The first of two parts. Read Part 2 here
There’s a ghost haunting next week’s elections in California.
It’s been there 20 years.
Proposition 187 – a measure Californians overwhelmingly voted into law on Nov. 8, 1994 – was never enacted. The law would have denied public services, including public education and non-emergency health care, to immigrants living in the state illegally. This summer, state legislators officially wiped it from the books, calling it the “most mean spirited and un-American” measure in the state’s history.
But the legacy of Prop. 187 lives on. And the people initially targeted – Latinos in general and undocumented immigrants in particular – are among the biggest beneficiaries.
“In the long run, it did us a lot of good,” said Amin David, a longtime Latino advocate and founder of Los Amigos of Orange County.
“It sparked an ignition, a fire, to do what we wanted to do but were not able to do,” he added. “And, boy, it took us many years, but what a turnaround.”
This year, Latinos are expected to surpass non-Hispanic whites as California’s single largest demographic. The number of Latino legislators in California has more than doubled since Prop. 187 passed.
And in Sacramento, those elected officials are pushing through a long list of new laws to aid the immigrant community, including those here illegally.
‘THEY KEEP COMING’
The initiative was called the “Save Our State” campaign. It came at a time when California was struggling to recover from a recession, as the economy shifted away from defense jobs and more toward the service sector.
The perception among many was that immigrants living in California without permission – “illegal” aliens as they were called then and are still labeled today by the U.S. government – were a drain on the economy and on society. The California Legislative Analyst Office estimated that passage of Prop. 187 would save the state up to $200 million annually.
“They keep coming. Two million illegal immigrants in California,” a man’s voice reads over grainy black and white footage of the U.S./Mexico border, as images of people run across the freeway. The infamous TV ad ended with Gov. Pete Wilson coming on screen to say “enough is enough.”
“It was an attempt by Pete Wilson to gin up the white base,” said Fred Smoller, associate professor of political science at Chapman University. “And it worked, for him.
“But it really antagonized Latinos.”
After Prop. 187 – and the ad campaign that supported it – Smoller said many Latinos came to view Wilson’s party, the California Republican Party, as “the party of racism.”
And the GOP hasn’t recovered since.
CALL TO ACTION
Luis Alejo was a college student in 1994. His grandparents had come to the U.S. from Mexico through the bracero guest worker program, and his parents picked strawberries in California’s Central Valley until they returned to school and pursued careers.
Today, Alejo is an asssemblyman representing Watsonville.
“It changed our lives forever,” Alejo said.
“Many of us were driven into political activism because of that draconian, anti-immigration proposition.”
A number of today’s state leaders cut their political teeth fighting Prop. 187. Their ranks include State Sen. Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, the first Latino elected California Senate president pro tem in more than 100 years. He was raised by a single immigrant mother who worked cleaning homes.
In 1994, de León helped organize a massive rally in downtown L.A. against Prop. 187. Protestors waved Mexican flags along with American flags.
Earlier this summer, 20 years after the vote, he sponsored legislation to “erase” Prop. 187 from California codes. Some legal scholars questioned that move, saying an initiative approved by voters must go back to voters for repeal.
But for de León and others, removing Prop. 187 language from the books was an important bit of symbolism.
Sen. Ricardo Lara, chairman of the California Latino Caucus, remembers his parents – who, for a time, were unauthorized immigrants – telling him that if they don’t come home from work, he should go “to your tíos’ house.”
“I thought that was normal growing up,” said Lara, D-Bell Gardens, whose district includes part of Long Beach. “It wasn’t until I realized, ‘Oh, my God, my parents could be taken.’”
“That’s when I became politicized. I realized there was nobody speaking on behalf of both of my parents.”
Lara said two bills serve as bookends to his political career.
One is a bill he worked on as a staffer to allow for in-state tuition to undocumented students. The second is a bill he authored as a legislator this year, updating the state’s professional licensing rules so anybody who has a taxpayer identification number can apply for a professional license – even if they lack a social security number.
Other significant bills passed this year with a push from the Latino Caucus include a loan program to help undocumented students pay fees to California public universities, and an initiative that will go before voters in 2016 to repeal Proposition 227, once again allowing California public schools to teach foreign language immersion classes.
Meanwhile, one of the California Legislature’s most noteworthy laws from the previous session is soon to take effect: By Jan. 1, people living in the country illegally will be allowed to apply for a California driver’s license.
In 1994, 12 Latinos served in the California Legislature. Today, that number is 27.
NEW ELECTORATE
Proposition 187 contributed to a major political shift in the state, mobilizing Latinos to register to vote and eventually elect those who would represent their interests.
Most registered as Democrats.
“Until the early 1990s, California was competitive in presidential and statewide elections,” said Jack Pitney, professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College.
“There were other trends helping Democrats, (but) Proposition 187 was an important part of the story.”
Jonathan Wilcox, an adjunct professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, was a former speech writer for Wilson. He noted the measure garnered support from Latino voters and won by a wide margin: 59 percent: “Nobody can say it had only the support of Republican voters, of white voters.”
Wilcox defended Wilson as having a spotless record on racial issues. (Wilson was not available for comment.)
“What’s happened in relation to the Latino community and Republican Party is heartbreaking because I believe it’s so correctable,” Wilcox said. “I think that something like this isn’t going to last forever.”
Republican leaders – both nationally and in Orange County – are working to reach out to Latino voters. In California, 28 percent of voters are registered as Republican, versus 43 registered as Democrats.
“The challenge for the Republican Party is to recruit and support candidates that reflect the great ethnic diversity of California. As California continues to change ethnically, you’ll see the Republican Party continue to make those efforts,” said Scott Baugh, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party.
As negative and as scary as Prop. 187 was to Latinos, it helped to “wake up” the community, said Benny Diaz, immediate past state director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, California chapter. “It said they’re running after you. You better stand up.”
NATIONAL REACH
Prop. 187 also had an impact on the national level that, in some ways, reflected what California voters said they wanted when it was passed.
The Welfare Reform Act of 1996, pushed by President Bill Clinton, included provisions to kick out legal immigrants from certain federal public assistance programs, although some were later restored.
“It took the idea from Prop. 187,” said Joseph Villela, director of policy and advocacy for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA).
“This idea that immigrants were a drag to the economy and they were coming for benefits.”
Villela said Prop. 187 also left its mark on the federal Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996, which emphasized border enforcement, increased penalties, expedited deportations of immigrants convicted of criminal offenses and expanded the types of offenses that could lead to removal from the country.
Muzaffar Chishti is the director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at New York University School of Law. He too said that 187 became a trigger for these federal changes, which among other things, took discretion away from immigration judges and made it possible to deport legal immigrants, such as green-card holders, with criminal history.
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa, has a different take on the measure’s long-term impact.
“The lasting legacy of 187 is that the American people have again witnessed a fundamental issue in which elected officials totally betrayed a majority of voters. That has left a lasting sense of cynicism with a lot of people wondering how democratic our system is and whether the liberal left can just ignore the law when it’s not benefiting their agenda.”
Rohrabacher said he and Huntington Beach resident Barbara Coe, the leader of then Orange County-based California Coalition for Immigration Reform, were the inspiration behind 187. Coe, the measure’s co-author, died last year.
Rohrabacher did not support Wilson’s TV ad campaign. “It was polarizing and nasty,” he said.
But the measure itself, he said, was not racist. He would support it all over again.
NEW CALIFORNIA
California is one of four states where whites are no longer the majority.
It is home to more than 10 million immigrants, more than any other state. Most are here legally – 47 percent are naturalized U.S. citizens and another 26 percent have other legal status, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. The rest are here illegally.
Overall, immigration to California has slowed. It increased by 1.3 million in the 2000s, compared to 2.4 million in the 1990s. Nationally, the number of white births were outnumbered by minority births for the first time in 2012, the U.S. Census reported.
California reached that point more than 20 years ago.
“Demographics is destiny and, at the core, we’re seeing a historic shift of almost a reconquest,” Smoller said. “The state is changing permanently.”
“We’re not your father’s Orange County anymore,” Smoller added.
STILL ARGUING
Twenty years after Prop. 187, immigration remains a hot button issue.
There’s a new proposal to abolish birthright citizenship to so-called “anchor babies,” children born to parents who are in the country temporarily or without permission. Also under fire is President Obama’s program known as DACA, which grants temporary reprieve from deportation to people under the age of 31 who meet certain criteria.
Meanwhile, a proposal to overhaul the country’s immigration laws remains in congressional limbo. Obama said this summer he would act unilaterally on immigration reform if Congress didn’t move forward, and some are expecting him to take action after next week’s midterm elections.
While immigration issues remain divisive ones, various national polls indicate growing support for federal immigration reform.
In California, 61 percent say that immigrants are a benefit to the state “because of their hard work and job skills,” while 32 percent say they are a burden because they use public services, according to a Public Policy Institute survey.
Rohrabacher noted that the survey asked about immigrants, not illegal immigrants.
David, of Los Amigos, said Prop. 187 still speaks volumes about “how people feel about strangers in our land – especially about the undocumented.
“It stroked an unexpected deluge; a hurricane,” he said “And we scurried about to try to fix it.
“Ultimately, that’s where we are now.”
Coming Part 2: Prop 187 came from Orange County. Its proponents continue to fight.
Contact the writer: rkopetman@ocregister.com
