IMMIGRATION REFORM BACKLASH AIDS DEMOCRATS IN CALIFORNIA AS IT DID NATIONALLY IN BONILLA CONGRESSIONAL RACE IN TEXAS

By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

Early last Spring I was driving up State Route 101, stopping to spend a day in each of the small towns that constituted a portion of the 28th Assembly District where I had a client. Driving down the “main” street of Greenfield (pop 12,600) I found myself behind a demonstration – over 1000 people, mostly young people, were demonstrating against the Republican House version of immigration “reform” on a Tuesday morning. In Greenfield.

This had to involve 15-16% of the entire population of the town.

Now Republicans have pandered to nativist sentiment every election for years. In the 70’s – severely outnumbered in party registrants – they sought out and appealed to those California Democrats with roots in the Confederacy of the old south. Willie Brown’s picture played a starring role in every Republican’s campaign. But the spontaneous uprising in Greenfield told me that was a risky strategy this year.

Were the Greenfield demonstrators, “illegal” immigrants? Some had been, brought to America as infants by farmworker parents. Most of these kids spoke better English than I do and only a pastiche Spanish at home. All had graduated to the legal world years ago – albeit not by legal means in all cases. Each had friends or relatives without current documents who would be subject to felony penalties for simply being in Greenfield – as would any who employed or otherwise “aided and abetted” them under the Republican House proposal.

Jailed and deported for helping grandma?

Schwarzenegger did his best to distance California Republicans from this policy, but he only succeeded in distancing himself from the remainder of California Republicans. Twelve years worth of efforts by the Republicans in wooing Hispanic and Asian immigrants after the noxious campaign of Pete Wilson went down the drain this year.
It doesn’t show yet. But it will.

All the polls will show that our electorate is composed of successful baby boomers: White, with some college education, affluent homeowners. But as a group, they will never have a larger share of the vote than in 2006. Every election year in the future the sons and daughters of Asian and Latino immigrants will increase their share of the vote. And those voters will increasingly reflect the effects of the anti-immigrant sentiment dominant among the older white men of the Republican Party.

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