Monday, June 14, 2010

California's 1994 Proposition 187

I've been reading Glenn Beck's Down-loadable STORM manual. You can get it off of his website. I'm sorry, I don't have the link, but you can google him, I think it's just glennbeck.com, but I'm not sure right now. I had to write this and get it out. I Down loaded the manual and printed myself a copy. I'm old school. I like to hold a copy in my hands. I have to warn you. It doesn't print all pretty and bindable. Apparently it was originally a small book so if you print it front and back, you get small pages side by side. But I can live with that.

I found something interesting right off the bat, on their page 8. I took it to my therapy session (and that's a pain therapy session, not mental therapy - in case anyone is wondering). I've been down in my back, so they sent me to therapy. By the way, it went great. The first time I haven't been in pain for 3 months, but I digress.

The very first thing STORM did was to protest proposition 187 in California in 1994. Well, when they said it was an anti-immigration ballot initiative, you know I had to look it up. I found the following history on it:

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Proposition 187, a California initiative statute, was a November 1994 ballot measure in the spirit of Proposition 13, designed to save the state $5 billion per year by reducing public services for illegal immigrants. The measure denied public social, health, and education services to illegal immigrants. It required state and local agencies to report suspected illegal aliens to state and federal authorities, and it declared that the manufacture, sale, or use of false citizenship or residency documents was a felony.

Popularly known as the "Save our State" initiative, Proposition 187 raised serious constitutional issues regarding illegal-alien access to public education as well as questions about the federal regulation of immigration. Regardless of these issues, Governor Pete Wilson and other Republican leaders, including Harold Ezell, President Ronald Reagan's western regional director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, joined in support. Democratic and liberal leaders, Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, and the League of Women Voters opposed the measure. Opponents outspent supporters three to one. Republican, moderate white, and African American voters passed the measure with 59 percent of the vote. Democratic, liberal, and Hispanic voters overwhelmingly voted against the measure.

Proposition 187 was quickly in the courts. In 1997, federal district judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer ruled that the denial of services to illegal immigrants was unconstitutional. In 1998 she made her injunction permanent, grounding her decision on the federal government's exclusive authority to legislate on immigration.

Proposition 187 created deep ill will in the Hispanic community, and many immigrants responded to the measure's threats by becoming citizens.

Bibliography

Allswang, John M. The Initiative and Referendum in California, 1898–1998. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000.

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My, my, my, how short of a memory California has, that they have to protest Arizona law. This got APPROVAL of Republican, moderate white, and African American voters by 59%. I would not call that fringe. I would say they were fed up at the time with being inundated with illegal aliens steeling their money. They saw the writing on the wall in 1994 that there weren't enough funds to go around and they were being sucked dry. There was a great article written on it, where the writer thought the judge sabotaged the proposition.... http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0602/article_514.shtml.

And what were the results of the California bill? The illegal aliens became legal immigrants. I bet the ones who couldn't become legal went either home, or to some other state that wasn't so picky about their immigration status. Until it blew over and they quit enforcing it. I wonder how long that took? Until the Republicans got out of office?

I found a really good blog on the history of California when it was a republican state. http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/californias-crisis-and-the-collapse-of-the-republican-party/

There are commercials for Pete Wilson when he was running for Governor of California. At one time, they were Arizona, trying for border control. Amazing, huh? Now the liberals have control and the borders are thrown open. What do the conservatives in California think? Have they all left California?

I feel like I live in 2 Americas. There is the America that is in the news, the one I blog about. And there is the one that I see walking down the streets, that keeps my friends asleep. I wonder when they will collide?

Lori Ann Smith

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