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Guest
Contributor
Joe
Armendariz
Prop
187 Revisited
Campaign season has begun, but, don't feed the Pander
Bears...
[Joe Armendariz] 8/14/03
In
the opening salvos of the battle to replace Gray Davis, Republican
gubernatorial frontrunner Arnold Schwarzenegger has been coming
under fire for his support of Proposition 187 from the Democratic
Party's chief Latino racemonger, Art Torres.
As long-time
Californians will recall, Proposition 187, which appeared on
the ballot
in 1994 as the "Save Our State" initiative,
would have excluded illegal immigrants from access to public
services, including an education for their children. California
voters -- including a large percentage of Latinos -- supported
Prop 187 and the measure passed overwhelmingly, only to be
subsequently overturned in the courts.
Predictably,
Torres -- who called Proposition 187 the "last
gasp of white America" -- is busily reminding the
Latino community that Gray Davis opposed 187, as did Cruz
Bustamante.
Well, they're not alone. Many, like me, also opposed Prop
187 for reasons having less to do with the merits of the
measure
than with its politics. The Democrats have tried to use
Proposition 187 as a "silver bullet" against
Republicans ever since. But that was then and this is now.
Today, illegal
immigration is even more out-of-control than it was nine years
ago, and the federal government
has been
ignoring its responsibility to California taxpayers to
protect our state's border. Add to this the implications
of allowing
unrestricted immigration after the tragedy of September
11, and any voter would have to be out of his mind to
deny that
our country's immigration policy is in desperate need
of reform.
But Bustamante,
Torres, Davis and the rest of the Democrats are going to continue
to wallow in their unadulterated
ignorance and try underhanded tactics of racial division.
This time,
they may not succeed. At the end of the day, Latinos
need something more than the politics of racial division
--
they need economic
empowerment, not welfare benefits. And the parents
of Latino children need a genuine choice in where their
children
are educated, not an open door to a closed academic
opportunity, which is what most of the inner city public schools
provide.
Finally,
consider the bizarre dichotomy embraced by this trio: They
support welfare benefits for illegal
immigrants,
while
opposing the creation of new oil and gas jobs for
legal residents, including Latinos. They support a system
that redistributes
taxpayers' money to those who break our laws, but
apparently believed that our domestic oil and gas industry
should
be designated as an illegal, non-conforming enterprise.
Here is the
bargain that California Democrats would strike: Come to America
illegally, get a check and
a free (albeit
terrible) education for your kids. But try getting
a job on an oil platform
and sending your children to a school that actually
teaches them? Forget about it. And then we wonder
why California,
under the control of an intellectually bankrupt
Party, is winning
the race to the bottom.
Joe Armendariz
is Executive Director of the Santa Barbara Industrial Association
and the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association.
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