San Diego Officials Vote Immigrant Emergency : Border: County supervisors hope declaration will prompt release of federal reimbursement for costs of handling illegal crossers.

The Board of Supervisors here voted Tuesday to declare a state of emergency due to the high cost of illegal immigration and to demand that President Clinton show the same concern for California as he has for Florida in repelling illegal immigrants.

“The President darn well better stop treating California as a second-class citizen or he can kiss his reelection goodby,” said Supervisor Brian Bilbray, who sponsored the declaration. “It’s a no-brainer: California should get the same treatment as Florida.”

The vote was 4 to 0 with one supervisor absent.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Pete Wilson said the governor will heartily endorse the supervisors’ declaration and send a letter to Clinton asking that the county receive money from a fund set up by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act for areas that are adversely impacted by immigration.

If Clinton declares an emergency for San Diego County, the county would go to the top of the list for funding without having to compete with other counties for money.

The governor has written before to the President on immigration matters and even bought a full-page ad in the New York Times. In response, Hillary Rodham Clinton mocked Wilson and his letters during a recent campaign trip on behalf of the governor’s reelection opponent, Kathleen Brown.

Bilbray and Wilson held a news conference last month in San Diego to decry Clinton’s quickness to use military units to intercept rafters from Cuba while purportedly not giving the Border Patrol enough agents to seal the border with Mexico. In acting to use the Navy and Coast Guard, Clinton cited a state of emergency declared by Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles.

San Diego County officials have complained for several years about the costs of illegal immigration, from providing health care to locking up illegal immigrants accused of crimes. The supervisors this spring sent a bill to the White House for $64 million, after Clinton made a remark during a televised town hall meeting suggesting that such a bill be sent.

The emergency declaration was opposed by a variety of Latino rights, humanitarian and liberal groups.

Diane Anshell, an official with the Peace and Freedom Party’s San Diego County Central Committee, said that “state-sponsored immigrant bashing” would only further the careers of politicians without solving the state’s economic woes.

Bilbray, a Republican who represents the border area, is running for Congress against first-termer Rep. Lynn Schenk (D-San Diego) and is using his tough stand on illegal immigration as a major platform.

The fund in the 1986 Immigration Act that the county hopes to tap was recently allocated $74 million to cover the entire country. The supervisors have put the law enforcement costs alone for illegal immigration in San Diego County at more than $150 million.