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Provisions withholding nonemergency medical care and other services from illegal immigrants and requiring schools, hospitals and police departments to report suspected undocumented aliens may prove more difficult to overturn. A U.S. district court will hear civil rights groups' lawsuits this week. One delicate issue for President Clinton: Should the Federal Government withdraw some $15 billion of funding for social programs if enforcement of 187 conflicts with federal regulations?
While lawyers argued, a defiant mood, bordering on disobedience, seized many of those who must implement the new law. The Los Angeles city council voted to join legal challenges and, in the meantime, directed its employees to continue providing services. Although 187 appears to exclude illegal immigrant children from foster care, Los Angeles County children and family services director Peter Digre said, "It's unimaginable that the voters meant for us to ignore battered, molested or starving two-year-olds just because they are undocumented." Los Angeles police chief Willie Williams announced there were . no policy changes in his department, although the initiative requires local law-enforcement officers to report to the Immigration and Naturalization Service any illegal alien arrested for other reasons. Officials, however, were bombarded with angry calls, protesting the use of taxpayer funds for lawsuits and threatening recalls of recalcitrant politicians. Several clinics reported a sharp drop in visits, as immigrants worried about deportation.
At the Sierra Vista clinic in Lamont, pediatrician Pierrette Poinsett said she would quit before turning away patients. "I see up to three kids a week who test positive for tuberculosis," she said. "This proposition will result in more disease, more teenage pregnancy. It targets the most vulnerable population -- children. It is unconscionable."
But Juan Rivera, who grew up in a migrant camp and now volunteers as the chamber of commerce head, could not afford to give up his state job as a prenatal-care eligibility clerk. "It tears me apart," he said, "but I will have to turn people away." Of the 60 pregnant women he sees each month, he said, about 20 are illegal aliens.
Although most illegals work and pay taxes, they do not pay enough to counter public anger over crime, taxes and cultural conflict. "Illegal aliens are a category of criminal, not a category of ethnic group," said Ron Prince, an Orange County accountant, who organized the initiative. Nonetheless, the racial divide in last week's vote was striking. Although non-Hispanic whites make up only 57% of California's population, they make up 80% of eligible voters, and they voted 2 to 1 for Proposition 187. Latinos, a quarter of the population, represented only 8% of last week's voters, and they opposed the measure 3 to 1. Their cause was hurt by protest marches that many white Californians found threatening. "On TV there was nothing but Mexican flags and brown faces," said Robert Kiley, the initiative campaign's political consultant.