Other opponents delighted in the irony of Pfaelzer using the federal welfare overhaul--a law championed by Wilson and Republican leaders--as a legal battering ram against Proposition 187, which also had strong GOP backing.
"Gov. Wilson has been hoisted on his own petard," said Peter Schey of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.
Proposition 187 differs substantially from the new federal welfare law passed last year. The California measure is more restrictive in some respects and less stringent in others.
A major difference involves education. Proposition 187 would have barred illegal immigrants from attending public schools, in clear violation of the Supreme Court's landmark 1982 Plyler vs. Doe decision. The federal law contained no such ban.
In other arenas, Proposition 187 would have made illegal immigrants ineligible for all publicly funded, nonemergency medical treatment. The federal welfare law allows access to immunizations and treatment of infectious diseases. Also, the federal law does not mandate that local health care workers, educators and police inform on suspected illegal immigrants.
But, in some ways, the federal welfare law went further. Proposition 187 focused only on illegal immigrants, while the new federal statute makes many legal noncitizens ineligible for a host of public benefits, including disability payments and food stamps. And the federal law generally bars state and local governments from providing nonemergency aid to "not qualified" noncitizens--a broad category that encompasses both illegal immigrants and many categories of temporary legal residents.
Responding to that federal mandate, the Wilson administration is proceeding with new rules that will eventually make illegal immigrants ineligible for hundreds of state services, from prenatal care to business contracts to fishing licenses. Once in place, those restrictions may represent one of the lasting legacies of Proposition 187, which arose from the suburbs of Los Angeles at a time when massive immigration, especially from Mexico and Central America, was drastically altering the region's demographic makeup.
The movement was born in 1993 as the Save Our State campaign, garnering support at the grass-roots level and receiving technical assistance from a former commissioner and Western states chief for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. But Proposition 187 did not take off in the public consciousness until the Republican Party pumped money into a flagging signature-gathering effort and Wilson, then in the midst of what seemed a tough reelection effort, made it a keystone of his campaign.
