Is This What Prop. 187 Sought? More Latino Citizens?

What a profound political irony that a ballot initiative intended, in all honesty, to send immigrant Latinos back home would prompt them to put down roots here.

Proponents of Proposition 187 vehemently denied any intention to bash immigrants. Rather, they insisted their beef was only with illegal immigrants who “break the rules” and whose lawlessness should not be rewarded with public services.

Such civic high-mindedness became embarrassingly transparent a few weeks later, when many Proposition 187 supporters expressed approval for a provision in the GOP’s “contract with America” that would deny a variety of federal social services to legal immigrants, a group that, at an estimated 10 million, dwarfs their illegal counterparts. This time, it was argued, the problem was one of immigrants avoiding--when not spurning--the American tradition of seeking citizenship.

Now, through a revolutionary course of events, that problem appears to be solving itself. And it is doing so in a manner that is likely to make those who supported Proposition 187 out of a growing anxiety over a swelling population of Latinos more anxious than ever, while taking much of the bite out of the initiative.

According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, there has been an “unprecedented surge” in the number of applications by legal immigrants to become U.S. citizens. Across the country, between last October and January of this year, citizenship applications numbered nearly a quarter million, an increase of 80% from last year. In January alone, 65,959 applications for citizenship were filed with the INS, representing both the highest monthly total on record and more than double the number of applications filed during the same period last year. In Los Angeles County, meanwhile, as many as 2,500 people a day are applying for citizenship, up 500% from last year. And the overwhelming majority seeking citizenship is Latino.

This surge in citizenship applications is a surprise even to immigrant-rights activists who have, over the years, been mostly unsuccessful at persuading legal Latino immigrants to become U.S. citizens. Juan Jose Gutierrez, executive director of One-Stop Immigration, says his organization is experiencing an “‘avalanche” of applications.

Who are these people? Why are they suddenly so desperate to become citizens? The typical legal immigrant seeking citizenship, says Gutierrez, falls into one of three groups, each of them with different reasons for undertaking the effort.

* Immigrants from 50 to 85 years old . Some came before the Mexican Revolution, crossing what was then only an imaginary southern border, about the same time that my grandfather drifted into this country as a young boy from Chihuahua. Their sudden interest in citizenship largely stems from their growing fear of losing federal benefits that make life in old age easier to live.

Those who believe that immigrants are addicted to public services, hearing this, will claim vindication. Nonsense. After all, such an addiction would not account for the veteranos’ additional, and irrational, fear of losing less tangible privileges, like being licensed to drive a car, collect unemployment insurance or send their children to a private university.

* Immigrants in their late teens and early 20s who came to the United States as children. Young, able-bodied and largely unconcerned about the possibility of losing benefits, they are also not plagued with moral dilemmas about abandoning their home country. An MTV generation who hears their grandmothers’ questions in Spanish but answers in English, these young people move comfortably in the American mainstream. Never intending to return to their parents’ homeland of Guatemala or El Salvador or Mexico, their decision to become citizens only formalizes a personal decision made long ago.

* Recent arrivals as young as the MTV’ers but more identifiably Latino. This group most likely will have the greatest impact on the immediate political future of the United States, and especially on cities, like Los Angeles, with high concentrations of Latino immigrants. Seeking to control their own destiny and block political manuevers like Proposition 187 from happening again, these immigrants are less concerned with securing the benefits that accompany citizenship than the rights that do. Particularly, the right to vote .

Given the role that citizenship played in the pro-187 rhetoric--the call for identification cards that had a familiar but distasteful “America for Americans” ring to it--it’s hard to imagine that all this is what proponents of the initiative had in mind. Surely, the reality of hundreds of thousands of Latino immigrants staking their claims to the American Dream cannot be encouraging news for those who were counting on what Gov. Pete Wilson promised would be the “self-deportation” of immigrants, both legal and illegal, that was sure to occur once the magnetic welcome mat of social services was removed.

But Proposition 187 was never just about due process or illegality or even the undeniable cost of social services for illegal immigrants. It was also about too many Latinos being too visible on too many streets in too many California cities. It was also about fear and shifting demographics and Los Angeles resembling Tijuana. It was also about which undesirable element was going to public school with your children or sitting in hospital waiting rooms. And it was also about immigrants as eyesores.

If this trend of immigrants seeking citizenship continues, none of that is likely to change--only become more common. That may well disappoint those who supported Proposition 187. It should also encourage those who see California’s ethnic diversity, not as a liability of the past, but as an asset for the future.