COUNTY REPORT: A Message Hits Home : PROPOSITION 187 : Measure Seems to Have Little Effect on Use of Illegal Workers : Immigrants: For many, their lives are clouded by confusion as they brace for the fallout from suits challenging the law.

Jose Martinez watched the public protests against Proposition 187, and held out hope that the measure could be defeated. Then the illegal immigrant listened to Spanish-language radio the night voters decisively endorsed the initiative.

He got the message: An overwhelming number of people want him, and his kind, to go back where they came from.

Nevertheless, Martinez the next morning staked out the same Moorpark street corner where he has regularly found work since arriving in the United States five years ago.

And, as usual, he got a job, no questions asked.

“Right now, nothing has changed,” said the 28-year-old day laborer from the Mexican state of Guanajuato. “In the future, who knows? But I need work, I need to feed my family. What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go?”

So far, Proposition 187 has had little effect on Martinez, or anyone he knows.

In fact, on street corners and at hiring sites throughout Ventura County, the initiative has apparently done little to curb the use of illegal immigrant labor.

But fears stirred up by the measure run much deeper than that. The proposition seeks to cut education, health care and other public benefits to illegal immigrants.

And while the courts have temporarily frozen implementation of those provisions, officials report a sharp decline in the number of illegal immigrants visiting public health clinics. At the same time, many of the undocumented are talking about keeping their children out of school.

It comes as no surprise to immigrant-rights advocates that there has been a decline in the use of public services, while the measure has had little impact on the work force.

They never believed that the proposition was aimed at ridding the state of its valuable supply of cheap, immigrant labor.

“Basically, the message of Proposition 187 as I see it is to leave the exploitable laborers here, but send their women and children back home,” said Claudia Smith, regional counsel for California Rural Legal Assistance.

“Certainly it has the potential of making life a lot more miserable for undocumented families,” Smith added. “But whether it’s going to make it miserable enough to make some of them go home, or make some of them stop coming, is still an open question.”

For many illegal immigrants, there is also the open question on how the measure will be enforced, and when enforcement will start.

*

Many are bracing for the fallout from a flurry of lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the measure. Until then, many say their lives are now choked by fear and clouded by confusion.

“We really don’t know what this law means,” said Juan Guzman, an illegal immigrant competing last week with dozens of other farm workers at an Oxnard park for a minimum-wage job cutting vegetables.

“I don’t know what it means for my family,” he said. “I don’t know if one day a police officer or someone else will choose to turn us in to the Border Patrol. I guess we’ll just take our chances.”

While much of the controversy over the measure has focused on the severing of social services, little has been made about how it will affect those industries that heavily rely on illegal immigrants.

But to the extent that the measure sought to drive illegal immigrants out of the work force, opening up jobs for U.S. citizens and legal residents, that is yet to happen.

Nearly two weeks after the measure won overwhelming voter approval, illegal immigrants say they continue to find steady employment in the county’s food-rich agricultural industry and in other jobs such as landscaping and construction.

“Who is going to do this work, if not us?” asked Oxnard farm worker Tomas Garza, as he fended off an early morning chill while joining a pool of job-seekers last week. “If we were all to leave, this industry would collapse. They need us as much as we need work.”

One reason that the initiative has had little impact on the labor force is that it is virtually impossible to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants, farm labor representatives say.

Most illegal immigrants use phony documents to land work in the fields, they say. Under federal law, all workers must prove citizenship or legal residency in the United States.

*

Robert P. Roy, general counsel for the Ventura County Agriculture Assn., said growers have long had to obey federal laws that require verification of legal status.

“I don’t think that anyone is really suffering any anxiety over it, at least not from the employers’ sector,” Roy said. “I haven’t had one phone call from an employer asking what the impact of Proposition 187 is going to be on his operation.”

And by all accounts, the initiative has not spurred an exodus of illegal immigrants back to their own countries.

“It’s business as usual,” said Mike Malloy, agent in charge of the Border Patrol office in Ventura County. “We are understaffed, overworked and still have a hell of a problem. We can go anywhere we want, catch anyone we want in any business we want.”

Beyond the question of illegal immigration, the proposition also affects legal immigrants whose spouses, children and other family members are here illegally.

In fact, many, if not most, of those facing deportation today are relatives of U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants, stuck on waiting lists to become legal residents.

“The majority of people here have papers, but their families may not,” said Rafael Rodriguez, a day laborer in Moorpark. “What’s going to happen to our wives and children? Those are the things we are really worried about with this law.”

Karl Lawson, an immigrant-rights activist in Oxnard, said the Immigration and Naturalization Service legalized more than 16,000 adults in Ventura County under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Nearly all have U.S.-born children, Lawson said. And about half have spouses who now have applications pending for legal residency, but who are caught in the achingly slow INS bureaucracy.

It could take three to 15 years for applicants to be granted legal status, Lawson said. In the meantime, under Proposition 187, they are still illegal immigrants and subject to deportation.

*

“The simplicity of 187 divides the world into legal and illegal,” Lawson said. “But the predominant immigrant family in California is what we call a mixed one, some legal and some not. Proposition 187 ignores the reality of the mixed family and the fact that U.S. citizens will suffer division of families and tremendous harm if it is upheld.”

On the street corner in Moorpark, the reality is that few immigrants are thinking of packing up and heading home.

“Yes, illegal immigration is a problem,” said day laborer Ramon Rodriguez. “But this is not the way to solve it, this is not a solution.

“The fact is that illegal immigration isn’t going to stop because of this law. Nothing can stop people who need to find work.”