Immigration Plan Draws Strong Reactions : Congress: The proposal mirroring Prop. 187 is hailed locally as a necessary crackdown and assailed as being wrongheaded and heartless.

Alan Guggenheim emigrated from France in 1981, and now the Thousand Oaks businessman and Republican activist is disdainful of fellow immigrants who don’t follow the rules. “When you break the law, you should lose all your rights.”

The issue is not so clear for a 60-year-old undocumented farm worker wearing a white cowboy hat in the sunshine of an Oxnard park. “You have to go where you have a chance at life, and there is work here. We have to put food on the table for our kids.”

A national proposal to stamp out illegal immigration drew passion from both sides Thursday in Ventura County, with supporters praising what they called a much-needed crackdown on criminals and foes decrying the effort as wrongheaded and heartless.

The plan, which was unveiled in Washington on Thursday, bears a strong resemblance to Proposition 187, the California measure that swept to victory last November.

If that election is any indication, backers far outnumber opponents of the national plan to track down illegal immigrants in hospitals and classrooms. In November, Proposition 187 won 65% of the vote countywide, a margin six points higher than the initiative gained throughout the state.

“The core of the problem is that it is too easy for people to come here illegally, and when we catch them they are barely punished,” said Guggenheim, an international business consultant and member of the county and state Republican central committees.

But Dr. Chris Landon, director of pediatrics at Ventura County Medical Center, said denying illegal immigrants all but emergency health care would jeopardize the health of those around them.

“Syphilis, gonorrhea, diphtheria, measles--yes, let’s just deny these people care until they get really, really sick,” Landon said sarcastically. “Won’t that be good for everyone? I can see the frustration that has led to these measures, but when you get right down to it, it’s a wrongheaded plan.”

Mary Beth Wolford, superintendent of schools in Simi Valley, said requiring teachers to report students who are illegal immigrants would interfere with the goals educators work toward every day.

“Our mission is to provide an education for every child in the school district,” she said. “It does not seem compassionate to make the child suffer for the actions of the parents.”

Guggenheim disagreed. “Every day, children suffer because of their parents,” he said. “Parents fight, children suffer. Parents commit crimes, children suffer. That’s life. Just because children will suffer doesn’t mean we should do nothing about the crimes of their parents.”

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Steve Frank, who led the Ventura County campaign in support of Proposition 187, said children of illegal immigrants would be better off if they returned to their countries of origin.

“The kids still have the right to go to school--in their home country,” said Frank, a candidate for the 38th Assembly District seat. “If they need medical care they can get all the care they want--in their home country.”

Local immigrant rights advocates said the plan to replicate Proposition 187 on a national scale comes as no surprise.

“I was expecting something like this, because xenophobia across the nation is very strong,” said Armando Garcia, president of the Immigrant Rights Commission. “Politicians like to blame immigrants, who come to this country to work, for all the economic problems.”

Though Proposition 187 is snarled in the courts, Garcia said it has already had a nasty effect on race relations in the county. According to Garcia, a day after the proposition passed, a patron at a Santa Paula restaurant walked into the kitchen and demanded to see the Latino cook’s green card.

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Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, advocates a national, tamper-proof identification card. He said tough sanctions are already in place for growers and other employers who hire illegal immigrants. But he said strict enforcement would initially hurt industries where illegal immigrants tend to work.

“If they were able to develop a very effective system that would ferret out illegal immigrants, there would be a terrible impact on industry,” Laird said. “The cost of vegetables would skyrocket--such as the iceberg lettuce during the floods--and there would be equivalent disruption in the hotel and garment industry.”

Laird said it is unfair that some immigrants must wait years to enter the United States legally while illegal immigrants can sneak across the border and find work quickly.

On Thursday afternoon, a group of immigrants--both documented and undocumented--gathered in the shade of an awning in an Oxnard park. When asked to comment on the national plan, they defended their decision to come to the United States.

Leo Ribera, 42, a farm worker and a U.S. citizen, called the national plan “drastic.”

“Any law that would let children die before going to a hospital or pull them out of school is a bad law,” he said. “To make it national means that many more kids will be out of school. What do we do about them?”