Illegal Immigration Key ’96 Issue, GOP Chief Says

Republican Party Chairman Haley Barbour, declaring that illegal immigration looms as a major issue in the 1996 elections, said Tuesday that he endorses a government crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Barbour, a key figure in the election strategy that won GOP control of Congress, said that California’s adoption of Proposition 187 last year demonstrated that the public fully supports strict enforcement of immigration laws, including one prohibiting the hiring of illegal immigrants and imposing fines against employers who violate the law.

That law has been enforced only sporadically and Congress last year sharply reduced the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s funds for enforcing it. But INS Commissioner Doris Meissner, in an interview Monday, vowed that the Clinton Administration will follow a tougher new enforcement plan to curb the flow of illegal immigrants.

As part of the plan, the Administration is moving toward adoption of a controversial national computer identification system that would enable employers to check on whether job applicants have proper work documents.

Some immigration and civil rights groups strongly oppose a national identity system on grounds that it would increase discrimination and violate privacy rights. Meissner called such concerns legitimate but said they could be minimized by not concentrating all information in a single databank.

Barbour, interviewed at a Times Washington Bureau breakfast, said that--while such concerns are well founded--”there is no doubt that the principal element of Proposition 187 is when people break the law . . . the government ought to sanction them. That includes employers.”

California Gov. Pete Wilson and several other Republicans have suggested that a federal version of Proposition 187 should be adopted to restrict government services to illegal immigrants in the country. But Barbour argued that it would not be a proper federal remedy.

The federal government’s solution, he suggested, should be to enforce existing immigration laws and protect the border. To the extent the government is unable do that, he said, it should reimburse state governments for their costs in dealing with the problems of illegal immigrants.