Proposition 187: One Is More Than Enough : Unfortunately, Wilson says he will seek a federal version

One of the election’s biggest winners--Gov. Pete Wilson--now sees an opportunity to push Congress toward a federal version of California’s controversial Proposition 187, which would deny all benefits except emergency medical care to illegal immigrants. For several reasons, we hope that no one takes the advice.

Meanwhile, a fellow who stands to be one of the election’s biggest losers (although he still refuses to admit defeat) is also still greatly concerned about illegal immigrants. Republican Rep. Mike Huffington says he won’t concede the Senate race to incumbent Dianne Feinstein until an investigation has determined “that Mrs. Feinstein has received a majority of legal votes.”

Huffington also said, “I have become very concerned about whether massive voting irregularities (by non-citizens) played a critical part in affecting this election outcome” and that he has received “substantial, credible evidence” of “large numbers of non-citizens voting as a result of a mobilization effort against Proposition 187.”

By this, we suppose he is referring to the army of illegal voters who turned out to send Proposition 187 and its supporters, such as fellow Republicans Gov. Wilson and Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, down to resounding Election Day defeats. Yes, this is heavy sarcasm.

WHERE’S THE PROOF?: We haven’t a clue as to what Huffington and others who see vote fraud are referring to, since Proposition 187 won 59% to 41%, Wilson won reelection 55% to 41% and Lungren won 54% to 39%. At last count, Huffington was losing by about 152,000 votes with only 180,000 left to consider. His statement about massive vote fraud now threatens to lower California politics to new depths on the sour-grapes scale. Last week, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge rejected a legal challenge by Republicans who alleged that illegal immigrants and children had cast absentee ballots.

Wilson’s post-election buoyancy is understandable, but his push to elevate Proposition 187 to the national stage is unfortunate. The governor even says he would work with states interested in passing laws similar to Proposition 187, in addition to his lobbying of Congress.

Such an effort on Capitol Hill would be wholly premature, and a waste of precious time. First, most of 187’s provisions have been temporarily blocked by a federal judge pending further review by the courts on constitutional and other legal grounds. Also, illegal immigrants are already ineligible for welfare and food stamps. Congress has required states to provide emergency medical care to illegal immigrants, but Proposition 187 leaves this undisturbed.

A ‘MINOR’ BARRIER: And any effort to remove illegal immigrants from schools nationwide faces the same hurdle that Proposition 187 has not cleared: the 1982 Supreme Court ruling requiring states to educate illegal aliens. There is also the question of whether it violates the federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), likely to be the next chairman of the House judiciary subcommittee on immigration, says that “most of us are more interested in passing a bill than in posturing, and that means producing a bill that has bipartisan support in Congress.” Any provision cutting off educational benefits for children, Smith said, “would make it difficult” to attract such broad support.

Former GOP Cabinet secretaries Jack Kemp and William J. Bennett on Monday continued to downplay Proposition 187, saying it was not a formula for solving illegal immigration. Bennett said Wilson’s posture on 187 is “scapegoating” and called the measure only “superficially attractive.”

It’s at least clear that it would be rash to duplicate Proposition 187 at a time when its legal standing is so very much in doubt.