Face to Face but Worlds Apart on Immigration

I’m so weary of all the arguing over immigration. We’ve been through two decades of divisive debate over this issue and we’re no closer to resolving our differences. We just keep reenacting the battle over and over again, in arenas large and small.

We reach temporary standoffs, but minds don’t change, hearts don’t open.

Predictably, protagonists on both sides faced off again last week at a school board meeting in Anaheim. Their rehearsed roles were played out with tired familiarity, their rhetoric faithfully repeated like lines from a play we’ve seen too often.

And the players fit their parts perfectly.

On one side were the five elected trustees of the Anaheim Union High School District. They are mostly white and mostly registered Republicans, the party blamed for stirring up anti-immigrant sentiment under Pete Wilson. The board entertained a proposal from their president, Harald G. Martin, to bill the Republic of Mexico for the costs of educating Mexican children who live here illegally.

The idea was cheered by some of the county’s most strident immigration foes in the audience, including Barbara Coe, a key force behind Proposition 187.

Martin, a member of Coe’s group, came up with his Make-Mexico-Pay plan out of frustration that the courts blocked implementation of 187.

Many Latino advocates ignored Martin’s proposal, a purely symbolic action since nobody thinks the district could ever compel Mexico to pay. Nevertheless, a few Anaheim activists, including Josie Montoya, did show up to voice the usual opposition.

From all accounts, the meeting was like an orderly and nonviolent version of “The Jerry Springer Show.” Both sides got their licks in, but nobody really communicated.

Montoya’s granddaughter, an eighth-grader at Sycamore Junior High, was among those who spoke against the proposal. Or tried to speak. Angela Pacheco, 14, said she felt too intimidated to finish making her statement because she heard snickering from the back of the room.

Afterward, Angela said, she traded allegations of racism with an elderly man who “got like an inch away from my face and started shouting and going off.” As a fellow student started praying and quoting from the Bible, the man, she says, erupted with a curse: “Racist little [expletives] like you are all going to hell.”

I can’t tell you the other side of that story because the girls didn’t get the man’s name. But to me, that scene pretty much sums up the state of our discourse on immigration. We’re in each other’s faces but we’re not listening.

A few days after the meeting, I had a long conversation with Rob Stewart, one of the Anaheim board members. Stewart, of Stanton, seemed to take a middle position on the immigration issue, which the board will revisit after its lawyer draws up a proposed resolution to bill Mexico. He said he’s concerned about the costs of educating immigrant children, but he doesn’t believe billing Mexico is the solution.

Yet, the more I talked to Stewart, the less I could agree with his viewpoint. Our conversation was civil, but neither of us was persuaded.

To start with, Stewart, 51, agrees with the premise that undocumented immigrants are more of a drain than a boost to the economy. Their use of services, he said, far exceeds any tax revenue they generate.

How can he be sure? All I know is that reports on the economics of immigration are totally contradictory. Conclusions, pro or con, depend on which ideological camp orders the study.

“Just logically, sit down and think about it,” he said. “I don’t need the actual numbers to prove it.”

Most illegals are making minimum wage, he contends. Even if they paid taxes, it wouldn’t be near enough to cover the $5,000 per year it costs to school a child in California.

“You think their puny taxes . . . are going to cover that?” he asked. Besides, he added, “these people pay no property taxes.”

What makes him say that?

Common sense, he answered. They wouldn’t all be crammed into rentals and garages if they could buy their own homes.

Though I’m sure Stewart would be surprised at how many Mexicans have mortgages but no papers, it’s almost impossible to counter such generalizations.

Stewart abruptly changed the subject and became noticeably upset. Out of the blue, he asserted that immigrants don’t want to learn English.

“That is an irritant,” he said. “That is an insult to you, me and any other American.”

And it’s also false. Many immigrants work hard to learn English. That’s why they’re crammed into ESL classes at night.

But why even bring up the tangential language issue?

Because, Stewart said, if immigrants bothered to learn English they’d make more money and pay more taxes to cover their education.

Well, we all want that. But we don’t break down the cost of education for each family in the state, I noted. Does Stewart, for example, pay enough taxes to carry his own weight?

“I don’t pay that much, but I got a lot of kids,” he said.

Six, to be exact. That would be $30,000 per year just to cover the public education of the Stewart family. Does he pay that much?

Stewart said he paid even more than that in taxes at one time, when he owned a business. But he objected to my line of questioning.

“You’re missing the whole point,” he snapped. “My relatives had to wait to legally immigrate to this country. My relatives didn’t sneak across the border in the middle of the night.”

And so? “If you are illegally in this country, you are stealing from this country,” he said.

Stewart said he does not believe that he and his colleagues are being divisive. On the contrary, Latino advocates are divisive in trying to preserve public education for undocumented students.

“They see a free ride being attacked and they’re going to jump on it,” he said. “They have no solution. They just sit and say, ‘Cough up the money and pay for it.’ ”

See what I mean? The more we talked, the less we understood each other. We went from discussing the costs of education to speculating about the motives of people who disagree with him.

Martin, the school board president, told me Friday he just wants the facts. He can’t accurately say how serious the problem is if schools aren’t allowed to count the number of undocumented students.

So now he’s proposing to invite INS agents to review school files and determine which children are legal and which are not. He concedes he can’t use the information to target illegal students--not yet, anyway.

What’s next, Mr. Martin? Marking undocumented children with black crosses on their foreheads?

“This is a Gordian knot, basically, and it has to be sliced,” he said, using an expression that refers to finding a quick and bold solution to a perplexing problem.

I think the hysteria doesn’t fit the facts. Immigration from Mexico is simply an economic relationship between workers from a poor country and employers in a rich one. The relationship has its problems but it’s also productive, judging from our tax surpluses at a time when the number of undocumented immigrants is at a record high and unemployment at record lows.

I just tremble to think of the solutions people might propose when our economy takes a dive.

I did find myself agreeing with Stewart on one of his broad, anecdotal generalizations. This one was regarding immigrants in the auto-shop classes he teaches part-time in Garden Grove and Fountain Valley.

“I can tell you right now who in my class is illegal and who’s not, and I never asked,” he said proudly.

How’s that?

“The illegals don’t give you any trouble.”

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.