Immigration Debate About to Resurface

The emotional debate that swept across California during the Proposition 187 campaign two years ago is about to erupt again, this time in a conference room on Capitol Hill.

The House and Senate have both approved wide-ranging immigration reform measures, and the rival legislative packages must now be reconciled behind the closed doors of a House-Senate conference. Among the key differences in the two measures: a House provision, plucked from California’s ballot measure, that would permit states to ban public education for illegal-immigrant children.

Although the conferees who will hash out the issue have not yet met, their leaders have staked out positions. Both House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and soon-to-leave Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) have endorsed the measure, although to differing degrees.

Gingrich has said he definitely wants the public-schooling ban to be part of the immigration legislation that goes to President Clinton. Dole, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, has been more circumspect. He did not press for inclusion of the ban during debate and the Senate omitted the provision. Now that Dole has decided to resign from the Senate to run for president full time, it is not known how hard his appointed successor, Kansas Lt. Gov. Sheila Frahm, will push for the controversial measure.

The White House has called the public-schooling proposal “nutty.” Both Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and Education Secretary Richard W. Riley have recommended a presidential veto if conferees include it.

“We’re trying to keep it out of the final bill, and I will do everything I can to keep it out,” Clinton said recently, stopping short of an outright veto threat.

The president said that if Republicans include the provision for partisan reasons, it would not be the first time.

“They are adopting a strategy to say that, ‘We’re going to use the lawmaking process of the United States to force the president to veto a bill where the main subject of the bill he’s really for, because we’d rather have the veto,’ ” Clinton said. “And I think that’s wrong.”

Including the schooling ban in the final bill could put Dole and Clinton on opposite sides of a key issue, much as Proposition 187 divided Republican Pete Wilson and Democrat Kathleen Brown in the 1994 California gubernatorial race. During that campaign, Californians backed as tough a crackdown on illegal immigration as they could get, a sentiment Wilson successfully tapped to defeat Brown.

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), who introduced the public-schooling ban and is a member of the House-Senate conference, predicted that Clinton will suffer in California if he vetoes the immigration bill.

“I cannot believe that he would be that stupid--or should we say politically naive?” Gallegly said. “He may talk a lot about it and play a poker-face game, but I don’t think it’s a wise thing politically, especially in California, to veto this immigration bill.”

The president’s political advisors, of course, understand the power of the immigration issue in California. They have been vigorously touting the administration’s successes along the border, and portraying the House and Senate bills as mere continuations of Clinton immigration initiatives.

The Clinton campaign is confident California voters will agree with the president’s assessment of the GOP’s political motives.

The public-schooling ban passed in the House, 257 to 163, largely along party lines. Still, some of those who supported it have expressed mixed emotions about the measure’s practical effects.

“My mind gives me one answer, and my heart gives me another,” said Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale), dean of California’s congressional Republicans. “You don’t want to be mean to anybody, but you have to protect the people in our country legally. . . . The concept is, if the kids can’t go to school, the parents will go home. I don’t know if they will or not.”

Even Gallegly acknowledged that the measure will not work unless coupled with other aspects of the legislation, including more immigration officers and speedier deportations of those found to be in the country illegally.

Gallegly argued that the provision must be viewed as a new way of thinking about immigration control. In the past, he said, once illegal immigrants arrived in the country, the federal government effectively excused their illegal entry, allowing a feeling to develop that they were entitled to public benefits.

“We’re not penalizing children,” Gallegly said. “We’re merely not rewarding them.”

The provision would require public school students to provide a declaration affirming that they are in the country legally. Noncitizens would be required to show documentation, and states could check the validity of the information with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The measure would not apply to children born in the United States to illegal-immigrant parents because they become citizens here at birth.

Supporters have framed the measure as a states-rights issue, saying California and other areas affected by immigration should not be required to pay for the federal government’s failure to control the borders. By educating so many illegal immigrants, Gallegly and others said, the quality of education for legal residents is slipping.

Wilson, one of 31 Republican governors to endorse the measure, has estimated that there are almost 380,000 illegal-immigrant children in California public schools. The Urban Institute, a Washington-based public policy group, put the number closer to 300,000. The annual cost of educating those children has been estimated at $1.2 billion to $1.9 billion.

There are already a variety of federal programs to compensate school districts for some of the costs of educating immigrants--money set aside for bilingual instruction, migrants, disadvantaged children and schools with large numbers of recent foreign arrivals. But the funding comes nowhere close to fully compensating schools for the costs.

Those opposed to ejecting illegal-immigrant children from schools raise humanitarian and practical concerns, saying it makes sense to educate these children as long as they remain in the country. Illegal immigration is so pervasive now--with an estimated 4 million people living here illegally, according to the INS--that removing undocumented children from schools would create more problems than it would solve, critics say.

“To us, it is far better to have these youngsters in a structured, nurturing, learning environment than to have them out roaming crime-ridden neighborhoods,” Gilbert Gallegos, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, wrote in a letter to Dole.

It remains unclear whether the schooling ban could be legally enforced. The Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that it was unconstitutional for Texas to bar illegal-immigrant children from its public schools. But proponents are confident that today’s court might see action by Congress differently.