﻿The 1990s were a time of building anger over immigration.
And it started in a place that might surprise you – California.
-Illegal immigration is a serious problem in California.
Undocumented immigrants coming across the border were concerning to Peter Nunez, a former
federal prosecutor who lived in San Diego. -Every night, the groups would gather on the
Mexican side, waiting for the sun to go down. And they would gather by the hundreds, if not
the thousands. And at a certain point the groups would just sort of charge across the border.
-It’s been dubbed the ‘bonzai dash’ – human waves overwhelm border guards and race
into California. -The number of border patrol agents was totally
inadequate. So, it was totally out of control.
California was in the middle of a recession,
and while the downturn was primarily from the loss of manufacturing jobs,
immigrants quickly got the blame. -Groups worried and angry about the
impact of rampant immigration are multiplying. -People were losing their jobs left and right
and they felt this was because of the influx of illegals coming and taking their jobs.
Robert Kiley was a political consultant. He and his wife started working with
grassroots citizen groups, who were angry that undocumented immigrants
were using taxpayer-funded social services. -When you went to the hospital to the emergency,
they were full of people there that weren’t from this country. They were illegals. They
were getting medical services free. Schools were being impacted, cities were being impacted.
The Kileys helped come up with Proposition 187, a ballot initiative that would deny government
benefits to undocumented immigrants. Peter Nunez became an early supporter.
-The idea was let’s make California an unfriendly place for people who are here illegally,
with the hope that no more would come and that those that were here would leave.
-Their children would be kicked out of public schools. Educators and health
care workers would be required to report anyone they suspect of being illegal.
It was considered an extreme idea by Democrats and some Republicans,
who said it would unfairly target immigrants for the state’s economic trouble.
-The immigrants that were coming here were doing jobs that nobody wanted to do. They
were farm workers. They were people who were janitors. They’re maids.
-Opponents label Proposition 187 immoral and racist.
-Taking innocent children and throwing them out on the streets,
that that somehow is going to solve our illegal immigration problem, is simply fallacious.
-People thought it wasn’t really going to have much of a chance. But it turned out it hit a nerve.
-More than 600,000 Californians have signed petitions calling for a halt to services
illegal residents receive. -And then it got picked up by the politicians.
Republican Governor Pete Wilson, who was in a tight race for re-election,
threw his campaign behind Prop 187. -Pete Wilson, asking the state with the highest
unemployment to give him a second term. Wilson says don’t blame him, blame illegal immigrants.
-The federal government won’t stop them at the border yet requires
us to pay billions to take care of them.
Wilson’s campaign ad felt like a personal attack to Kevin de Leon,
even though he was a citizen. His mother had come to California illegally
before becoming a legal resident. -It was something that was deeply personal
because I witnessed my mother, I witnessed my aunt, who worked their fingers to the bone,
who helped build this economy. -For Hispanics, the largest immigrant group in the
state, it has become a highly emotional issue. -The politicians were scapegoating, demonizing,
looking for someone to blame. That’s not the America that I know.
De Leon didn’t have much experience in politics, but he helped organize anti Prop 187 marches.
-And they all brought Mexican flags. And boy that ticked off a lot of people.
That polarized the issue. Polarized it. Are you for it or against it?
-The tensions just hit a fever pitch. As a young Latino,
I felt unease, I think for the first time in my own city, my own country,
my own state where I grew up. -Yes on 187! Tell them to get out!
-Prop 187 was an expression of unhappiness with a community that was
rapidly becoming less and less white. -USA! USA! USA!
-There was a kind of anxiety, anger, rejection out there in the country.
Proposition 187 and Pete Wilson won in a landslide, but the courts ruled
that only the federal government can regulate immigration, and Prop 187 never went into effect.
-What happened almost immediately after is a surge of citizenship applications and of people
saying they were going to vote. A million new registered voters who were Latino in California.
-I thought for the very first time, perhaps we have to run for office. Enough with the demonization,
enough with the scapegoating. We want to be full-fledged Americans. We want to have our
voices heard. We want to have a say.
Kevin de Leon did run for office,
and 20 years after Prop 187, he became the first Latino president of the state
senate in more than a century. -My story should not be the exception,
my story should be the rule.
Before leaving office in 2018, he and other Latino politicians helped
make California one of the most liberal – and immigrant
friendly – states in the country… a change fueled by a long-term demographic shift in the state.
-It’s not just the rise of the Latino vote that has turned California so blue. From the mid-1990s up
until the early part of this decade there was a mass exodus of white working-class voters.
They went to surrounding states. They were being replaced by younger, poorer, immigrant voters.
And that combined, that mix, is what has made California the bluest state in the union.
Although Proposition 187 never went into effect because states can’t override federal
immigration policies, it added fuel to an immigration crackdown that spread
across the country in the mid-90s. -It was Prop 187 that began the
anti-immigration fever – a fever which has now spread to Washington.
Immigration went to the top of the agenda. The Clinton Administration started ratcheting up
immigration enforcement efforts because they were scared to death of what Prop 187 symbolized.
Calls for additional border barriers, expedited deportations, and for local police to enforce
immigration law started to grow…and it was a Democrat who signed those ideas into law.
That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more
by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice
as many criminal aliens as ever before. -It was a really fundamental change in the way
the federal government goes about enforcing immigration policy
and created the basis for the large scale removals that we’ve experienced in this country.
With the 2016 election of Donald Trump, immigration divided much of the country. And there
were echoes of Proposition 187, from the anger... -Go back to Mexico!
… to the rhetoric. -They come over to the border,
they have the baby in the United States. We now take care of that baby, social security,
medicare, education. Give me a break. -It’s this mix of economic insecurity
combined with dramatic changes in our demography. We’re seeing the story replay itself.
President Joseph Biden has reversed many of the restrictive immigration policies put in
place by the Trump administration, but some immigration advocates want him to do more.
California’s experience in the years since Proposition 187 demonstrates that the impact
of immigration on the U.S. Is hard to predict. -You’re not going to realize what seeds were
being planted. It’s never a simple story of a melting pot and it’s not a simple
story of their taking over. It’s this constant struggle between feelings of being threatened
and trying to create a larger community, and I think 187 was a signpost on that.
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