Prop. 187’s Support Shows No Boundaries

At least part of Veronica Rodriguez’s attraction to Proposition 187, the sweeping November initiative that would deny basic services to illegal immigrants, can be traced to the Mexican license plates at her community college.

A working student in the Imperial County farm town of Holtville, Rodriguez says she was turned down for educational aid because she earned too much. Now, the 21-year-old daughter of legal immigrant farm workers smolders when she sees cars bearing Mexican plates in the parking lot and lines of people collecting aid checks at the campus. Many immigrants, she suspects, are getting assistance they should not.

Fresno resident Vanessa Quintero also is tilting toward a vote for Proposition 187, grasping for something that will help arrest the crowding and deterioration in the heavily Latino neighborhood where she bought a home five years back. Fueling her frustration, she says, is the stream of Spanish-speakers seeking directions to the welfare office half a block away, some explaining they recently arrived from Mexico and don’t know the area.

“I have a heart. I am human,” said Quintero, a tax examiner who once worked in the Central Valley’s farm fields. “But each time I walk out my door, I think: ‘Oh boy. Something has got to be done about this problem.’ ”

Far from the California heartland, in Los Angeles, a self-described “very liberal” Democrat who helps run a theater troupe that performs for thousands of underprivileged children has reached a similar conclusion. Although she says she’s convinced illegal immigrants contribute more to the state than they use in services, she is supporting Proposition 187 on what she calls ethical grounds. “Entering the country illegally by definition is breaking the law,” said the Westside woman, who, like many pro-187 liberals and Latinos, preferred not to be named. “To reward people for that with health (services) and public education is just ethically wrong. . . . The law has to mean something.”

As Election Day nears, an unusually broad consensus of support has emerged for Proposition 187--one that transcends conventional political wisdom and typical electoral alignments.

Large numbers of liberal, Latino and Democratic voters of all stripes--those who normally could be expected to forge the core opposition to such a measure--are embracing one of the harshest immigration reform schemes ever placed on the ballot, polls show.

Veering sharply from the path of their ostensible political leaders, who warn that Proposition 187 panders to prejudice and will be a financial and social calamity, these voters appear ready to fall in with California’s latest benchmark political revolt.

“This is a situation where there’s been a disconnect between the political elite and just rank-and-file Americans,” said former UCLA political science professor Peter Skerry, author of “Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority.” “The dam has broken and people feel they can express these feelings that kind of pent up.”

How deep the tide of support will remain by Election Day is unclear. Voter attention--and the campaign against the initiative--is only beginning to fix on the hard details of the measure. And uneasiness could grow as voters weigh the measure’s practical implications, including denial of public schooling and routine medical care to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants already living in the state.

Nonetheless, the breadth of current backing for the measure is remarkable, experts say. Most Republican, Democratic and independent voters favor it, a recent Times Poll found. So do whites and Latinos, moderates and conservatives, and people from all age groups, income and education levels. Even liberal voters are evenly divided.

Many voters--particularly in less predictable liberal and minority pockets of support--are latching on to the simple power of the initiative’s message. Dozens of interviews with voters, poll respondents, Democratic Party activists, neighborhood leaders and political analysts indicate that Proposition 187 is resonating through deeply embedded, often personal and anecdotal, voter concerns.

People speak of a sense of order diminished and of control lost. They see undisciplined, profligate government programs failing to address glaring problems of homelessness and troubled schools, even as they extend more services to illegal newcomers. Threading through it all are discomforting changes many have witnessed in their town, at their school, in their work.

“You find (support for the initiative) in strange places where you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find it,” said Bill Christopher, the head of a large coalition of Los Angeles homeowner and neighborhood watch groups, which recently held a highly charged, sharply divided discussion of the measure.

“I think it’s a lot of people out there just flailing away (on an) issue that needs to be addressed. It’s a manifestation of everybody’s desire to get a handle on the issue. . . . But no one’s quite sure the best way to do that.”

The appeal of the measure is palpable in places like the Evergreen Senior Center in Boyle Heights east of Downtown Los Angeles. Gathered for bingo on a recent afternoon, many of the older Latino homeowners--mostly Democrats who vote regularly--sharply criticized illegal immigrants they say are crowding their communities and taking advantage of tax-supported programs for the needy.

Several viewed Proposition 187 as discriminatory, chiefly targeted at Mexicans, and a political ploy designed to boost the reelection chances of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who has endorsed the measure.

But others--on condition that their names not be used--said they are fed up and planning to vote for the measure. “(My family) never asked for welfare. Not once,” said a 75-year-old Latina who has lived on the Eastside much of her life. “I see some people demanding things they shouldn’t demand. I’m against all those girls coming over here (to have children) so they can get a check, free (food) stamps, medical and everything.”

An 81-year-old Mexican American retiree, who prides himself on reading the paper daily and keeping abreast of the Proposition 187 debate, said cutting off services would be tough. But he said it may be the only solution to what he insists is a drain on public services by undocumented new arrivals. “I support the idea. You’ve got to put a stop to it,” he said.

Elsewhere, Dora Hernandez, a Boyle Heights legal secretary and longtime resident, is still uncertain which way to go. Although she is uncomfortable with the “racial bashing” she senses is inherent in the measure, the longtime registered Democrat complained: “I abhor what (illegal immigrants) have done to my neighborhood.”

Such sentiments--and a recent Times Poll finding Proposition 187 is favored 52% to 42% by Latino registered voters--are no surprise to Armando Garcia, a Catholic brother who grew up on the Eastside. Today he runs a nonprofit parent education program for immigrants in the area.

He said many pochos --a critical term for Latinos who have lived here many years and become more Americanized--complain to him about their new neighbors. “(They say) they play their music too loud, they throw trash around . . . they have clothes hanging, they take the shopping carts out of Ralphs,” Garcia said.

“There is a great disdain (for) what I call the culture of poverty. It’s entangling the Anglo community, but more so the pocho community,” he said.

This vast accumulation of aggravations over large economic issues and day-to-day community problems extends far beyond the Latino community.

Cindy Dones, a computer firm manager and mother of three in the East Bay community of Fremont, is leaning toward supporting the measure, even as she worries about its severest provisions.

A liberal Democrat, Dones struggled to explain what is drawing her to a measure she by no means is entirely comfortable with.

“I don’t think it’s any one thing. It’s a lot of little things that can add up to be (a) major problem,” she said. She described a longtime kindergarten teacher in her child’s school, who was reassigned because a bilingual teacher was needed for the growing numbers of Spanish-speaking students.

“She had 25 years experience. She was caring, loving. You just look at a situation like that and say: Wait a minute! You’re taking good people out of their jobs for the wrong reasons.” She later acknowledged that many of the Spanish-speaking students could have been legal residents.

Nonetheless, she said illegal immigrants are straining the school system at a time when teachers do not get raises and schools cannot afford modern equipment.

“In California, the people in office don’t do a lot of long-term planning,” she said. “(Then) it seems like we’re kind of faced with an all-or-nothing choice. This may not be the right thing to begin with. But hopefully if we take a harder line, they’ll figure out what’s right and not right to do,” she said.

Pointing to auto insurance rate rollbacks and other voter-approved measures that have been buried in court battles or watered down, some liberals seem willing to gamble that the toughest elements of Proposition 187 won’t survive. The measure is squarely at odds with a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that undocumented children are entitled to public education, although supporters hope to challenge the decision if the measure passes.

“I don’t think kids would be denied school,” said Mayo C. Williams Jr., an electrical contractor who lives in Los Angeles’ Windsor Village area. “But I think it would send a lesson back to those thinking about coming to this country that it’s not as easy as it looks.”

Williams, a Democrat who said he normally votes for liberal causes and candidates, says he’s seen illegal immigration help drain money from his small business. Competing contractors who use undocumented labor can pay lower wages and underbid him, he said. “They’ll come in and work for less than minimum wage,” he said.

In addition to cultural clashes, competition for jobs, school programs and affordable housing seems to be fueling some of the support for Proposition 187 in urban minority communities, where many illegal immigrants have settled.

“I’m fair-minded. But we’re so close to one another here we can smell one another’s breath,” said Lois Medlock, a longtime neighborhood activist in a once predominantly black South-Central Los Angeles community that now is heavily Latino. Medlock’s Southeast Central Homeowners Assn., made up of more than 100 black property owners, recently endorsed Proposition 187.

Friction has been building in her area over everything from expansion of bilingual education in neighborhood schools to immigrants who raise chickens in their yards, she said. “We need to stop somewhere . . . “ she said. “I’m not mad at them. I’m mad at this government.”

Virginia Charon, a liberal-leaning Democrat and neighborhood watch leader in the Los Feliz and Hollywood areas, has raised money each Christmas to provide gifts for thousands of children in her area, many of them immigrants.

But she is supporting Proposition 187 because she says the steady influx of illegal immigrants in recent years has exacerbated everything from litter and crime to overcrowding in neighborhood schools.

Liberal and moderate Democrats on the Westside, where housing costs are higher and fewer poor immigrants tend to settle, often cite larger principles.

“Legal immigration is the lifeblood of the country,” said Jack Hirsh, a 45-year-old computer programmer and “middle-of-the-road” Democrat. But he says he supports the initiative because “it’s a simple matter of propriety. I believe in the law. It’s hard for me to see any justification for anything having to do with people whose presence inside the country is not lawful.”

Diana Plotkin, a grass-roots Westside Democratic Party activist, senses the measure’s appeal in rank-and-file party circles, despite the opposition of many party leaders. “A lot of liberal Democrats (are) looking in terms of supporting it . . . which surprises me,” she said. “There’s a futile sense here. People are so frustrated that nothing is being done.”

Opponents say racial bias is feeding the support for Proposition 187, and discrimination could be rampant if it passes. Provisions to require public employees to question people about their immigration status and report suspected illegal residents would throw suspicion on many minorities who speak with accents, critics say.

The impact of racial prejudice is nearly impossible to gauge in polls, experts say. Predictably, racial considerations are discounted by supporters of Proposition 187 across the political spectrum.

“That could be a factor. But I’m Hispanic and I don’t think race is really the issue,” said Rodriguez, the Imperial Valley college student. It’s about public money and opportunity, she said. “There’s a lot of people out there that live in this country--American people--that need the help.”

Even some critics of the initiative say its appeal is not as simple as race and are concerned about the polarized rhetoric of the early public debate on the measure.

Those supporting the measure tend to be tagged as racist and those opposing it are dismissed as favoring open borders, said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Center, a Latino policy think tank at Claremont College. “Both sides are not even listening to each other, so the middle (ground) has been lost in the debate,” he said.

Former UCLA professor Skerry, who argues Proposition 187 is simply bad public policy, also says it was foreseeable. California polls have shown a high level of anxiety the last 10 or 12 years, he said.

“If you saw what was going on, immigration was at such a level that something had to give,” he said. “Political figures didn’t want to see it, but it was there.”

* ELECTION ROUNDUP: A3