Prop. 187 is the bad idea that still haunts California

SAN DIEGO -- Does anyone know the year of the California Civil War?

It was 1994. And while you won't find any monuments commemorating the battles, the term "civil war" aptly describes what was happening in the Golden State 25 years ago.

Families were split. There was a hostility in the air.

All because the most populous, and most productive, state in the country decided to rip itself apart at the seams by ungratefully making life miserable for the illegal immigrants who helped keep its economy humming.

Ground zero was Southern California. As a radio talk show host in Los Angeles at the time, and contributor to the opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times, I was in the thick of it.

The war was waged not with bullets but with ballots. It was sparked by a kneejerk, mean-spirited and poorly thought out initiative on the November ballot called Prop. 187.

The state Republican Party got behind the measure, and eventually wound up buried under it.

Why sugarcoat it? Prop. 187 was pure evil. It zeroed in on a powerless and vulnerable group of people -- undocumented immigrants -- and punished them for being so productive as to constantly be in demand. This group worked so hard, without complaint, that U.S. employers -- including the American household -- couldn't stop hiring them. And the more hiring that took place, the more immigrants came to California, which only caused more panic among that segment of the population that feared that a state that was originally the property of Mexico was reverting back to its roots.

The immigration debate is about only one thing: fear -- of changing demographics and the cultural displacement those changes bring with them.

In an American tradition that goes back 250 years, restrictionists always feel the need to demonize immigrants by portraying them as inferior to the native-born. Fill in the blank: Germans, Irish, Chinese, Italians, Greeks, Jews.

And one way to make that argument is to insist that immigrants come here for the freebies -- welfare, housing vouchers, food stamps. It's those superior U.S. citizens, the argument continues, who work hard to pay for it all.

Of course, that's rubbish. The truth is that, if those U.S. citizens were willing to work as hard as their grandparents did to scratch out a living, illegal immigrants would have nothing to do. And they'd head north to Canada.

Prop. 187 was also a twisted perversion of the initiative process, which works best and does the most good when it expands rights for people rather than eliminating them. The measure denied the undocumented and their children access to welfare and other social services, nonemergency medical care, and public schooling.

Never mind that -- undocumented or not -- these people pay sales, payroll and property taxes. In some cases, Uncle Sam even makes it possible for them to pay federal income taxes -- through an ITIN (Individual Taxpayers Identification Number).

In the quarter century that followed, special interest groups in California would try to use the ballot initiative process to end affirmative action, eliminate bilingual education and outlaw same-sex marriage. Oftentimes, it fell to the courts to give them a lesson in Constitution 101.

That's what happened with Prop. 187. Although it was approved by more than 60% of Californians, it never became law because a federal judge struck it down -- just as opponents predicted would happen.

The measure never stood a chance legally. For one thing, it was an improper power grab by a state in an area over which the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction: the regulating of U.S. immigration policy. For another, there was existing case law -- Plyler v. Doe -- which required public schools to open their doors to children regardless of legal status.

The real surprise was that the initiative enjoyed such broad support from a wide variety of California voters, including a majority of African Americans and nearly 20% of Latinos. It was also unexpected that 78% of Latinos would look past their differences and oppose the initiative, in large part because of the overtly racist and alarmist commercials that polluted the television airwaves in the final month leading up to the election. The spots included one infamous ad in which swarms of immigrants were seen making a mad dash across the U.S.-Mexico border checkpoint south of San Diego, as an announcer lamented: "They keep coming ... "

Yes, genius. Because -- see above -- we kept hiring them. And we're still hiring them.

Prop. 187 may be history, but the human dynamic that set the stage for it continues to this day.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, "Navarrette Nation," is available through every podcast app.