Plan Would Cut Aid For Illegal Aliens Initiative Similar To Controversial California Law

Karen Small worries her small-town lifestyle as a baker’s wife, raising four kids in rural Skagit County, won’t be around for long.

Small, 60, says she loves America’s diversity but fears American culture is being overwhelmed by uncontrolled immigration.

She believes jobs and social services are being soaked up by illegal aliens who have no right to be here, while their children are taking up space in overburdened, underfunded public schools.

So Small filed an initiative last month she hopes will change things.

The measure, Initiative 653, would declare illegal aliens ineligible for statefunded public health services, welfare programs and education in the public schools, including state colleges and universities.

It also would require teachers and state workers to report any “apparent illegal aliens” to state and federal immigration authorities.

The measure is nearly identical to Proposition 187, approved by California voters last November. That measure faces nearly a dozen court challenges, so it has not been put into effect.

The California measure is criticized as blatant discrimination. So is Washington’s Initiative 653.

“It’s a divisive initiative that targets people of color or anyone who looks foreign. After all, how do you find an apparent undocumented Canadian?” asked Vicky Stifter of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project in Seattle.

Asked if the initiative is racist, Small said, “It is racist, but it’s slanted toward the American citizen.

“We are losing our rights and privileges. I want to be able to walk safely in my town. I don’t want people coming in that there aren’t jobs for, to pay taxes for people that aren’t working. Our country is becoming too full for everyone to have a good standard of living.”

U.S. citizens are suffering because of overgenerosity toward illegal aliens, Small said.

“We have kids in school being denied a good education. There are too many children and not enough money, and we have kids that don’t know our language and expect us to teach them. Our American kids are suffering for it.”

She called her own ancestors “a good bunch” who came from Ireland and England in the 1600s and later became Mormon pioneers.

Small said she fears American culture will be “swallowed up.”

There are an estimated 30,000 undocumented people in Washington state, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service says.

Illegal immigrants already are barred by federal and state law from receiving most health and welfare services.

Judith Billings, state superintendent of public instruction, said the school system is both legally and morally bound to provide a public education for all children. Exclusion of illegal immigrants from public schools is prohibited under a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling and the state constitution.

“Children are the responsibility of all of us,” Billings said. “We must do the best we can by them if we wish a secure future as a society that values and respects one another. It is wrong to deny kids an education because their parents came to this country illegally.”

The state also provides limited health services and income assistance to undocumented people.

The state spent $9.3 million in 1994 on prenatal care, labor and delivery services and two months of postnatal care for 2,704 undocumented women, state records show.

More than $5 million also was spent on health services for children, including undocumented kids, in 1994. By federal law, undocumented people also must be given emergency care in hospitals.

The state also allows undocumented people to collect welfare for up to one month per year for emergency reasons. The program costs $1.4 million in state tax money every year, including all legal residents and illegal aliens, records show.

The state Department of Corrections will spend more than $34 million this biennium incarcerating undocumented criminals, records show.

Robert Kiley, top political strategist for California’s Proposition 187, said that measure was passed, despite $4.5 million spent by opponents, because voters resent spending tax dollars on illegal aliens.

Backers of Proposition 187 spent $350,000, raised mostly from the state Republican Party and senior citizens, Kiley said. The measure was strongly supported by GOP Gov. Pete Wilson, but it was opposed by nearly every major lobbying group in the state.

Conservative talk-radio hosts saved the measure, Kiley said. “We never could have done it without them.”

Kiley has formed a national organization, based in Texas, to push similar measures. So far, Arizona and Florida have joined Washington in filing illegal alien initiatives.

But Small admitted Initiative 653’s prospects are dim. She got her petitions printed just last week and was making plans to get them in the hands of volunteers.

Small said she won’t use paid signature-gatherers. If the measure doesn’t qualify for the November ballot, Small said, she will try again, resubmitting the measure as an initiative to the 1996 Legislature.