Mahony to Fight Ballot Measure on Immigrants : Proposition 187: Cardinal asks state’s Catholics to join campaign against ‘save our state’ initiative, calling it an ‘assault on human dignity.’

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony denounced the “save our state” immigration initiative Saturday as “simplistic and ill-willed,” and vowed to work for its defeat in November’s elections. California’s top-ranking Roman Catholic cleric urged Catholics statewide to join in the campaign against the proposition.

“Our economy is not going to be remedied by adopting punitive measures against those with little or no political power: the poor and immigrants,” Mahony, speaking in Spanish, told a Latino Catholic conference in Monterey Park.

In a subsequent interview, the prelate called the proposal “a devastating assault on human dignity.”

The remarks by the cardinal, who heads the nation’s most populous Catholic archdiocese and has long been an outspoken defender of immigrants, were his first official comments on the matter since Proposition 187--as the measure is known formally--qualified for November’s statewide ballot.

Although Catholic bishops had been expected to oppose the measure, the cardinal’s strongly worded proclamation signaled the hierarchy’s determination to use the church’s resources and the power of the pulpit against the far-reaching measure.

Proposition 187 would deny a range of public benefits--notably schooling and non-emergency health care--to illegal immigrants. The proposal would also require that school administrators, health care workers, social service personnel and police work closely with U.S. authorities to identify illegal immigrants, including parents of U.S.-born children, for deportation.

A coalition of clerics, community workers, unions and others have formed a statewide alliance against the proposal. Yet opponents acknowledge an uphill battle.

The initiative has broad support among voters, and has clearly tapped into a sentiment against illegal immigration at a time of statewide economic stagnation.

Supporters say the initiative is needed to dry up the pool of public resources that attracts illegal immigrants. Once it becomes law, proponents contend, the measure will discourage foreign settlers from coming without papers and prompt many illegal immigrants already in California to return to their homelands.

But, according to Mahony and other opponents, the measure will do nothing to stop illegal immigration or encourage the undocumented to leave. Rather, detractors argue, the initiative will create an uneducated underclass of people lacking medical care and fearing any government contact.

“We’d have several hundred thousand youngsters, not getting educated, on the street, drawn to gangs and crimes,” the cardinal said.

Harold W. Ezell, an initiative co-author and former high-ranking U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service official, said the cardinal’s comments were disappointing, albeit not surprising. “He’s been a supporter of illegals from Day One,” Ezell said.