Editorial
Vote No on Prop 187's uncivil ethnic war
In the time-honored tradition of cynical leaders from George Bush to Slobodan Milosevic, Governor Pete Wilson, battered into the sub-basement of approval ratings by four years of failed policies, recession and chronic natural disasters, turned earlier this year to the ultimate re-election weapon for faltering politicians: a nice little war -- in this case an uncivil ethnic war packaged as Proposition 187.Guaranteed to provide "most likely voters" with an all-purpose scapegoat for the economic ills that besiege us, Wilson's leadership of the "Save Our State" campaign can assure his victory only by plunging California deeper into defeat and division.
Make no mistake, the anti-immigrant hysteria that has found its symbolism and substance in Proposition 187 is not merely a legalistic metaphor for war. It is an illegal declaration of war.
Why else, but for 187's blatant illegality, would Attorney General Dan Lungren (an apparently reluctant subaltern in Wilson's military campaign) promise last week to refrain from prosecuting any of the hundreds of thousands of doctors, nurses, teachers or other professionals who have sworn to dodge 187's draft into the Big Brother Corps?
Why else, but for the likelihood of social unrest, has the California National Guard been warned to be prepared for riotous violence in the aftermath of the election, as was widely reported (outside the Bay Area) this week?
Anyone with enough awareness of current events to distinguish between O.J. and Homer Simpson has by now heard and read all the sound legal, economic and moral reasons to vote against 187:
- It does nothing to attack the problem of illegal immigration at the source (the border), nor does it do anything to enforce the many potentially effective immigration laws the state already has available.
- It won't save taxpayer dollars. The state's official fiscal analysis, printed right there in the voter handbook, plainly states that it could end up costing the state upwards of $15 billion through loss of federal funds to schools and hospitals. To make up for that loss would cost the average family about $1,600 in additional taxes.
- Rather than boot the estimated 300,000 undocumented, brown-skinned kids in California schools back across the border, it would simply deport them to the streets -- our streets -- where they would turn our nightmares of youth crime into vivid realities.
- And rather than simply turn the rule of law against illegals, it would turn legal and illegal residents alike against a law that is fundamentally unconstitutional, unhealthy, unsafe and unenforceable.
Indeed, if one can find no other reason to vote on Tuesday, this pernicious, wrong-headed, self-defeating initiative provides all the reasons one needs, and more.
The "more" is war -- the dismal inevitability that 187, if approved, will turn Californian against Californio, Anglo against Latino, old blood against new blood.
Wilson, the would-be commander in chief, proudly boasts that the multitudes are among his legions, inaccurately including the majority of documented Latinos in his estimates.
The deputy editor of the Los Angeles Times, Frank del Olmo, had to go off the editorial-page last week to prove Wilson wrong.
In a principled dissent from the Times' endorsement of Wilson (which reportedly was forced upon an unwilling editorial board), del Olmo noted on the op-ed page that the latest polls show Latinos leaning heavily against 187.
With their help, and with a mighty election-day offensive by voters in the Bay Area, where 187 should go down by a proper landslide, this mangy dog of war can be beaten before it bites.
Vote against Wilson's war.
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