Immigration Delicate Issue for Clinton

The emotional issue of immigration is boiling up into another vexing political dilemma for President Clinton, and--as on gays in the military--his compassion appears to be on a collision course with his constituency.

Few other national issues offer the same combustible mix of color, culture and constitutional rights. Clinton has kept it off the front burner so far, but immigration is an undercurrent of the Administration’s major policy initiatives--from health care and welfare reform to passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

And what makes the issue especially delicate for Clinton is the way it scrambles traditional political coalitions and presents an ever-shifting terrain upon which it is difficult to find firm footing.

The President’s instincts on immigration appear to be more generous than current public sentiment, which is growing increasingly hostile to the flood of legal and illegal immigrants streaming into the country.

Clinton’s approach to balancing these forces is just now emerging: He seems to be seeking to avoid alienating Latino voters and pro-immigration liberals while appearing to respond to the concerns of workers who feel threatened by competition from illegal immigrants and local officials who must contend with the costs of unchecked immigration.

To do this, he is employing a combination of tough rhetoric against illegal immigration and relatively mild and inexpensive concrete steps to stem it.

As Clinton feels his way through these shoals, White House aides who track the issue are urging a low-profile approach to avoid feeding rising nativist sentiments, especially in California. They said that Clinton will not propose any major immigration policy changes for at least six months as he studies both the substance and the politics of the thorny issue.

The advocates of a liberal immigration policy tend to be found on the far left and the far right of the political spectrum, an unusual alliance of civil libertarians and economic conservatives who believe that unfettered immigration confers broad moral and fiscal benefits on American society.

The pro-immigration forces also include customarily conservative agricultural and small-business interests who favor open borders as a source of cheap labor.

But at the nation’s political center, where Clinton’s electoral future lies, there is growing anxiety about the economic costs of providing health, welfare and education to millions of illegal immigrants.

In addition, the anti-immigrant alliance includes many African-Americans, settled legal immigrants and working-class whites at the lower end of the economic scale--all traditional members of the Democratic coalition--who view recent arrivals as competitors for scarce jobs.

This sentiment is particularly acute in the states most affected by illegal immigration--California, Texas, Florida, New York--which are critical to Clinton’s reelection calculus.

Accordingly, Clinton has struck a tough tone in comments on illegal immigration while at the same time insisting that America must remain a beacon to the oppressed and a multicultural melting pot.

In a recent interview with The Times, he vowed a “much more aggressive posture” on enforcement of existing restrictions than that of previous administrations. “I’m going to try to develop the toughest possible position I can, reasonably,” Clinton said.

White House political aides view immigration as a “wedge” issue that Clinton can use to burnish his “new Democrat” credentials. His law enforcement emphasis and tough talk--”we must not, and we will not, surrender our borders to those who wish to exploit our history of compassion and justice”--are designed to appeal to Ross Perot voters and conservatives in both parties, aides said.

“The President has moved quickly to propose a very tough immigration control package and a very tough crime package with an expansion of the death penalty,” said a senior White House political adviser. “If people want to be more extreme than that, they’re going to look like extremists. The old hard-right attacks won’t work on Clinton.”

Clinton has studiously avoided a declaration of broad principles on immigration, preferring to focus on narrower questions of tightening asylum conditions and border enforcement. Aides said that Clinton does not want to put too much emphasis on the touchy element of immigration in the forthcoming debates on the trade agreement with Mexico and Canada.

The President has indicated, however, that he is likely to propose denying medical benefits to illegal residents by refusing to grant them the tamper-proof identification cards that all Americans will carry under the new health care plan.

In this, Clinton is in agreement with Gov. Pete Wilson, who last month proposed a sweeping set of measures to deny public benefits--including welfare, health care and free education--to illegal immigrants and their children. Wilson advocated amending the U.S. Constitution to deny citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

Wilson also asserted that 2 million of California’s 31 million residents are in the country illegally and cost the state $2.3 billion a year.

Clinton was mildly critical of Wilson’s approach, rejecting his call for refusing citizenship but expressing sympathy for Wilson and other officials who have to contend with the high cost of caring for immigrant populations.

Clinton clearly was aware that Wilson was responding to deep public frustration over the cost of immigration and could not have failed to notice that Wilson’s poll ratings took a 10-point leap after he announced his proposals.

State Treasurer Kathleen Brown and California’s two liberal Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, have joined Wilson in catering to the anti-immigrant mood in the state.

Brown proposed last week that illegal immigrants from Mexico convicted of crimes in California should be sent back home to serve their sentences as a means of saving the state prison system about $500 million a year. Feinstein advocates imposing a $1 border crossing fee for all cars to fund the hiring of 1,000 new Border Patrol officers. Boxer wants to call out the National Guard to reinforce the Border Patrol.

Conservative political analyst Kevin Phillips said that California’s senior officials are not leading public opinion, but following it, hoping to reap political benefits.

“The political spectrum means nothing on this issue,” said Phillips. “Any politician with ambitions has to take a position that recognizes the total public obsession with doing something.”

Phillips added that Wilson, in his years as a U.S. senator, was considered a moderate on immigration. Now, like many other politicians, he’s moving rightward to stay atop the wave of public opinion.

“Pete Wilson by nature is a lagging indicator,” Phillips said. “He’s not on the cutting edge of anything.”

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), a son of Mexican immigrants, said that he is grateful Clinton has not yet joined the bandwagon in a political appeal to the beleaguered middle class.

But he said he fears that neither Clinton nor Congress is capable of rationally debating the issue in the current atmosphere.

“I wouldn’t put it past this Administration, especially one that doesn’t have a total understanding of the issue, to go overboard,” said Becerra, a member of the immigration subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. “The politics of immigration lend themselves to people going overboard.”

The freshman congressman said he is particularly concerned that local worries about the costs of providing welfare, education and health care for immigrants will spark a backlash and create a permanent class of U.S. residents with neither government rights nor protections.

Becerra, whose district north and east of downtown Los Angeles is 60% Latino and also includes sizable numbers of Asian-Americans, said: “It’s difficult to come up with a rational policy when people think whatever you come up with is more than ‘those people’ are entitled to.”

At the White House, some aides are concerned that the debate is becoming increasingly tinged with racism and that it may be difficult to resist popular sentiment to, as one official put it, “just start cutting off programs and shutting the door.”

Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration, Refugee & Citizenship Forum, is critical of both Clinton and Wilson, who he believes are guilty of fanning anti-immigrant flames. His group advocates an open immigration policy as the best way to serve U.S. economic and moral interests.

Sharry said that Wilson is wrong to believe that if the nation simply ended what Wilson calls the “perverse incentives” to immigrants--free health care, education and welfare--that the inflow would halt.

Sharry believes that Clinton’s current approach--tougher border enforcement--is also wrong and unworkable.

“People are convinced something has to be done about illegal immigration. It’s just not palatable to argue that nothing should be done,” Sharry said. “But to advocate enforcement and disenfranchisement and alienation is misleading and simplistic.”

At the other extreme are those who believe Clinton’s plan to beef up border and airport security to keep out illegal aliens and potential terrorists does not go nearly far enough.

Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said that the only answer is an immediate moratorium on all immigration, legal and illegal. New, much lower, limits on overall immigration should be adopted, as well as a viable system for enforcing them, he said.

Clinton’s approach, said Stein, is akin to “trying to dam the Mississippi with toothpicks.” He said that Clinton’s efforts to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration and to push tougher standards for granting political asylum are “troublingly bureaucratic.”

“In all likelihood, the Administration is going to try to get away with asylum reform proposals and hope the issue goes away,” Stein said. “But it won’t. It can’t. It’s a permanent feature of the political landscape.”