm workers to gain permanent residency in the United States, thus causing some of the problems Wilson is now raising as a crisis.

“He is like Al Capone coming forward with a program to deal with organized crime,” Press said.

Wilson shrugged off Press’ comments as “petty partisanship.”

Among those seeking to roll up the nation’s welcome mat to immigrants, the governor’s comments were seen as long-overdue recognition of the destructive nature of large-scale immigration.

“I think the governor’s right on target,” said former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Alan C. Nelson, a consultant for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based lobbying group that seeks a moratorium on new arrivals. “These proposals are all very solid. It makes a lot of sense.”

The governor’s comments further signaled that immigration is likely to be a political flash point in the 1994 gubernatorial race in California.

State Treasurer Kathleen Brown, a likely Democratic candidate for governor in 1994, has proposed using NAFTA as a lever for getting the federal government to send Mexican nationals convicted of crimes from California prisons to those in Mexico.

Neither Brown nor Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, another potential Democratic candidate, had an immediate comment Monday.

Nationally, Clinton has urged a major crackdown on illegal immigrants, vowing enforcement measures and budgetary commitments that went beyond efforts by Republican administrations.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who lost the governorship to Wilson in 1990, has gotten considerable attention for proposing a $1 toll for crossing U.S. borders that would be used to beef up the Border Patrol.

Morally, critics argue that denying education to illegal immigrant children would create an underclass of youth.

“We will pay for that in the long term by ensuring that they will end up in the criminal justice system,” said Robert Rubin, assistant director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, a San Francisco-based group.

The governor would also like to render illegal immigrants ineligible for health and other benefits, but that too is a complicated issue.

Illegal immigrants are already ineligible for most federal benefit programs, such as food stamps, unemployment insurance and welfare. They may receive federal welfare and food stamp payments on behalf of their children who are U.S. citizens.

On the health front, experts noted, federal assistance to illegal immigrants is largely limited to emergency assistance. Some states, including California, provide pregnancy-related care. To deny emergency and pregnancy care, critics said, would be counterproductive, forcing governments to cope somehow with a population denied basic health services.

“These people have to be provided with something, unless you want them spreading disease or facing life-threatening illnesses without care,” said Wheeler of the National Immigration Law Center.

Although he acknowledged a moral obligation to provide emergency health care, Wilson said the federal government should pick up the bill for such services to illegal immigrants. And beneficiaries then should be quickly deported, the governor said.

Monday’s comments marked the second time that Gov. Wilson has forayed provocatively into the complex thicket of immigration issues, questioning whether a state that had encouraged newcomers was being undercut by its own attraction.

In late 1991, the governor publicly questioned whether there is “a limit to what we can absorb.” A firestorm of criticism followed, and the governor quickly dropped the issue, insisting he was not blaming immigrants for the state’s woes.

Since then, Wilson has focused his energy on persuading the federal government to compensate California for the costs associated with illegal immigration, with little success.

Times staff writers Virginia Ellis in Sacramento and David Lauter in Washington contributed to this story.