[Mb-civic] California's lessons on immigration - Peter Schrag - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  California's lessons on immigration

By Peter Schrag  |  April 2, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

AS THE IMMIGRATION controversy reaches white heat, California, with more 
than 9 million immigrants in a population of 36 million, 2.4 million of 
them undocumented -- both far and away the highest proportions in the 
nation -- represents America's most important test of how well that new 
population is assimilating and how native, white Americans are 
assimilating to it. The results so far are a cautionary tale for both 
the right and the left.

For the right there's the harsh lesson of the long-term effects of the 
Latino backlash against Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative that sought 
to deny schooling and most other services to illegal immigrants, and 
against former Republican Governor Pete Wilson's broad-brush attacks on 
illegal immigration in his reelection campaign that same year. Nearly a 
million California aliens became citizens and registered to vote shortly 
after that campaign, most of them as Democrats. The 500,000 people who 
marched in Los Angeles last weekend in protest of the punitive House 
immigration bill were a reminder of that power. In California, Hispanics 
represent 19 percent of registered voters, more than double their 
percentage in 1990, and their numbers continue to increase rapidly. 
Within the next generation, as the nation's Hispanic population grows, 
countless other states will show similar numbers.

But California is also a cautionary tale for the left, and not just 
because of the depressing effects of illegal immigrant workers on 
low-end wages. A model of high-quality public services in the three 
decades after World War II -- roads, water systems, a world-class higher 
education system, well-funded schools -- California did an abrupt 
about-face in the 1970s, symbolized by the overwhelming passage of 
Proposition 13 in 1978, which sharply reduced property taxes, and 
continuing with the string of tax limitations and other restrictive 
measures that followed. Ever since, and largely as a result, 
California's public services -- schools in particular -- have been 
seriously underfunded, its once-famous highway system in wretched condition.

Proposition 13 was widely (and for the most part correctly) attributed 
to the spike in property taxes that accompanied the run-up in real 
estate values of the mid- and late-'70s. But it also happened to 
coincide with the sharp increase in immigration, particularly from Latin 
America, that began with the repeal in 1965 of the nation's 
national-origins immigration quotas. In the ensuing decades, those 
immigrants and their children have become a majority in California's 
public schools and, because of their lack of insurance, a significant 
proportion of the clients of emergency rooms and public clinics. At the 
same time non-Hispanic whites, who are older, more affluent, and have 
fewer children, still represent about two-thirds of the voting 
population. When the beneficiaries of services are largely other people 
and their children, it shouldn't be surprising that voters are less 
passionate about supporting them.

California's experience offers reassurance as well. Some 600,000 
California businesses are now Latino owned; third generation 
homeownership among Latinos is almost equal to the state average. 
Immigrants' children learn English almost as fast as prior generations; 
by the third generation, few speak anything but English. As those 
immigrants and their children become an essential part of California's 
economic and social fabric, the political climate is changing as well. 
In 1982, according to the Field Poll, 75 percent of Californians 
believed immigrants had a negative effect on the state. In a survey 
taken just a month ago, only 45 percent said immigrants were having an 
unfavorable impact, 47 percent said the opposite. (Among registered 
voters, 57 percent said immigrants had a negative impact. But that was 
still a significant change from 1982).

All Californians, regardless of background, are now immigrants to the 
new multi-ethnic society growing up around them. That society demands 
something that's never been done anywhere: Take that great diversity of 
people from a hundred different cultures and bring them all up to the 
demands of a global high-tech economy. In that respect, too, California 
is not different from the rest of the nation, just a generation or two 
ahead.

Peter Schrag is author of ''Paradise Lost: California's Experience, 
America's Future."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/02/californias_lessons_on_immigration/
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