(LAT) Governors' Views From the Border Put Dole on the Spot
Mauricio Banda
News source: Los Angeles Times (Politics)
Source: http://www.latimes.com/
Date: 06/04/96
POLITICS
Monday, June 3, 1996
Governors' Views From the Border Put Dole on the Spot
Politics: Unlike Wilson, Texas' Bush takes friendly
tack with Mexico. Split on immigration is problematic for GOP.
By DAVE LESHER, Times Staff Writer
Remember who your friends are, Texas Gov. George W. Bush
admonished the Republican presidential candidates last summer.
He was not referring to himself or other boosters of the GOP.
Instead, Bush said he was talking about the people of Mexico, who, he
argued, have been offended by his party's tough talk on issues such as
illegal immigration. Without mentioning names, Bush's message was
partly directed at the White House candidate from California at that
time, Gov. Pete Wilson.
Since Bush won office in 1994, the story of border issues in
Texas and California has been a tale of two cultures and a tale of two
governors. Both men represent states with large Latino populations.
Both face challenges posed by illegal immigration. But Wilson and
Bush, who appeared together here in the last few days at a conference
of Mexican and American border-state governors, have taken sharply
opposing positions on relations between the two nations.
Those differences have contributed to a major, although little
noted, election-year split within the Republican Party on issues
regarding immigration, drug smuggling and U.S.-Mexico relations.
As the 1996 presidential campaign takes shape, the presumptive
Republican candidate, Sen. Bob Dole, has had to navigate a difficult
line between the positions of the two governors.
So far, Dole has leaned more toward Wilson than Bush. Dole
backed California's Proposition 187. He also supports legislation
Congress is now considering that would take some of Proposition 187's
provisions nationwide, blocking public education and other assistance
for illegal immigrants.
Beyond the campaign, the opposing positions represented by the
two governors will be a continuing issue for both political parties as
they try to sort out relations with Mexico.
The contrast between Bush's approach and Wilson's "is night and
day," said Raul Hinojosa, head of the North American Immigration and
Development Center at UCLA. "The difference is that the governor of
Texas has recognized the importance of Mexico much more than the
governor of California."
*
During their 1994 election campaigns, Bush appealed for votes by
making friendly relations with Mexico a campaign theme. Wilson, in
contrast, forever tied his political legacy to border and race
relations when his 1994 reelection campaign helped seal the victory of
Proposition 187.
Wilson's campaign played on concerns about Mexico and Mexicans,
as exemplified in a commercial in which the narrator referred to
illegal immigrants with the comment: "They keep coming."
Politically, the differing approaches reflect the political
realities of the two states.
As a percentage of voter turnout, the Latino population in Texas
is nearly twice as large as in California--in part because native-born
citizens make up a notably larger percentage of the Latino population
in Texas. As a result, officials say, a Republican cannot win
statewide office in Texas without substantial support from the Latino
community--something that is not true in California.
In addition, as Bush acknowledged, the budget pressures in
California caused by illegal immigration are greater than in Texas.
Moreover, compared with California, Texas has a much stronger
historic connection to Mexico and its own Latino community, he said.
Economically, trade with Mexico is a major factor in Texas, while
Mexican trade ranks third in California, behind Japan and Canada.
*
Today, Wilson is a well-known figure in Mexico. Leaders there
point to his campaign as the harbinger of an increasingly hostile and
hard-line attitude in the United States.
Last week, Wilson's record was singled out when he arrived in
Santa Fe for the first conference of the 10 border-state governors
from Mexico and the United States since Proposition 187 passed. And
his isolation was enhanced by the fact that all three of his fellow
American border-state governors, all Republicans, had opposed the
California ballot measure.
"Pete Wilson is probably one of the most unpopular Americans in
Mexico," said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter
Registration and Education Project in Los Angeles. "Those other
governors are leading the way in sensitive treatment of important
binational border relations."
For his part, Wilson, in an interview here, blamed much of his
unpopularity in Mexico on a misinterpretation of Proposition 187
caused by a "calculated campaign of character assassination."
The ballot measure was not intended to be a condemnation of
illegal immigrants, Wilson argued. Instead, he said, the initiative
targeted public benefits for illegal immigrants and their children
because those benefits amount to a reward for lawbreaking. The issue,
he argued, is one of fairness.
Illegal immigration "has major consequences that are unfair to
taxpayers and to legal residents and to schoolchildren whose class
size we might have been able to reduce much earlier if we had not been
spending $2 billion per year on the children of illegal immigrants,"
Wilson said. "When you've got consequences of that magnitude, then I
think it would be a terrible dereliction of duty to put your head in
the sand and pretend that there is no problem.
"Do I enjoy offending people? No. But . . . there are days when
you are going to have to do things that are right and necessary, but
unpopular."
Wilson argued that if border states are allowed to stop spending
tax money to educate the children of illegal immigrants, those
students and their parents will return to their home country for
school.
Bush, in contrast, is a strong advocate of public education for
illegal immigrant children, saying he considers it a moral obligation.
In his campaign against Democratic incumbent Ann Richards, which never
raised the issue of illegal immigration on television, Bush argued
that educating undocumented students would reduce crime by ensuring
that residents are job-ready instead of unemployable.
Bush has supported a beefed-up border enforcement program in
Texas, called "Operation Hold the Line." But he makes a distinction
between policies at the border and those directed at the quality of
immigrant life.
Wilson has continued to urge Dole to stress the problematic
aspects of relations with Mexico, particularly when he campaigns in
California.
On the issue of drug smuggling, for example, Wilson urged Dole
this spring to push the Clinton administration to officially cite
Mexico for not adequately helping U.S. authorities crack down on
traffickers.
Bush, however, responded to the issue by writing a letter
telling Dole that any such step "would have devastating effects for
the citizens of the U.S.-Mexico region."
Dole followed Wilson's position, which Clinton rejected.
*
Bush hosted five Mexican governors at his inaugural last year,
and he has visited Mexico six times since he took office, aides said.
"This is a very important aspect, I think, of my being a
successful governor," Bush said in an interview. "It is much easier
for me to discuss illegal immigration with [Chihuahua Gov. Francisco
Javier Barrio] Terrazas because he knows that here's a guy who is
trying to figure out problems in a friendly way rather than in a
divisive way."
As for Wilson, "he had to make the calls he had to make given
his situation. I imagine this is a difference in what is happening in
each respective state."
Copyright Los Angeles Times