Republicans used California's 'Juan Crow' law as a model for other states. Now it's dead, and so is the far-right

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/republicans-california-juan-crow-law-repealed

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It was a symbolic stroke of the pen, really – political showmanship at its finest. But when California Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill on Monday that excised a 20-year-old statute from the Golden State’s law books once and for all, he showed anew that California remains the crystal ball of the United States – especially when it comes to the ever-vexing issue of illegal immigration.

Brown’s signature vanquished the last remnants of Proposition 187, the most important piece of state legislation you’ve probably never heard of – an initiative placed on the 1994 California ballot that spawned an ugly legacy. Long before Arizona, Alabama and other states decided to pursue anti-immigrant measures, Prop 187 proved that it was politically possible. And 20 years before Republicans nationwide tried scoring cheap points by railing about unchecked immigration, the California GOP used the initiative to win seats in Sacramento.

A generation before the Tea Party, conservative activists whipped the public into a frenzy to pass Prop 187 by a nearly two-thirds margin.

In the sordid history of voter-approved proposals, Prop 187 was as vile as they came. Tellingly nicknamed “Save Our State”, it appeared at a time when California was in a deep recession and needed a scapegoat to blame (sound familiar?). In this case, the easy target was immigrants – mostly Latino – who were fundamentally changing the demographics of the state to the chagrin of the old gabacho guard.

But the issue of illegal immigration was just a smoke screen to get in touch with California’s inner Juan Crow – an excuse to propose state-sanctioned xenophobia in the most draconian ways imaginable. Prop 187 sought to create an atmosphere of fear and rejection and thereby drive all immigrants out of California. One section would deny public benefits – from public schooling to healthcare and food assistance – to illegal immigrants and their children, whether foreign-born or not. Even more onerous were the provisions that would’ve forced public workers (like teachers), doctors and even clergy members to report anyone they even suspected of being in this country illegally to la migra. Forget about forcing people to show papers; anti-immigrant conservatives didn’t bother with such pleasantries.

Although activists valiantly fought the proposition with marches and boycotts, it would be for naught: immigrant-bashers rode the wave of Newt Gingrich’s national Republican revolution to victory. But the proposition’s success unwittingly became the Waterloo of the far-right in California – and their slow death since should be heeded by any Know Nothings who think that demonizing immigrants is the way to win in the long run.

The backlash against Proposition 187 was immediate. Lawsuits kept it from ever being fully implemented, and a federal judge finally ruled it unconstitutional in 1999. It energized a Latino electorate – yes, John Boehner, there are plenty of legal Latino immigrant and Latinos born here – that came out in larger and larger numbers in subsequent elections, overwhelmingly voting Democrat and leading to de facto one-party rule California for the past decade. (The election of Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2002 was an anomaly that American can blame on all my cousins who loved him in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.)

The proposition also galvanized a generation of Latino politicians with long memories, who have effectively created a sanctuary state in California in subsequent years – offering driver’s licenses to folks without papers, providing in-state tuition for undocumented college students, officially telling la migra to butt out of state affairs – as penance for the sins of their predecessors. It’s these same legislators who crafted the bill that finally, fully repealed Prop 187, portions of which were still officially on the books up despite being unenforceable.

Even California’s white electorate eventually renounced their ways. Though elections in 1996 and 1998 banned affirmative action and bilingual education, respectively, no foreigner-fearing proposition has qualified for the state ballot, let alone passed, since. Nor will xenophobes probably ever get their way again: a Republican-led poll this week showed a majority of Californians favor a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Illegal immigration will always tug at the darker angels of our nature, but California is now at a point where the majority accepts that vilifying the future population of the state does nothing.

So all you other states with Prop 187-inspired laws, or towns inspired to pick up where the statehouses left off? Be warned: go down that hater path, and you just might turn into the next California.

Actually, now that I think of it … please, go ahead and try. The rest of us will sit back and laugh as the last your kind fades into the sunset, and your kids all marry Mexicans.