A Roll Call of Second Opinions

So these two out-to-pasture immigration officials and an Orange County businessman with a grudge got together and agreed it would be swell to run all undocumented people out of California. They drafted a ballot proposition that would require schools and hospitals to report any suspected “illegal.” Kindergartners. Pregnant mothers. No matter. No papers, boom, out the door.

Everyone loved the idea, at first. Not only was it perfectly mean, and thus in keeping with the times. It also gave Californians someone else to blame for their statewide slump. The governor was the most enthusiastic supporter. He seemed convinced that this Proposition 187 could reelect him. He would pretend that California was Alabama, circa 1960, that his name was Wallace, not Wilson--and ride anger to victory.

As Election Day drew closer, though, opponents began to emerge, as if from caves. They ranged from the President of the United States to police officers, from preachers to farmers to schoolteachers to doctors to Chamber of Commerce directors to editorial writers--a wide and deep coalition of the sort of people traditionally trusted by Californians to provide political guidance.

These opinion leaders disagreed on why they disliked Proposition 187. Some thought it bad politics, others bad policy. Some worried about the loss of billions of tax dollars, others warned of disease or unpicked crops. What they agreed on was this: If illegal immigration was a disease, Proposition 187 was the wrong medicine. Listen to just a few of them:

* “I don’t think as a matter of practice,” said President Clinton, “it’s a good thing to condition an election referendum, much less other elections in California, on a measure that even the supporters say is unconstitutional.”

* “I won’t be mincing words on this one,” said the Rev. Richard C. Kennedy, an Orange County priest “. . . Proposition 187 is immoral. This thing is completely godless.”

* “Profoundly anti-conservative,” wrote Jack Kemp and William Bennett, two of the tallest trees in the GOP forest. “It relies on a Big Brother approach and imposes expensive regulatory burdens. It is also a mandate for ethnic discrimination. Does anyone seriously doubt that Latino children named Rodriguez would be more likely to appear to be illegal than Anglo children named, say, Jones.”

* “The Proposition 187 tax bill,” said Mel Katz, a director of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, “is like an arrow aimed right at the heart of California’s business climate.”

* “An ill-conceived and punitive measure,” said Dr. Matt Harris, president of the California Academy of Family Physicians, “that could significantly add to, not reduce, the cost of caring for undocumented persons by denying needed preventive and primary care services.”

* “This nativist abomination,” thundered William Safire of the New York Times, arguably the nation’s most influential conservative columnist, “would deny education to children of illegals and turn teachers into government informers, and for what--to put hard-working immigrants in costly jails.”

* “The proponents claim they drafted Proposition 187 to test education requirements before the Supreme Court,” stated Pete Mehas, a Fresno County educator. “I say we don’t deserve to be part of some grand legal experiment.”

* “This initiative,” said Max Turchen of the Congress of California Seniors, “requires Americans to report to the authorities people they ‘suspect’ of being illegal aliens. But what are the criteria? The color of your skin? The way you talk? Your last name?”

“We’re going to be in trouble,” said Ray Lopez, a Fowler raisin packer. “If you removed every illegal from this state tomorrow, you’d see the businesses--and not just the agricultural businesses--start to crumble.”

* “A bandage approach to a major problem,” said Ernie Gustafson, who for decades ran INS operations in Southern California, “dreamed up by politicians and wanna-bes. . . . It will solve nothing. It will take the innocence of children and make them the scapegoats of a failed policy.”

* “Imagine,” argued a Wall Street Journal editorial, “telling hundreds of thousands of teachers, nurses and bureaucrats that they now must report nationality suspects. Maybe California could hire former East German and Soviet neighborhood spies to demonstrate how to perfect such a hearsay reporting system.”

* “A fraud,” said L.A. County Sheriff Sherman Block, “and a hoax.”

And so on. This week the testimonials at last seem to have broken through the anti-immigrant hysteria. Polls are finding Proposition 187’s support in sharp decline--along with its aura of inevitability. The measure drafters, meanwhile, have been busy explaining away reported links to a white supremacy organization.

And what of Gov. Wilson, who once perched himself so eagerly on the Proposition 187 limb as king of the immigrant-bashers? Well, perhaps he’s heard the sound of sawing. A new TV ad of his opens with warm, fuzzy shots of the Statue of Liberty.