THE LIE THIS TIME
Ramon Delgadillo's Crucifixion, now on display at the new Arizona Latino Arts and Cultural Center in downtown Phoenix.
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One of the most insidious myths of the anti-immigrant movement is that the undocumented receive truckloads of public assistance, that they are a drain on the system, costing the American public untold billions.
I heard this vicious lie repeated over and over again during a nativist rally on the Arizona Capitol lawn in mid-November, when motorcycle thugs — members of Riders Against Illegal Aliens — scapegoated Mexican immigrants for everything from the financial crisis to high unemployment to the federal deficit to the housing bubble.
I'm surprised they didn't try blaming Mexicans for the ravages of old age and cancer while they were at it.
When I countered this public-benefits lie with the simple fact that the undocumented are barred from federal welfare rolls, I was scoffed at. As it was with Ronald Reagan's "welfare queens," the lie persists even when there's nothing to back it up. That's because it's something idiots like those at the Capitol that day want to believe as rationale for their hateful bigotry.
Thing is, even the nativist intellectuals (if you can call them that) over at the Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform accept the fact that the undocumented are ineligible for all but emergency assistance. In an unsigned document on FAIR's Web site titled "Immigration and Welfare," FAIR admits as much with the following statement:
"Illegal immigrants are barred from the following federal public benefits: grants, contracts, loans, licenses, retirement, welfare, health, disability, public or assisted housing, post-secondary education, food assistance, and unemployment benefits. States are barred from providing state or locally funded benefits to illegal immigrants unless a state law is enacted granting such authority."
Why, it was none other than that dangerous liberal Democrat President Bill Clinton who made these restrictions a reality by signing into law the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. The welfare-reform law was the product of a Republican Congress, and had its seeds in Newt Gingrich's Contract with America.
Despite FAIR's admission, it spends most of the same online document bashing the public benefits that legal immigrants are still entitled to. Legal, illegal — it doesn't matter to nativists. That's why they're nativists, because contrary to their claims, they generally despise all immigrants — particularly if the newcomers are not as white as the Pillsbury Doughboy.
But like a bad virus, you can't keep a good lie down. Enter Proposition 200, which passed in 2004 with 56 percent of the vote and redundantly prevented illegal immigrants from obtaining public benefits, as well as required proof of citizenship at the polls. The new law made it a class 2 misdemeanor for government workers not to report suspected violations of federal immigration law, and it established what legal beagles call "a private right of action." That is, it gave citizens the opportunity to sue "any agent or agency of this state or its political subdivisions to remedy any violation" of the law.
Prop 200 was backed by a pack of vicious racists and extremist nativists, including ex-Kia dealer Rusty Childress, founder of United for a Sovereign America, which has accepted neo-Nazis into its ranks, and Cuban-born bigot Virginia Abernathy, who's denied being a racist, though she once told the Arizona Republic, "I'm in favor of separatism," and that each ethnic group is "happier with its own kind."
That Abernathy was the chair of the national advisory board for the Prop 200 group Protect Arizona Now and that neo-Nazi hugger and state Senator Russell Pearce was the co-author of the prop should tell you everything you need to know.
In response to an inquiry from the director of the state's Medicaid program, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, Attorney General Terry Goddard issued an opinion shortly after the prop's passage stating that the law's application to "state and local public benefits that are not federally mandated" indicated just that — state and local assistance. The prop did not apply to federally mandated programs such as AHCCCS, which provides medical care to the poor.
Goddard's opinion observed that the law amended Title 46 of the Arizona legal code, which deals with state and local benefits, and that access to AHCCCS was already denied illegal immigrants by 1996 federal welfare reform. The opinion also noted a similar California law, Prop 187, passed in 1994, was overruled by a federal district court.
Prop 200 backers sued, claiming erroneously that the state was not implementing the law properly. The case is still in court, though the Prop 200 law effectively has been rendered moot by a new, broader version of the same thing, known as HB2008, which was sneaked through the Legislature's special session in July. This time, Pearce and his allies made sure the new law amended Title 1 of the Arizona Revised Statutes. That's the section dealing with "general provisions," so it could have a potentially wide impact.
How wide? So wide that cities and towns might have to worry about reporting suspected illegal immigrants who use city parks or have their homes saved by firefighters. Not only would government employees be criminally liable, with a possible four months in the slammer for a class 2 misdemeanor, state and county agencies and cities and towns could be sued by any nativist nutcase with an ax to grind.
