Clinton Vows More Immigration Aid : Politics: He labels Wilson’s use of the issue ‘disingenuous.’ Governor says President has not done his job and calls his actions ‘election-year cosmetics.’

President Clinton, vowing to seek more federal dollars for California to offset the cost of illegal immigration, said Sunday that it was “disingenuous” of Gov. Pete Wilson to attack him on the issue and to use it as the centerpiece of the Wilson reelection campaign.

Clinton said that if Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigrant measure on Tuesday’s ballot, is designed to send a message to Washington--a major argument of the backers: “I don’t need a message. I had the message from the day I became President.”

In an hourlong round-table interview with California political writers, Clinton repeatedly said he has done more to help California on the immigration issue than Wilson’s “friend and political ally” George Bush.

Clinton added: “For the governor to say, ‘Here’s a hole in our budget and you fix it’ when the hole was created in part by federal policies he helped to enact, is a little disingenuous, when I’m the first person who tried to help him.”

Wilson, campaigning in Southern California, reacted angrily.

“I think he has demeaned his office,” Wilson told reporters in Costa Mesa. “He has not told the truth. He has not done his job. If he had done his job, there would have been no need for 187.”

Wilson described the actions Clinton has taken as “election-year cosmetics” and said the President’s performance during his weekend of campaigning in California “has been pathetic.”

In his interview Sunday morning, Clinton acknowledged that the costs of illegal immigration are a federal responsibility, but he sharply disputed the Republican governor’s estimate that providing services to illegal immigrants costs California as much as $3 billion a year.

“No one I know believes that figure,” Clinton said. “I don’t even think they believe those figures.”

He added that the reimbursement to the states should be offset, or reduced, by an amount equal to the state taxes paid by those illegal immigrants who are working in California. Clinton said he did not know how that amount could be determined.

The President said that he inherited “an immigration mess” when he took office, but that he is beginning to turn the problem around. He said a doubling of the Border Patrol in the San Diego sector has led to a dramatic decline in the number of illegal immigrants coming into the state.

For more than a year, Wilson has written Clinton sharply worded letters and issued statements demanding that the federal government reimburse California for the full cost of providing services to illegal immigrants living within the state. These include health care, public schooling, a variety of other social services and the housing of criminals convicted of committing crimes in the state.

During the past year, Wilson balanced the state budget on the hope of receiving nearly $3 billion from Washington--which almost certainly won’t happen. That gap remains in the state budget for the fiscal year ending next June 30.

The governor has said California would not have a budget deficit if the federal government lived up to its congressional mandate to compensate the state. Wilson’s critics accuse him of being part of the problem because of legislation he sponsored while in the U.S. Senate to allow immigrants to enter California as farm workers.

Clinton was asked whether he and Wilson could work cooperatively during the coming year if the governor wins reelection over Democrat Kathleen Brown.

“That’s entirely up to him,” Clinton said. “I didn’t start the war of words and letters. I was out here trying to help.”

Clinton said, “I don’t recall Gov. Wilson putting any heat on President Bush at all.”

Wilson responded Sunday that he had lobbied every President since Jimmy Carter on the costs of illegal immigration, although never so publicly or critically.

Clinton said any increase in immigration funds would have to be balanced against other spending and the need to reduce the federal deficit. He said that he repeatedly had asked for more funds, but that the spending levels were cut by Congress. California got an estimated $324 million during the last fiscal year in direct offsetting costs.

The ultimate solution to the immigration problem is to restore the state’s economy, the President added.

“We are spending a great deal of money to rebuild the California economy,” he said.

In the interview at his Nob Hill hotel before flying on to Seattle and Minneapolis, Clinton decried the negativity of politics this year as exemplified by the bitter and closely contested U.S. Senate battle between Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Republican Rep. Mike Huffington.

Clinton called Feinstein’s achievements during her first two years in Washington “remarkable.” He added that he believes a majority of California voters agree with her positions on important issues, but “because of the environment, because of the advertising against her, it drives her negatives up.”

“This is not a very good way to run a country, I don’t think,” Clinton said.

In a prolonged discussion of the immigration issue, Clinton said he understands the frustration that has led to support for Proposition 187, which would cut off public education and non-emergency health care to people not legally in the state. But the ballot measure will not solve the problem, he said.

Before leaving California, Clinton heard a distinctly anti-187 sermon at a morning church service at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. As Clinton listened, the Very Rev. Alan Jones denounced the “witch hunt” mentality that he said was abroad in the land.

The nation, he said, is “in the middle of a war with our pains and our prejudices, our fear and our doubts. . . . Moses, in the form of a Hollywood actor, speaks in the voice of the NRA,” he said, referring to Charlton Heston’s advertisements opposing candidates who have voted for gun control, “and politicians and their handlers try to manipulate us.”

“Who shall we demonize? Who shall we blame for the mess we are in? This week it is undocumented aliens. But, oh, how we loved their cheap labor,” he said. “We are on the lookout for witches to burn.”

From San Francisco, Clinton flew on to Seattle, where a crowd of several thousand supporters gathered to cheer for the President and Democratic Senate candidate Ron Sims, who is locked in a close race with Republican Sen. Slade Gorton.

The Republicans have tried “to bury us in a mountain of negativism,” Clinton said. But, he insisted, through his tenure so far “this country is in better shape than it was 21 months ago.”

“If people in politics were judged the way people at work are judged,” he said, “every single Democrat in this congressional delegation would be elected again, resoundingly.”

Unfortunately for Clinton, the electorate’s judgment seems unlikely to be so favorable. Democrats fear they could lose more than half the seats they currently hold in Washington state--including that of House Speaker Tom Foley, who stayed campaigning in his district at the eastern end of the state rather than join Clinton. Republicans are hoping for just such a turnover, believing it could give them the final boost they would need to gain control of the House.

Clinton plans to finish his final week of campaigning today with appearances on behalf of candidates in three crucial Senate races--in Minnesota, Michigan and Delaware.

* CLINTON INTERVIEW: He notes intense partisanship, isolation from voters. A5