CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : PROPOSITION 187 : Business Leaders Attack Immigration Measure

Saying Proposition 187 would take an economic and moral toll on California, several leading business executives Thursday spoke out against the ballot measure that would deny many public services, including schools and non-emergency medical care, to illegal immigrants.

“It’s flawed legislation if you deal with the issue of the numbers,” said Michael Rossi, a vice chairman of Bank of America, at a Downtown news conference. Rossi cited the potential loss of billions of dollars in federal revenue and added costs for law enforcement if illegal immigrant children are expelled from public schools.

“It’s not just a question of dollars and cents,” said Bruce Corwin, president of Metropolitan Theatres Corp., which serves largely Latino communities. The measure is “evil, awful” and discriminatory, Corwin said. “It’s no different than what happened to the Jews in the ‘30s, the Japanese in the ‘40s.”

The executives’ statements came the same day that a university-based policy organization released a survey showing that most California school superintendents whose districts include large numbers of Latino students believe passage of Proposition 187 would hurt far more than it would help.

Almost half the superintendents who responded to a 50-district survey by the Tomas Rivera Center predicted higher costs if voters approve the measure Nov. 8. At least three-fourths said the removal of illegal immigrant children would neither reduce class size nor cut bilingual education programs.

Proponents argue that many of California’s problems--from the high cost of government services to crime--are aggravated by illegal immigration. They contend that denying public services to illegal immigrants will reduce costs and discourage foreigners from entering the state without government permission.

The business leaders who spoke Thursday--including J.P. Morgan Securities managing director Michael George, former Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. Chairman Benjamin M. Reznik and Michael R. Peevey, a former president of Southern California Edison Co.--made clear they were speaking as individuals.

The Tomas Rivera Center’s survey of school superintendents added up to “overwhelming rejection” of the measure by “individuals who have the whole picture” of their districts, the center’s president, Harry P. Pachon, said at a separate Downtown news conference.

Only one-fourth of superintendents said they expected overall education costs to decrease if the ballot measure becomes law, while almost 82% anticipated that the requirement for schools to verify student citizenship or immigration status would increase district administrative costs.

When asked to cite potential benefits of the measure, 71% of superintendents said there were none. Much smaller percentages (from 4% to 8%) listed greater school stability, more resources available for other students and better test scores as possible benefits.

There is no mechanism for determining how many of the 5.2 million students in California public elementary and secondary schools are in the country illegally. Estimates range between 200,000 and 400,000.

The center, which has not taken a stand on Proposition 187, conducts research on Latino policy issues and operates from the Claremont Colleges in Claremont, the University of Texas at Austin and Trinity University in San Antonio. Pachon said the organization took care to ensure that the survey was unbiased.

* STUDENT WALKOUT: Hundreds of students leave classes to protest Prop. 187. B3