Initiative Targets Renting, Selling to Illegal Immigrants

In what could become the next major skirmish in California’s immigration wars, a group of Orange County residents has hatched an initiative they hope to put on a statewide ballot by 1998 to hit illegal immigrants right where they live--literally.

The measure, being pushed by the same group that spearheaded 1994’s victorious drive to adopt Proposition 187, would make it a crime to rent or sell property to illegal immigrants, a tactic proponents say would force them out of the United States, or at least push the undocumented into other states.

It also would allow California businesses to sue competitors who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

Those twin concepts could yank the battle over immigration a step beyond Proposition 187, which sought to deny most publicly funded benefits to illegal immigrants, while obligating educators, police and others to report suspected illegal immigrants to federal authorities. But the proposition has been largely invalidated in federal court.

Stuart Stitch, one of five Orange County residents who are taking a leadership role in the new initiative campaign, says it “will take care of illegal immigration in California. This initiative will move them back to their own country, into another state or into a box.”

But it will probably face stiff opposition from business groups reluctant to see a flurry of lawsuits among competitors and from church leaders active in the sanctuary movement, who stand to suffer harsher punishment under the initiative--double that envisaged for ordinary citizens.

“This is designed to put priests in jail,” said W. Snow Hume of Fullerton, one of the measure’s backers. “This is designed to put an end to the sanctuary movement.”

The push for the new measure, dubbed the California Lawful Employment and Residency (CLEAR) initiative, remains in its infancy. Advocates are starting the process of collecting the roughly 435,000 signatures of registered voters needed to qualify for the ballot.

The proposal is already beginning to draw fire from academicians, constitutional scholars, immigrants rights groups and public health officials. They contend it would send illegal immigrants underground or into the bush, creating even more headaches for residents and local governments, while fanning discrimination against immigrants residing in the country legally.

“It harkens back to McCarthyism,” said Martha Jimenez, regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “It’s that kind of questioning, that kind of turning your neighbor in. The politics of division are not the way we need to go.”

Critics also express confidence that the courts would, as they did with Proposition 187, find that the measure conflicts with the federal government’s immigration responsibilities, and declare most of its provisions unconstitutional.

“This is clearly the offspring of Proposition 187, and it’s every bit as mean-spirited as its parent,” said Carol Wolchok, director of the American Bar Assn.’s Center for Immigration Law.

“Sounds like it could have some constitutional impediments,” state Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) predicted, adding that his “guess is it isn’t going to obtain a lot of signatures.”

Stitch and other CLEAR backers disagree. They sense a pent-up anger among California residents disgusted with the public costs and troubles caused by illegal immigration and troubled by the undoing of Proposition 187 in the courts.

The signature-gathering effort is being pushed by activists from the Proposition 187 fight, among them Huntington Beach resident Barbara Coe, chairwoman of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, an umbrella group that was instrumental in the 1994 victory. Stitch said Coe’s group is providing the backbone of support for the effort, and that backers hope to get support from sympathetic elements within United We Stand, the political organization that launched Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential bid.

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CLEAR backers face an early November deadline to gather the requisite number of signatures. They also must overcome recent failures by anti-illegal immigration forces. Two other propositions circulated earlier this year didn’t get enough signatures to qualify, including one that would have called on Congress to enact the provisions of Proposition 187.

Stitch and others, however, remain confident that they can succeed where others have failed. “The grass roots of collecting is not going to be a problem,” Stitch predicted.

The tenets of the proposition are relatively straightforward. It would:

* Make it a misdemeanor to sell, lease, sublet or rent to illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants who own property would have one year to get rid of it, or it would be forfeited to the state.

* Require landlords to inquire as to a prospective tenant’s residency status in writing.

* Set fines of $3,000 to $5,000 for landlords who violate the law. Two convictions would qualify landlords as habitual offenders and subject them to two years imprisonment for each offense. Those penalties would be doubled if the landlord was a tax-exempt or nonprofit group.

* Make it a misdemeanor to provide false information to a prospective landlord, with fines ranging from $500 to $1,000. Half of all fines would go to public safety, a fact proponents hope will help them win the support of police organizations.

* Allow businesses to sue competitors that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. It would include companies that use independent contractors employing illegal immigrants. Backers suggest that the increase in legal cases could spur trial lawyers to support the initiative.

The major goal, Stitch said, is to curb the costs of illegal immigration on tax-paying citizens who foot the bill for health, welfare and education costs.

“When the illegal alien has crossed the border, they’ve broken the law,” Stitch said. “If they’re willing to do that, why wouldn’t they want to milk the rest of the system--welfare, education, health care? We’re just patriots of the United States who believe the law ought to be enforced.”

Backers of the initiative believe that their measure is better armored for constitutional battle than was Proposition 187. They have done extensive legal research, and copies of the initiative released to the news media cite previous cases they contend give them a solid constitutional footing.

Much of that research was conducted by Hume, a political activist, accountant and law student at Chapman Law School in Orange. Hume drew harsh criticism from Fullerton’s Korean American community last year when he used clipped English and an exaggerated foreign accent to disparagingly address Mayor Julie Sa during a council meeting.

Hume said the initiative’s tougher penalties for nonprofit groups that harbor illegal immigrants would dismantle the sanctuary movement, and that it would give local governments incentive to give illegal immigrants “a one-way bus ticket” out of California, perhaps to states where residents have expressed more sympathy for them.

“Oregon would be a perfect destination,” Hume said. “This would change their attitude on illegal immigration. Or we could export them to Wyoming or Idaho.”

Opponents see the measure as just another in the long line of anti-immigrant efforts that have paraded across the California stage since the Gold Rush era, when the Foreign Miners Act forced out Asians and Mexicans seeking a fortune.

“The nature of this proposition is really reminiscent of a lot of xenophobic measures in California history,” said David G. Gutierrez, a UC San Diego associate history professor. “It’s hard for me to not see this as another thinly veiled racist attempt to hit Latinos.”

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Foes say the latest initiative, like Proposition 187, fails to recognize the federal responsibility on immigration matters. But while Proposition 187 threw the burden for checking residency status to public officials, the CLEAR initiative would put private citizens--landlords in particular--in the role of the immigration agent, they say.

Juan F. Perea, a University of Florida law professor, said he thinks the initiative’s housing proposals would be found unconstitutional if judged by current case law. But, he noted, the U.S. Supreme Court has not addressed in years the issue of constitutional guarantees of equal treatment for illegal immigrants. Under the high court’s current conservative majority, the initiative could provide an interesting test case.

Perea said the housing ban also could whip up discrimination against legal residents, particularly Latinos and Asians.

“It’s fraught with risk for anyone who looks like an illegal alien,” he said. “A landlord is like anyone else--they’re risk-adverse, they don’t want to break the law. So they’re going to err on the side of caution and avoid anyone who looks like an illegal alien.”