Once California belonged to Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in. And such was their hunger for land that they took the land . . . and they guarded with guns the land they had stolen . . . Then, with time, the squatters were no longer squatters, but owners.
-- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
The 29 kindergartners in Lynne Wiswall's class, all Latino, had painted big American flags and attached them to wooden sticks in preparation for Veterans Day. But in her sunny classroom last week, down the road from a migrant camp where Steinbeck set his famous novel, Wiswall sadly put the red-white-and-blue banners aside. Californians had just approved a ballot initiative to deny public education and social services to illegal immigrants. How many of her Spanish-speaking five-year-olds were undocumented? Wiswall was not about to ask. But one thing she had decided: "I can't send these flags home with them now," she said. "I have the feeling everything's changed."
The sign on the road into town still reads Lamont, Growing to Feed the World. Like other San Joaquin Valley towns, and like much of California, Lamont (pop. 12,000) has for years welcomed immigrants -- illegal as well as legal, with few questions asked. Who else would pick grapes, pack carrots or wash dishes for $4.25 an hour or less? A few weeks ago, the town celebrated its annual "Weekend of Diversity" -- with an Okie migration commemoration on Saturday and a Hispanic fiesta on Sunday. But now Proposition 187 -- one of the most sweeping restrictions on aliens ever enacted in the U.S. -- has divided Californians along ethnic and economic lines, its angry message reverberating across the country. "When we were prospering, we closed our eyes to illegal immigration," said Juan Rivera, president of Lamont's chamber of commerce. "Now because times are tough, it is easy to pin the blame on one group."
& Those who had dismissed the initiative as merely a tactical weapon in California Governor Pete Wilson's crusade to get federal dollars to close his budget deficit were quickly disabused. Immediately after the 59% to 41% vote in favor of 187, he moved to bar illegal immigrants from receiving prenatal services and from entering nursing homes -- thus, he claimed, freeing $90 million a year in funds for legal residents. Wilson declared, "The people of California have passed Proposition 187. Now we must enforce it."
Not so fast. The day after the vote, eight lawsuits were filed in state and federal courts. A San Francisco superior court judge temporarily restricted the state from expelling an estimated 300,000 illegal immigrant children from public schools, pending a hearing. A similar order extended to public colleges and universities. Opponents are counting on the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the education restrictions. In 1982 the court invalidated a Texas law barring illegal aliens from public schools, holding that "penalizing the child is an ineffectual -- as well as unjust -- way of deterring the parent." Even the dissenting opinion acknowledged that "it would be folly -- and wrong -- to tolerate the creation of a segment of society made up of illiterate persons." But the decision split 5 to 4, and the ballot measure's proponents are hoping a new court will reopen the issue.