Prop. 187: Stick It to the Kids : It’s a demagogue’s dead end and would do nothing to control illegal migration.

So you want to get tough on illegal immigration? Then seal the border and crack down at airports. Require everyone in this country--man, woman or child--to carry a foolproof identity card and mandate jail time for any employer who hires someone not in possession of such a card. Then you’re talking.

But don’t tell me that Proposition 187 will do any of that. The initiative--labeled “save our state” and promoted by Gov. Pete Wilson--is a demagogue’s dead end.

First, it deceives with the notion that the states, rather than the federal government, can stop the flow of illegal immigration. The states can’t, and all the governor is doing is stoking the passions of the moment for short-term political gain.

Immigration is a federal responsibility, and both Republican and Democratic occupants of the White House have looked the other way on the premise that immigration bolsters rather than hurts the economy.

Second, Proposition 187 aims primarily at hurting children, who are not the ones who make the decisions to come here or to leave. The folly of punishing children for their parents’ decisions was recognized in a 1982 Supreme Court ruling that held a very similar Texas law unconstitutional. Penalizing children, the court held, “is an ineffectual--as well as unjust--way of deterring the parent.”

It’s a punk’s game to beat up on kids, but that’s what the governor is doing in supporting Proposition 187. The only new provisions are a ban on immigrant kids going to school along with a bizarre restriction on the purchase of health care by immigrants. The rest of the tough-sounding language is bogus. There are already laws on the books that make it a crime to sell phony green cards; the governor has the authority to provide information to the Immigration and Naturalization Service on immigrants convicted of crimes. Nor are the undocumented now eligible for free non-emergency public health care or welfare.

What the proposition does that is truly stupid is to prevent hospitals that receive public funding from providing care that the undocumented are willing to pay for. Imagine forcing people to forgo timely medical treatment they would pay for, in effect telling them to get seriously ill so they would then be treated free in emergency rooms.

Even more mischievous is the proposition’s goal of tossing out an estimated 300,000 kids, from kindergartners to high school seniors about to graduate. This is a “snitch on kids” measure. Proposition 187 mandates that “Each school district shall provide information to the state superintendent of public instruction, the attorney general of California and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding any enrollee or pupil or parent or guardian attending a public elementary or secondary school in the school district determined or reasonably suspected to be in violation of federal immigration laws.”

You’ve got to turn the kid in to the INS even if he or she is a straight-A student. You’ve also got to turn in the parents who kept that kid hitting the books. Even a child who is a U.S. citizen by virtue of having been born here would have to inform on parents whose status is undocumented.

Hey, we just want to follow the law, Wilson and the other proponents of this mean-spirited measure proclaim. Hardly, when the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that denying undocumented children education violates the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

There are already plenty of state and federal laws and regulations that are constitutional and that, if enforced, would make undocumented labor much less attractive. If the governor was serious, he would crack down on agribusiness, whose profits are directly dependent on the exploitation of undocumented labor. But those same profits bankroll his campaigns, so it’s easier to make children the target.

In 1986, Congress increased fines and jail penalties for employers of the undocumented, but the law has never been enforced. Indeed, Proposition 187 is the brainchild of two top INS officials who failed in this effort: Alan Nelson, a former INS commissioner under Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and Harold Ezell, who was INS Western regional commissioner at the same time. As Carl Shusterman, a former INS prosecutor, pointed out, “not a single employer of illegal aliens went to jail during their tenure.”

Having failed to enforce sound law already on the books, these failed bureaucrats, Wilson included, now seek to impose a new law that fails miserably to deal with the real issues of immigration. But unfortunately, it has already proved wildly successful in playing politics with voters’ fears and children’s lives.