Keep Out, You Tired, You Poor...

By NANCY GIBBS

Senator Dianne Feinstein makes an implausible undercover agent, which made her recent experiment in black-market-document procurement all the more persuasive. The California Democrat decided to find out for herself just how easy it would be to get a fake green card and driver's license. So she traded her Hermes scarf for some urban camouflage -- in this case, a gabardine pantsuit -- and went shopping in MacArthur Park, a crime-infested mini-mall for phony immigration documents near downtown Los Angeles. Never mind that the patrician politician went trailing a swarm of agents in dark suits; the fake IDs were hers for the asking. "They would have cost anywhere from $10 to $60," she says, "and I could have had them within the hour."

Feinstein was prescient enough to make illegal immigration a pet issue, which gives her some political cover in her unexpectedly tight race against conservative Santa Barbara Congressman Michael Huffington. But the same cannot be said of Democrat Kathleen Brown, who in a struggle to unseat Governor Pete Wilson finds herself slipping over what has become the most hazardous issue of the 1994 elections. If California runs true to form, leading America's social revolutions through the ballot box, it will pass Proposition 187, an implacable, baldly unconstitutional plan to cut off services to illegal immigrants, from schools to health care to welfare. Wilson strongly endorses the measure; Brown emphatically opposes it, and at the moment that puts her at odds with as many as 3 out of 5 California voters.

Proposition 187 is truly a referendum for the 1990s: if successful, the initiative will constitute a dramatic statement by voters that if the government does not move to solve the immigration problem, the people will. In a country built by immigrants, it is a measure of the deep dissatisfaction with the generosity of the welfare state that the public has seized on aliens as the enemy within. A TIME/CNN poll determined last week that 77% of those surveyed felt the government was not doing enough to keep out illegal immigrants. For years now, the battle has raged between the federal authorities who are supposed to police the borders and the states who pay the price if they fail. Hoping for some ammunition, the Clinton Administration helped fund a study by the Urban Institute that for the first time assesses the costs of immigration. The study found that illegals drain about $2 billion a year for incarceration, schooling and Medicaid from the budgets of such major destination states as Texas, Florida and California. But the survey also discerned that for the country as a whole, legal and illegal immigrants generate a $25 billion to $30 billion surplus from the income and property taxes they pay.

That finding has not prevented angry Democratic and Republican Governors from demanding that Washington pay up. Lawton Chiles of Florida has already filed suit in a Miami federal court against the U.S. Government for "its continuing failure to enforce or rationally administer its own immigration laws since 1980." The suit asks for $1.5 billion in compensation. "So far, all we've got is a lot of hand wringing," says Chiles. Governors in Texas, Arizona and California are taking Washington to court as well.

Particularly in California, the fight reflects two very different views of immigration. Brown and her team have concluded that immigrants come streaming across the border seeking jobs with which to help their families and climb into the middle class. Wilson, on the other hand, argues that the immigrants are mainly attracted by the bounty of welfare benefits. These views yield opposite solutions: Wilson wants to stem the flow by curtailing the services. Brown prefers clamping down on the illegal workplace.

The Governor raised the temperature even higher last week, when he demanded an immediate "down payment" of $1.8 billion from Washington. Wilson argues that California, with 43% of the country's illegal aliens, pays multiple costs for its leaky borders: the number of illegal-immigrant felons has tripled to nearly 18,000 since 1988. The percentage of illegal-immigrant children in public schools rose to nearly 10%, or 308,000 students; providing health care for illegal immigrants costs state taxpayers $400 million.

Passing Proposition 187 -- known as the "Save our State" initiative -- would send a message to Washington that "we cannot educate every child from here to Tierra del Fuego," Wilson says. The proposition is breathtaking in its scope: it would render all illegal aliens ineligible for such state social services as welfare, food stamps and health care -- except the emergency care required by federal law -- and all public schooling, from kindergarten to state colleges and universities. State and local agencies would be required to report suspected illegals to the state attorney general and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the sale of false documents would become a state felony.

When it comes to schools, the initiative could prove to be more symbol than substance, given an enormous catch. In 1982 the Supreme Court ruled that public education is guaranteed to all children in the U.S. and that denying schooling to illegal immigrants violates the Constitution. The backers of 187 are perfectly aware of the legal obstacle and intend to use it as a vehicle for testing the law. As Wilson emphasized, "the save-our-state initiative is the two-by-four we need to make them take notice in Washington and provoke a legal challenge that will go all the way to the Supreme Court."

Though popular opinion is running with Wilson, Brown calls him a hypocrite for denouncing what he himself helped create while serving in Washington. In deference to his supporters in the agribusiness community, she says, "he was the leader in the U.S. Senate, fighting for the biggest loophole that has allowed in more than 1 million illegal immigrants, the 'seasonal worker' program." Proposition 187, she claims, will only make a bad situation worse, by throwing tens of thousands of children out of school and onto the streets where they will be trapped by "gangs, guns, drugs and graffiti."

Her allies in the Latino community, the powerful teachers' union and the medical community charge that Prop 187 would turn educators, doctors and social workers into immigration cops. A better approach, Brown argues, is for Washington to beef up its border patrols and tighten enforcement of existing laws. The Clinton Administration has been happy to oblige; two weeks ago, Attorney General Janet Reno chose Los Angeles for the unveiling of Operation Gatekeeper, a strategy to curb illegal immigration along the California-Baja California border, for years a prime smuggling corridor for people, drugs, guns, whiskey and consumer goods. Reno was quick to note that under the new crime bill and other Clinton proposals, California will receive "unprecedented levels of federal aid . . . to defray the costs associated with immigration."

Reno's suddenly aggressive stance just confirms that the whole immigration struggle is playing out against a backdrop of presidential and midterm politics. Wilson has fought back from a 23-point deficit to take a tenuous seven-point lead in the Governor's race. That unnerves the White House, not | only because Wilson has been such an outspoken critic of the President, but also because his strength in the Golden State makes him a threat in 1996. Without California's 54 electoral votes, Clinton cannot win re-election.

But he also cannot win if he carves his base in half. "The Administration," said an official, "has tried to help the anti-proposition forces without pitting Clinton against California's white middle class. But at some point you risk alienating a key part of your base. That's the political dilemma the Democrats are in." Clinton may have solved his "Florida problem" for the moment by muscling Castro and invading Haiti, but neither strategy would work on Mexico, which means the federal money will keep flowing until the votes are in.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 800 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on Sept. 21-22 by Yankelovich Partners Inc. Sampling error is plus or minus 3.5% Not Sures omitted

CAPTION: Do you favor a proposal to stop providing government health benefits and public education to illegal immigrants and their children?

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante/Los Angeles and Michael Duffy/Washington