PROPOSITION 187: Anti-Immigration Efforts Faltering
When Gov. Gray Davis (D) agreed to a settlement last year that overturned Proposition 187 -- a measure that would deny illegal immigrants social services and non-emergency medical care -- supporters of the measure "vowed to fight back with a recall, another initiative and a lawsuit," the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. However, the drive to recall Davis failed to gather the 1 million signatures required to place it on the November ballot. But Glenn Spencer of Voice of Citizens Together and American Patrol said his group will "try again with a more organized effort." He added, "We feel the mistake we made, if anything, is that we went off half-cocked. We were pretty angry." Meanwhile, the "emotional battle" over Proposition 187 "continues to echo in legislative proposals" to expand state public services, including medical care, to legal and illegal immigrants. Last year, Davis signed a bill that made "permanent aid already being provided" for two groups of illegal immigrants: medical care for pregnant women, costing about $63 million annually for 73,000 pregnancies, and nursing home services, which cost $17 million for roughly 320 people. To soften the edges of the anti- immigration initiative, supporters of Proposition 187 said the they had "higher hopes for a new and milder initiative that would require a count of children of illegal immigrants in public schools, but unlike Proposition 187 would not expel them." Ron Price, chair of Proposition 187 sponsor Save Our State, plans to gather signatures for the new initiative and a companion measure "requiring state officials to defend the new initiative in court" (Mendel, 3/19).
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