Congressman’s Proposal Mirrors Prop. 187

In another attempt to dam the flow of federal benefits to illegal immigrants, a California congressman will move this week to cut off all but emergency medical assistance to undocumented residents with a strategy that mirrors California’s Proposition 187.

The amendment by Rep. Frank Riggs (R-Windsor) seeks to cut off all federal money to illegal immigrants for Medicare, Social Security, college assistance, community health centers and scores of other federal programs.

While neither as far-reaching nor as restrictive as some of the immigration reform legislation moving through Congress, the Riggs amendment may be on a faster track. The congressman hopes to pin it Thursday to next year’s spending bill for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, a measure less controversial and more expedient than the welfare and immigration reform packages working their way through the House and Senate.

“This is what the people of California asked for when they overwhelmingly approved Proposition 187,” said Riggs, whose Northern California district stretches from the Napa Valley 300 miles north to the Oregon border. “It defies common sense to increase taxes on the wages of the law-abiding in order to fund benefits for the lawbreaking.”

For immigration rights activists, the Riggs amendment is the latest of several fires to try to extinguish as Congress sets out to stem the tide of illegal immigrants and cut off federal assistance to those already here.

Three other major bills moving through the House and Senate would deny public assistance not only to undocumented residents but to legal immigrants as well, and in some cases, to U.S. citizens. If passed, it would be the first time in U.S. history that government benefits were denied to naturalized citizens because they were not born in this country.

But those bills are bound to be the subject of considerable debate as they wend through the legislative process, while the Riggs language is a simple one-paragraph amendment to a crucial $61-billion 1996 spending bill.

“There are so many bills that go so far beyond this amendment,” said Charles Wheeler, director of the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles. “But it could be more onerous and more expedient” because it is attached to a major spending bill.

The same strategy was tried last year with hundreds of riders pinned to appropriations bills that attempted to eliminate federal aid for illegal immigrants. Most failed, with the exception of one denying federal assistance to undocumented residents who were the victims of the Northridge quake.

The Riggs amendment is the first of its kind this year, and with Republicans now in control of Congress, it is much more likely to have the votes to pass.

Furthermore, appropriations bills are less vulnerable to presidential veto than more narrow bills like welfare reform, because they include billions of dollars in funds for vital federal agencies.

“It would be pretty hard to beat this,” Angela Kelley, director of Policy for the National Immigration Forum in Washington, said of the flurry of immigration reform legislation. “The advocates are stretched pretty thin. The climate is negative and heightened to a level I haven’t seen before.”

Some sort of immigration reform seems destined to pass this year, activists said, and Riggs’ amendment could end up as repetitive prose if a broader reform bill is signed into law.

But its pace is quick--Riggs intends to offer it to the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday and the bill could be considered by the full House as early as July 26.

Activists say the immigration reform crusade in Washington was fueled by Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigration initiative that California voters approved in November. Enforcement of much of the measure is on hold while a federal court determines its constitutionality. A full-scale trial on the legality of the initiative is set for September.