NEWS ANALYSIS / CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : Charting Wilson’s Transformation on Immigration

WASHINGTON —  Pete Wilson is mad as hell about illegal immigration. Sound familiar? California voters can hardly avoid hearing that clear, simple message.

The grim-faced, doughty governor flays the federal government for failed immigration polices, he advocates a state ID card, he warns that the state is being crushed by the financial and social costs of millions of immigrants sweeping across the Mexican border. He also vigorously supports Proposition 187, the November ballot measure to deny health and education benefits to illegal immigrants.

In election year 1994, there is no question where Gov. Wilson stands on illegal immigration. But back in the mid-1980s, U.S. Sen. Wilson stressed a different set of views. His words and deeds from that era stand in vivid contrast to the anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric that forms the central pillar of his reelection campaign.

Then, Wilson subscribed to the argument that California growers needed large numbers of temporary migrant workers to bring in the state’s bountiful crops. With the perseverance he is known for, Wilson worked hard to ensure the steady flow of such cheap labor.

Political leaders often shift and shade their platforms to adapt to changing moods in the electorate and to changing circumstances in society. But Wilson’s current focus against illegal immigration leaves him vulnerable to charges from critics that he has undergone a recent conversion on the state’s most emotional issue.

His Democratic gubernatorial challenger, state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, has been one ready critic: “Pete Wilson is the deadbeat dad of illegal immigration and we have the DNA to prove it.”

Brown has seized upon Wilson’s well-marked trail of legislative efforts and charged him with hypocrisy--flip-flopping on the immigration issue because it suits the California political environment in which he seeks reelection.

Wilson insists his record has remained steady over the years and that Brown is distorting it for her own desperate political needs.

“His position has not evolved,” said Leslie Goodman, a Wilson immigration spokesman. “What has changed is an . . . increase in public anger (over the issue) that has strengthened his resolve. To suggest his position has changed is a phony charge.”

The record shows that as senator, Wilson was a hero to California agricultural interests for his tough legislative fight to include a guest-worker program in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), the pivotal reform legislation that instituted employer sanctions and offered amnesty to many undocumented workers already in the country.

Growers had long fought employer sanctions as a threat to their cheap labor pool of undocumented workers. But in the 1980s the growers realized that Congress was warming to the concept. In a strategic shift, they focused on getting a guest worker provision inserted in the bill.

Wilson was their legislative spear carrier in the Senate.

“Sen. Wilson was a tireless and skillful champion (of the guest worker program) throughout the legislative process in the face of intense criticism,” according to a December, 1986, newsletter of the Farm Labor Alliance, a coalition of agricultural groups. “In summary, agriculture owes Sen. Wilson its gratitude for protecting its interests. . . .”

Wilson benefited from his relationship with agricultural interests. He had received nearly $520,000 from farm-related political action committees in the 1980s, according to the National Library on Money and Politics in Washington.

To understand Wilson’s record on illegal immigration in the 1980s, it is necessary to understand how California has changed over the last 10 years.

California in the 1980s--pre-recession, pre-base closings, pre-defense cuts--was a different world economically. The state’s reliance on undocumented workers to perform a wide variety of tasks--many tied to the state’s enormous agricultural enterprises--was widely accepted.

When the economy was more robust, the benefits of hiring illegal immigrants seemed to outweigh the potential problems caused by a large influx of undocumented temporary workers.

In 1982, while campaigning for the Republican nomination for his first term in the Senate, Wilson told a Costa Mesa real estate gathering:

“I deplore the (Immigration and Naturalization Service) raids on farms here in the roundup of illegal aliens. Our economy needs such workers, and I’m for a guest worker program to allow such farmhands to come in to do the work when Americans won’t take the jobs.” Wilson also criticized a Reagan Administration proposal to bring in only 50,000 Mexican guest workers.

Once in the Senate, Wilson co-authored a 1983 provision that required the INS to get warrants from judges before checking fieldworkers’ citizenship. The INS fought the move, saying it would all but end enforcement efforts. But Wilson said it was necessary to provide “timely harvests” and argued that agriculture was being singled out for such raids.

Wilson also made good on his campaign promise about the guest worker program, even though the Reagan Administration’s INS commissioner, Alan Nelson, who is one of the sponsors of Proposition 187, viewed the growers’ complaint about labor shortages with skepticism. “There’s been some panic, which may or not be based on reality, and some hype,” Nelson was quoted at the time.

In 1985, Wilson threatened to filibuster the immigration reform bill if the Senate refused to streamline procedures that growers had to follow in order to import such workers.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), had long fought for restrictions on the numbers of immigrants allowed into the United States and strongly opposed including the guest worker plan in the bill.

But it was Wilson, the freshman Republican senator from California, who led the floor fight to tack on some form of guest worker program.

He pushed for an amendment that would allow 350,000 temporary farm workers in the country. It was defeated 50-48 on Sept. 13, 1985. But five days later, after intense lobbying from Wilson and agricultural interests, the Senate reversed itself and approved the amendment 51 to 44.

Simpson, battle-scarred after years of pushing for immigration reforms, said the program would “repeat the most serious errors we have ever made in our immigration policy.”

But Wilson’s plan faced strong opposition in the House because it required that the workers return home each year, withheld a portion of their wages until they did so and prohibited workers from obtaining public benefits.

House Democrats, fearing that the workers would be easily exploited under those rules, devised a more liberal plan--the Special Agricultural Workers (SAW) program--that offered more protection and legal residency to the workers. Today, Wilson blames the changes in the House for all the faults in the special workers program.

Nevertheless, Wilson, according to the Farm Labor Alliance newsletter, had to head off a last-minute filibuster from Senate conservatives up in arms over the program.

The immigration bill, including the special workers program, passed the Senate on Oct. 17, 1986.

But much went wrong with the Immigration Reform and Control Act. Ripe for fraud and abuse, the special workers program attracted more than 1 million seasonal workers, most locating in California.

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), who helped hammer out the compromise on the program, recalled Wilson’s legislative pragmatism on the issue.

“Wilson as a senator wanted one primary thing out of the immigration law: that agriculture could get their foreign workers,” Berman said. With the “Wilson amendment” facing strong opposition, he “signed on (to the special worker program), without ever uttering a word about (the economic effects) to counties and cities. What was done then helped create the problems that he lambastes now,” Berman said.

After the immigration reform law was enacted, Wilson wrote to President Reagan in October, 1987, asking him to ease the eligibility for special worker program. The rules required the workers to present proof that they had worked a certain number of days harvesting perishable crops before entering the United States.

Wilson wrote that the rules were “cumbersome” and urged that illegal workers be allowed entry if they make a “non-frivolous” application for the special status by agreeing to provide necessary documentation later. Wilson said relaxation of the rules was needed to “avoid the disaster of fruit rotting on the trees.”

Although it may seem inconceivable in today’s political atmosphere, Wilson, as a 1990 gubernatorial candidate, was eager to tout his Senate efforts on behalf of agricultural interests--”a political coup,” a campaign booklet proclaimed.

But once Wilson became governor, his immigration stance began to harden. Faced with dire state budget realities, a faltering economy and an increasingly angry electorate, Wilson began to view the immigration as a major source of the state’s economic problems.

In a July, 1991, letter to members, the Federation for American Immigration Reform highlighted Wilson’s change of heart. The federation, which advocates a moratorium on legal immigration, is one of the most conservative immigration reform groups.

The letter, signed by Executive Director Dan Stein, praised Wilson for calling immigration a “prime contributor to California’s and the nation’s budget woes.”

But the group also tweaked Wilson for his 1985 amendment, which the federation strongly opposed, “that allowed 1.3 million illegal alien seasonal agricultural workers to qualify for amnesty.”

The federation said Wilson had “learned the hard way how federal inattention to immigration policy can cause havoc with state treasuries. . . . We wish he had listened to our warnings and predictions years ago.”

In early August, 1993, with his popularity at record lows and facing tough prospects for reelection, Gov. Wilson outlined a sweeping immigration reform plan that called for a constitutional amendment to deny citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal residents. He also called on the federal government to cut off health and education benefits for illegal immigrants and prepare a tamper-proof identification card.

Wilson’s transformation was complete: He had emerged as one of the most vociferous foes of illegal immigration on the national stage.

Goodman, the Wilson spokesman, vigorously defends Wilson against the contention that his immigration views have shifted over the years.

“Most important, the guest worker program Pete Wilson proposed was never voted on in the House and never became law. It was hijacked, liberalized and forced to the House floor for vote. Yes, he voted for the final IRCA (that contained the special worker program), but do you forgo (voting for) the entire package, when it has employer sanctions for the first time and INS budget increases?

“This was a hold-your-nose-and-vote situation. The suggestion that his pursuit of a temporary guest worker program (then) reflects a change in attitude (now) is simply untrue,” Goodman said.

And Berman’s recollection? Goodman has called the liberal Democrat “part of the cabal that . . . cut a back-room deal to create the loophole which, ironically, Wilson is wrongly accused by his critics of having created.”

Now that Wilson is playing immigration hard ball, the federation’s Stein takes a mellower view.

“He didn’t have a change of heart, he had a change of perspective. Once you preside over the financial health of a state like California, you recognize very quickly that you can’t be a good governor without raising the (immigration) issue. To cast Wilson as flip-flopping on immigration is simply not fair.”