Despite Legal Snags, Prop. 187 Reverberates

A year ago today, California voters declared emphatically that it was time to do something about illegal immigration and what many consider its price tag: rising crime, overcrowded classrooms, skyrocketing health and social service costs and a sense that once-familiar communities were under “invasion.”

After a bitter campaign, Proposition 187--the so-called “Save Our State” ballot initiative--passed by a commanding margin, helping to propel its most high-profile supporter, Gov. Pete Wilson, to reelection.

Twelve months later, the measure remains mired in court battles that could drag on for years. And Wilson’s presidential campaign, based in large part on his tough stance against illegal immigration, collapsed not long after its highly symbolic kickoff near New York’s Statue of Liberty.

Yet despite such seeming setbacks, experts on both sides of the issue agree that Proposition 187 has had far-reaching national reverberations: The polarized, often racially tinged California debate identified a wedge issue that politicians and others have been quick to seize upon. Indeed, the initiative seems to have decisively achieved one of supporters oft-repeated goals--to “send a message” to the nation’s policy-makers.

“We established that something had to be done and it’s now moving across the country,” said Robert R. Kiley, an Orange County political consultant who helped launch the initiative. “When this started, we couldn’t get anyone to return a phone call from us.”

Proposition 187-type initiative drives have sprouted in other states, notably Florida and Arizona, and related movements have even gained momentum in Oregon and ostensibly liberal Massachusetts. The grass-roots groups that helped propel the measure to victory report continuing growth in membership.

In Washington, a Republican-dominated Congress has embraced immigration “reform,” pressing ahead with what critics label extreme measures to slash legal and illegal immigration levels. Many planned congressional restrictions on federal benefits actually go further than Proposition 187, barring legal immigrants--and even new U.S. citizens--from receiving government payouts. Proposition 187 never ventured so far. The measure sought to deny education, health care and other publicly funded services to illegal immigrants but not legal ones.

The Clinton Administration, eager to build support in California in this pre-election year, has unveiled a steady stream of operations designed to bolster enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border and otherwise reduce illegal immigration.

Although some of the national efforts would have undoubtedly emerged without Proposition 187, there is little question that the rancorous debate and almost 60% voter approval in California lent impetus.

“Proposition 187 has clearly galvanized the immigration debate nationally,” said Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner, who, reflecting the position of President Clinton, spoke out publicly against the ballot measure during one of her frequent California stopovers.

In the meantime, Ron Prince, a Proposition 187 architect, is pushing “Save Our Sovereignty,” a follow-up California advisory ballot measure for 1996. The measure backs a proposed constitutional amendment that would, in its most controversial provision, make the U.S.-born offspring of illegal immigrant mothers ineligible for automatic citizenship.

Although lacking the force of law, “SOS II” calls on the California Legislature to ratify the proposed constitutional change. To become law, the amendment--denounced as un-American by its detractors--would have to garner a two-thirds majority in Congress and be ratified by three-quarters of all the states. Supporters express particular rage that liberal legal-assistance groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have helped bottle up Proposition 187 in court.

“We will be the ACLU of the 21st Century,” Prince, who chaired the Proposition 187 effort and is spearheading the SOS II campaign, told a group gathered recently in the San Fernando Valley. “We will be suing them back to get rights back for the majority,” Prince said, evoking broad applause.

Illustrating how the rhetoric has, if anything, intensified in the past year, Prince cited the independence movement in the Canadian province of Quebec and raised the specter of “Chicano Mexicano” activists launching a plebiscite to return California to Mexico. Critics call the scenario absurd--there is no organized movement with such a goal--but the suggestion clearly sent a chill through a recent meeting of Voice of Citizens Together, a Valley-based group that backed Proposition 187 and has drawn a wide public following.

“As we see our community being given away, what real recourse do we have?” asked Prince, who last year publicly adopted a lynch mob metaphor, comparing supporters to a “posse” and Proposition 187 to the “rope.”

One of his current goals, Prince conceded, was to keep the immigration issue in the spotlight for the 1996 presidential elections, forcing Clinton and others to take a position on the proposed constitutional amendment, which currently stands little chance of passage.

Some Proposition 187 backers have already taken to mall parking lots and suburban street corners to enlist support for next year’s anticipated hot-button issue: the so-called California civil rights initiative, which would outlaw affirmative action in state agencies. Some critics have dubbed the measure, which has yet to qualify for the ballot, “Son of 187.” At meetings of pro-Proposition 187 groups, anti-affirmative action posters vie for attention with those excoriating illegal immigration.

“After Proposition 187 we have a window of time to get as much pushed through as possible to change what is wrong with this country,” said Kiley, the Proposition 187 political consultant who also backs the civil rights initiative. “We’ve set the stage for another people’s movement.”

Immigrant advocates, clearly on the defensive despite their courtroom success, call the inflamed talk more of the classic scapegoating that, they say, underlined the Proposition 187 campaign. In their view, an electorate battered by the state’s continued economic doldrums and ill at ease with its rapid demographic shifts has lashed out at a convenient target: immigrants, particularly Latinos, by far the largest group in Southern California, where Proposition 187 was incubated.

“They’re trying to blame Latinos for all the social and economic problems that this state and this country are facing,” said Marta Samano of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is participating in the courtroom fight against the measure’s implementation.

Largely overlooked in the controversy, Samano and other advocates say, are the many contributions that immigrants make in paying taxes, invigorating the economy and providing the low-wage work force that has kept Southern California competitive in a global marketplace.

Last year’s elections were a dramatic illustration of the wide disparity between California’s increasingly diverse population--with its huge numbers of non-citizens from Latin America and Asia--and the state’s mostly white voter rolls. Yet closing that electoral gap will take a long time, stretching into the next century, activists concede, despite accelerating voter registration efforts and surging citizenship applications. The unprecedented rise in citizenship applications is traceable in part to heightened fear of second-class treatment for all non-citizens, regardless of legal status, experts say.

The rush of applications has even prompted the government of Mexico to consider constitutional reforms allowing Mexican citizens to hold dual nationality--thus permitting millions of Mexican expatriates to become U.S. citizens without losing their rights under Mexican law. The move is a vivid illustration of how Proposition 187 has resonated deeply in Mexico and in Central America, where remittances from immigrants abroad provide billions annually in much-needed foreign currency.

But with economic prospects south of the border gloomier by the day, there has been no sign of illegal immigrants returning en masse to their beleaguered homelands--the “self-deportations” envisioned by Gov. Wilson and other Proposition 187 supporters.

Agustin Lopez, one of a number of day laborers seeking work along Sunset Boulevard early Tuesday, told a familiar story: Economic necessity drove him north, despite concerns about what he called increased racism in post-Proposition 187 California.

“There’s no work that pays in Mexico now,” said Lopez, a father of two and onetime accountant who said he lost his job when the government sold off the public bank where he worked--a fate shared by thousands of Mexicans toiling in now-privatized firms. Lopez crossed the border from Tijuana last week after an arduous nine-hour hike, he said, along with a group of six others.

Among those now eager to take the U.S. citizenship oath is Esther Orozco, 47, a native of Guatemala who said she is eager to cast her ballot against politicians who support Proposition 187-type measures. “This country is my country now, and I want to have a say,” said Orozco, a 21-year U.S. resident, who runs a Maywood bakery with her husband.

Orozco is one of a number of immigrants, all Latinos, who have complained to a Los Angeles rights group that they have been victims of discrimination in the wake of Proposition 187. In her case, Orozco said that she, her husband and a friend--the only Latino patrons at a Reseda restaurant that she had patronized before--were asked by the manager to show money or a credit card before being allowed to order.

“I felt humiliated,” Orozco said the other day.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, which catalogued the complaints, ranging from verbal insults to physical attacks, plans to issue a report today on the alleged upswing in discrimination.

Proposition 187 supporters scoff at allegations of racism and say discrimination has no place in their movement. “This is not about racism at all,” said John E. Lowe, a retired aerospace worker who was interviewed after a recent meeting of Citizens for Action Now, an Orange County-based group that was a key initiative backer.

Lowe lamented how his hometown neighborhood in New York’s Upper Manhattan was now largely inhabited by immigrants from the Caribbean. “Most of New York now is like the Third World,” he said.

He and other Proposition 187 supporters express open frustration with increasing bilingualism and what they consider uncomfortable changes in the region’s population makeup. Louisa Arnold noted approvingly how, during a recent trip to New England, she found the work force to be overwhelmingly U.S.-born.

“We saw blue-eyed, blond-haired boys busing tables, washing cars, working in hotels,” said Arnold, a Costa Mesa writer who also spoke following the Orange County meeting. “We weren’t helped by a bunch of Mexican maids who don’t even speak English.”