Drive Begins for Law Curtailing Services to Illegal Immigrants

An immigration reform group led by two former top INS officials on Tuesday kicked off a petition drive to place on the November state ballot a measure that would virtually bar illegal immigrants from public hospitals and schools.

Sponsors of the “Save Our State (SOS)” initiative began dropping off petitions to citizens’ groups advocating immigration changes. They need to gather 384,974 valid signatures by June 8 to qualify the measure for the ballot.

“California is in big trouble due to illegal immigration,” said Harold Ezell, Western regional chief of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1983 to 1989 and co-author of the proposal with Alan Nelson, the INS commissioner under President Ronald Reagan. “We can do a lot to make it so uncomfortable that people who want to come here illegally know that they cannot survive.”

The initiative, among the most stringent proposals put forth so far in the debate over illegal immigration, would require public hospitals and schools to report illegal immigrants to the INS. It would eliminate prenatal care for pregnant women who are here without papers. Illegal immigrants could receive emergency medical service but risk being reported to the INS.

Former Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum is sponsoring a separate initiative to cut off most emergency medical care to illegal immigrants and require Californians to carry identification cards attesting to their legal residency. Schabarum’s proposal has yet to be cleared by state officials for circulation.

Immigrant rights groups have argued that it is jobs, not public services, that draw illegal immigrants to the United States.