CENTRAL AMERICA : Leaders Worry: After Prop. 187, the Deluge : Latin presidents fear a massive return of citizens. They hope to lobby Clinton at upcoming Miami summit.

Central American presidents will carry the divisive issue of immigration to next month’s Summit of the Americas in Miami, where they plan to tell President Clinton that only improved economies can stanch the northward flow of illegal immigrants.

Expressing outrage at California’s Proposition 187 and other symptoms of what they see as an anti-immigrant backlash, the region’s leaders have begun a full-scale lobbying effort to prevent a feared massive return of citizens to cash-strapped and politically troubled home countries.

“There is a kind of new racism (in the United States) that is very dangerous,” Salvadoran President Armando Calderon Sol said. “We are extremely worried about our compatriots . . . (and) we must study why the U.S. people are turning to rejection of minorities.”

“Denying health and education to children is really deplorable,” Honduran President Carlos Roberto Reina said, echoing others who have said the California measure, approved overwhelmingly by voters, violates basic human rights.

Many of Central America’s economies rely heavily on the money that its citizens living in the United States send home. An end to those remittances, because Central Americans are either being deported or forced further underground, would spell disaster for the region, officials here argue.

The case of El Salvador--the source country of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants in Southern California--is especially acute. Salvadorans in the United States were granted temporary protected status in 1990 because of the civil war that raged between leftist guerrillas and a U.S.-backed government in their country.

That special status allowed many Salvadorans to live and work in the United States legally. It expires at the end of the year, and with the war officially over since 1992, an extension seems unlikely. The prospect has sent Salvadoran officials into panic.

Calderon Sol made a personal appeal to Vice President Al Gore during an ecological meeting in Managua, Nicaragua, last month, and Salvadorans on both the left and right are lobbying to have the status extended, saying that the stability of the country is at stake.

The remittances from Salvadorans in the United States exceed $800 million a year, more than all export income combined, according to the Central Bank here.

Tens of thousands of Guatemalans and Nicaraguans also send home money that is crucial to those nations’ economies. Neither group has the same protected status as the Salvadorans, but through asylum and other programs, many have been able to establish legal, if temporary, stays. They too would be hurt under measures aimed at clamping down on immigrants, officials in Central America maintain.

“Our fear is the 187 phenomenon is going to spread,” said Managua Mayor Arnoldo Aleman. “It is not going to stop in California.”

The Central American presidents hope to use the upcoming summit to make a case for stopping illegal immigration by bolstering economic and commercial ties between their countries and the United States. They want increased access to U.S. markets and a shot at attracting more foreign investment as a way to make their economies stable enough to support an eventual return of exiles.

“We see this as being of mutual benefit, a two-way road,” Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Ernesto Leal said.

Calderon Sol agreed: “The United States is going to have immigrants--with laws like 187 and without them, with extended stays and without them--because that is the reality. The people of Central America will go to the United States, or they will go elsewhere, in search of better living conditions if they don’t find them in their countries.”

Clinton and 33 of the hemisphere’s heads of state begin the three-day summit in Miami on Dec. 9, the first such meeting in 27 years.

Given Clinton’s newly weakened position, however, it remains unclear whether the plea of the Central Americans will have much impact. U.S. officials in Central America seem to be preparing for the inevitable, seeking to emphasize the potential benefits of returning, highly skilled, U.S.-trained exiles.

An Unwelcome Proposition

Although they concede that conditions in their countries have contributed to the flight of their peoples, leaders of Central American nations still say they are furious about U.S. immigration initiatives such Proposition 187. They plan to make ther strong feelings known during President Clinton’s summit in Miami.

“The United States is going to have immigrants--with laws like 187 and without them, with extended stays and without them--because that is the reality.”

Armando Calderon Sol, President of El Salvador

“Denying health and education to children is really deplorable.”

Carlos Roberto Reina, President of Honduras

Central Americans in Southern California

Salvadorans: 272,301

Guatemalans: 139,372

Nicaraguans: 38,439

Hondurans: 25,593

Estimates by social service agencies working with immigrants put the figures for Salvadorans and Guatemalans--communities with large illegal components, at up to 50% higher.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau