July 10, 2009

Calif. Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Rises

Posted by M. Junaid Levesque-Alam at 1:00PM

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Economic downturns can exacerbate and accentuate the tensions and fault-lines of any society. As the U.S. faces its most serious depression since the 1930s, one state has been making the news for its economic woes more than any other: California.

The state faces a massive $26.3 billion budget gap and its politicians and voters are locked in heated conflict over what services need to be cut. One clear casualty is the sense of leniency, generosity, and compassion toward the undocumented.

The Los Angeles Times ran an article and a blog post, apparently in response to reader concern about the cost of illegal immigration to the state, describing some of the outstanding issues.

The history of Proposition 187-—a ballot measure designed to prevent the undocumented from using most government services in California—-“could repeat itself in the current downturn, as activists opposed to illegal immigration have launched a campaign for an initiative that would, among other things, cut off welfare payments to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants,” the paper observes.

Welfare officials estimate that ending such payments would save about $640 million annually; the state has about 2.7 million undocumented residents, accounting for 7 percent of the population.

This anti-immigration proposal is quite frankly a new low, and a clear illustration of the speed with which the poison of animosity toward one particular group can spread. The consequences of cutting aid to needy children are clear to all but the purblind: they will either starve and die, or, because of malnutrition, suffer from a variety of other diseases that will require hospitalization.

The governor’s own proposal, which has not yet been accepted by the state legislature, is to place a five-year limit on state welfare payments to U.S. citizens who are children of undocumented parents.

Curiously, though, the LA Times never states exactly who is seeking a more immediate end to such welfare payments. It quotes Steven Camarota with the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies, who says only that “When people come into the U.S., even illegally, they cross more than a physical barrier; they cross a moral barrier. We don't like it if someone can't go to the emergency room. That's just our way.”

The McClatchy website excerpts from a Sacramento Bee article that supposedly poses an even more troubling question--McClatchy titled the excerpt, “California Contemplate Ultimate Reform – No Welfare.” But the link to the full article is dead and a Google search of that phrase turns up nothing at the Bee.

Regardless of who is brandishing the threat, it’s clearly enough of an issue to frighten state officials. “It's difficult to come up with the right adjective to react to this,” Bruce Wagstaff, director of the Department of Human Assistance in Sacramento, told the Bee. “It would be devastating to the people we serve.”

And if you take a look at some of the hundreds of comments at the LA Times site, there’s a strong tendency toward callousness. Some say that such rhetoric is expected, given the anonymity and absence of filters on the internet, but anti-immigrant vitriol in hard economic times is real.

Recent violent incidents, such as those described in this blog post and in this news article, where immigrants have been kidnapped or killed for profit or sport, illustrate the point all too vividly.