Border Politics: Checkmate? : Immigration: Clinton is gambling that the crackdown will steal the GOP’s thunder.

Presidential politics is behind the Clinton administration’s much-publicized decision to have the U.S. military and local police help the Border Patrol enforce a crackdown on illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico.

Conventional wisdom has it that the electorate is in an anti-immigrant mood, especially in vote-rich California, where the current immigration hysteria took off two years ago with the vote in favor of Proposition 187. But if someone in the White House had bothered to take a closer look at what is going on among immigrants in Southern California, they’d realize that the conventional wisdom isn’t the whole story. Border control is important, but the administration seems to have overlooked the potential political payoff of putting more time and effort into helping the thousands of legal immigrants who are eagerly waiting to become citizens.

In fairness, while it is blatantly expedient, the decision to focus on the Mexican border is defensible. The Border Patrol and its parent agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, always record a surge in illegal crossings along the southern border after the holidays as Mexicans and Central Americans who work in the U.S. return from visits home.

This year, INS officials anticipate an even heavier northbound flow because the continuing economic crisis in Mexico has created more unemployment there than usual. To try to stem that flow--and to generate favorable press coverage by looking tough on illegal immigrants--Justice Department officials last week announced an enhanced strategy. It starts with a 90-day redeployment of 200 additional Border Patrol agents from elsewhere in the country to border crossings in California and Arizona. They will be assisted by 350 soldiers and 135 police officers in support, not enforcement, roles such as air surveillance and transportation.

None of this is utterly new. Local police, the National Guard and even regular troops have helped INS for years, usually in small, ad hoc operations that got little public attention. The difference this time is that the White House wants all the publicity it can get out of this border crackdown in the weeks leading up to the California primary election in March and in the months leading up to the Republican convention in San Diego in August.

Given the hot-button nature of the immigration issue in Southern California, and especially in San Diego, one can anticipate plenty of rhetoric about it at the GOP gathering. But the nasty enthusiasm with which candidates like Pat Buchanan do their immigrant bashing could also create a political opportunity for Clinton.

One of the positive side effects of Proposition 187 has been a record increase in the number of legal immigrants applying for citizenship, from roughly 300,000 in a normal year to almost 1 million in 1995. But this surge also has created a record backlog, for, even while the INS has seen a 225% increase in citizenship applications since 1990, its budget for naturalization has decreased by 35%.

The effects of these distorted spending priorities are most visible in Los Angeles, where the INS district office has a backlog of more than 200,000 citizenship applicants. Last June, for example, when several church-based community groups here launched the Active Citizenship Campaign, the INS was able to process the first 400 applications in three months, according to Father Juan Vega, who heads the campaign. By year’s end, ACC had submitted 4,000 citizenship petitions. Now applicants are being told it could take as long as nine months for them to become citizens.

“So anyone who submitted an application in December must wait until August for an INS interview,” says Vega. “The earliest they can take the oath of citizenship is September, just enough time to register to vote in October, a month before the November election.

“We had hoped to have 18,000 new citizens registered to vote by election day, “ Vega adds. “Now it looks like the first 4,000 may be all we get.”

Not all of these eager new citizens would vote for Clinton, but it is hard to imagine all of them voting Republican. By so readily buying into the conventional wisdom on immigration, the administration may be blowing a great chance to create a whole lot of pro-Clinton voters.