COLUMN: California First

From Marc Teillon's "The Public Pillroy," Fall '94 Students were asked to walk down the Walk like they normally do on a Friday morning at 9 a.m. The show's managers, failing to realize that the only reason anyone was up that early was to get on television, ended up with a bunch of college students gawking directly into the camera and saying "Hi" to every friend and relative imaginable. Far behind the throng of students, one individual thrust a placard high in the air with hopes of bringing national attention to his cause. The sign was unreadable on the television screen, but the DP later enlightened the campus to the student's purpose -- to protest "the passage of Proposition 187." Once again, national politics have found their way to West Philly and once again, the campus activists have signed up on the wrong side of the debate. Proposition 187 was a ballot initiative passed by an overwhelming majority of California citizens in the recent election. The new law limits welfare -- mainly public education and health benefits -- to U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are eligible only for public assistance in an emergency. Sounds pretty logical, right? If you are in the state illegally, you shouldn't receive the same benefits as those who are legal. If criminals do receive the same status as law-abiding citizens, then there is no incentive for anyone to obey the law. Californians were merely restating the obvious and launching a direct challenge to the Supreme Court ruling that forced Texas, as well as California and everyone else, to give these criminals a free ride on the welfare bus. For years, California has been invaded by masses of illegal immigrants from Mexico. According to Governor Pete Wilson, in the past four years alone, enough illegals have crossed the border to fill a city the size of Oakland. The state has continuously implored the rulers in Washington to live up to their federal duties by policing the borders and protecting the national interest. However, the government has balked at beefing up the border patrol and, instead, has concerned itself with protecting third-world nations from military dictators and ridding every person across the country of the nasty habit of smoking. What were Californians supposed to do? Should they have sat back and watched their state be invaded by leeches ready to drain the system? If someone comes into your home uninvited, are you obligated to feed him, clothe him, and take him to the doctor? California residents, angry at these notions, took matters into their own hands. But ever since Save Our State (SOS), the grass-roots organization behind Proposition 187, started to gain wide-spread support, the left-liberal establishment has launched a smear campaign to lessen the tight grip of this middle-class movement. Charges of "xenophobia" and "nativism" were spewed forth in the papers and over the airwaves. Big Brother images were painted of school teachers and nurses turning in legal Latinos to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The bureaucrats and government officials, whose power is directly correlated to the size of the welfare rolls, tearfully asked how people can turn away thousands of children from public schools and force them to survive on the mean urban streets where gang membership and drug trafficking are the major pursuits. Sam Rivera, president of El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MeCHA) and campus mastermind of the Good Morning, America protest, tried his own hand at fear-mongering with this little quote in the DP. "The illegal immigrants are used as scapegoats and targets to further their [the politicians'] political campaigns. They're attacking a group without representation. There's a definite element of racism." But these and any other stories created to scare people away from the initiative miss the point entirely. The support for Prop 187 has little to do with policy gains or fear of foreigners or the preservation of the Caucasian ethnicity of America. The Californians are simply fed up with their Kantian duty to universal mankind. They are tired of supporting other countries while the problems in their own get worse and worse each day. They want to take care of their own people before they start taking care of everyone else. They are putting California first. Proposition 187 now faces intense deliberation in the courts. The legal battle will last months. But regardless of the rulings, the precedent has been set. The people of America are ready to take their country back. Until Sam Rivera and MeCHA realize this, they better get used to their current lot -- in the back of the pack and behind the times. Marc Teillon is a junior Finance major from Liverpool, New York. The Public Pillory appeared alternate Thursdays this semester.