Debate Over Educating Immigrants Stirs Passions

A school board meeting Saturday over proposals to seek payment from foreign countries or the federal government for educating illegal immigrants was laced with nationalistic fervor and emphatic talk about race, but ended with no vote.

Anaheim school board members stressed to two dozen people in attendance that the proposals are aimed at dealing with school overcrowding and funding.

Outside the boardroom of the Anaheim Union High School District, about 35 protesters beat drums and carried signs that read, “Immigrant Bashing,” and “Fair and Indiscriminate Education Breeds a Positive Community.”

When board members first considered sending Mexico a bill for $50 million, the amount they estimate it costs to educate illegal immigrants from Mexico for a decade, some decried it as a racist move.

During the Saturday meeting, one man stood up and asked, in a reference to the Ku Klux Klan, “Where are all your sheets?”

Andy Hilbert of La Palma, who spoke at the meeting, said he was fearful “of the wound that this is causing in the community.” He suggested that bonds could garner more money for the district, eliminate the rhetoric and allow educators to “start talking about human beings.”

The issue erupted at a meeting in May when Anaheim trustees debated into the night about whether Mexico should pay for the education of immigrants who were not legal. The proposal was introduced by board President Harald Martin, an Anaheim police officer who first proposed billing Mexico in 1995.

The board unanimously endorsed Martin’s plan, which later was amended to include all foreign countries. A subcommittee was told to draft a resolution seeking the payments.

Recently, however, the subcommittee discovered that the district cannot bill other countries because international law protects governments from suing each other. The board abandoned that idea and instead will consider pursuing the United States government for recompense.

They plan on sending “demands and requests” to the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno. The board is asking that the INS count the number of illegal immigrant students in the Anaheim school district and determine their home countries.

They plan to ask the federal government to reimburse the district for the costs of educating illegal immigrants, and to negotiate with foreign countries “to recover the costs of educating their citizens.”

During Saturday’s meeting, both Martin’s original proposal and the new plan were debated. A vote on the issue is slated for the board’s Aug. 19 meeting.

“All we’re asking for is the money,” said board member Robert Stewart. “We can do a better job if we have the money . . . to catch more of the children that are falling [behind].”

Although some at the meeting insisted that the issue was about education costs, others angrily spoke out about immigrants.

Barbara Walters of Costa Mesa said, “I know the illegal aliens want the Americans to pay their way. . . . This is not racist, it’s about money.”

Mary Grondie, who owns property in Anaheim but lives in Laguna Hills, said immigrants “have trashed my neighborhood. They have made the neighborhood look like a Third World nation.” She said very little about Anaheim schools.

At the center of the controversy is Martin, who goes so far as to call himself an ally of the Chiapas-based leftist rebels who are fighting the Mexican government to keep their land.

Martin blames Mexican leaders for “forcing the poorest of the poor out of their country and displacing them into the streets of gold in California and Arizona.”

Born in Austria, Martin and his family moved to Anaheim when he was 2. At home, the Martins spoke German, listened to German music and shared German meals. But he says that all immigrants should assimilate into American society.

“To have an America of different groups, of different enclaves, is divisive and it is dangerous,” Martin said. “I am not a German American. I am an American of German heritage. There is a big problem in the world today with all this hyphenation.”

A 1972 graduate of Anaheim High School, Martin holds a bachelor’s degree in police sciences and a master’s degree in public administration, both from Cal State Fullerton. He is a senior master patrolman with 19 years on the Anaheim force. Martin and his wife have two children, a boy attending high school in Anaheim and a daughter who recently graduated.

Fred Smoller, chairman of the political science department at Chapman University and a member of the county’s Human Relations Commission, said Martin’s proposal “is just one of many scattered incidents which fit a pattern that reflect the overall anxiety that Anglos [have] about the increasing diversity in our community.”

Martin has drawn complaints from the county’s Latino community before. When he proposed billing the Mexican Consulate for the education of illegal immigrants in 1995, fellow trustees voted the measure down, calling it discriminatory.

“He just wants the limelight for the right-wing majority,” said activist Larry Luera of United Neighborhoods.

Martin’s supporters include the Christian Coalition and Barbara Coe’s Coalition for Immigration Reform, which sponsored Proposition 187.