Together,
these piecemeal measures have taken on a significance greater than their
individual parts — a fundamental shift in the relationship between
California and its residents who live in the country illegally. The
various benefits, rights and protections add up to something experts
liken to a kind of California citizenship.
The changes have
occurred with relatively little political rancor, which is all the more
remarkable given the heated national debate about illegal immigration
that has been inflamed by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.
"We've
passed the Rubicon here," said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist.
"This is not an academic debate on the U.S. Senate floor about legal and
illegal and how high you want to build the wall.... [The state] doesn't
have the luxury of being ideological.... The undocumented are not going
anywhere."
Democratic lawmakers and immigration activists, with
diminishing opposition from the GOP, continue to seek new laws and
protections. These measures include cracking down on employers
withholding pay from low-wage workers and expanding state-subsidized
healthcare to adult immigrants without papers.
These
new initiatives face obstacles, but backers say such hurdles center on
the hefty price tags of the programs, not political fallout from the
immigration debate.
California officials have been spurred into
action in part by the lack of action in Washington to overhaul the
nation's immigration system. The stall in Congress
has motivated advocates to push for changes in state laws. But they
acknowledge that their victories are limited without national reform.
"The
reality is, despite the bills that we've done, there are up to 3
million undocumented immigrants that still live in the shadows," said
Assemblyman Luis Alejo
(D-Watsonville), chairman of the Latino Legislative Caucus. "Their
legal status as immigrants does not change — only Congress can do that."
Karthick Ramakrishnan, a public policy professor at UC Riverside, calls what's emerging "the California package":
an array of policies that touch on nearly every aspect of immigrant
life, from healthcare to higher education to protection from federal
immigration enforcement.
Other states have adopted components of
the package; Connecticut, for example, offers in-state tuition and
driver's licenses, and passed legislation known as the Trust Act to help
limit deportations before California did.
But Ramakrishnan said California is unique in how comprehensive its offerings are.
Most of these laws were passed after 2000, and became especially plentiful after 2012, when
President Obama took executive action that shielded from deportation people who were brought to the country illegally.
California
was one of the first states to authorize driver's licenses for those
affected by Obama's order; two years later,
Gov. Jerry Brown
signed a law enabling all immigrants in the U.S. illegally to seek
licenses. The same year, the state expanded in-state tuition for more
students in the country illegally and allowed people without legal
status to obtain law and other professional licenses.
There have
been symbolic wins too, such as a law last year to repeal vestiges of
Proposition 187. The initiative, which overwhelmingly passed in 1994,
denied immigrants in the country illegally access to public services; it
had been mostly overturned by the courts. And on Monday, Brown signed a
measure striking the word "alien" — seen as derogatory to those not
born in the U.S. — from the state's labor laws.
Still, advocates
at times have fallen short. They made the expansion of healthcare
coverage a signature issue in recent years, but the estimated price tag
of such proposals runs in the hundreds of millions of dollars. So far,
they've notched a narrower victory — $40 million in the most recent
state budget to provide Medi-Cal coverage to children younger than 19
regardless of legal status.
Brown also vetoed a measure in 2013
that would have allowed legal immigrant residents to serve on juries,
saying in his veto message that "jury service, like voting, is
quintessentially a prerogative and responsibility of citizenship."
A handful of Democrats — mostly from swing or politically conservative districts — had also opposed that measure.
Brown has appointed a number of noncitizens in the country legally to state agencies and departments, according to his office.
Other
policies have run into criticism. The death last month of Kathryn
Steinle, who authorities say was shot by a Mexican national who had
previously been deported several times, thrust San Francisco's
"sanctuary city" policy into the national political debate. The policy
limits local law enforcement's cooperation with U.S. immigration
officials.
San Francisco adopted sanctuary city status in 1989,
and other major cities in California, including Los Angeles and San
Diego, have followed suit. Under a statewide law passed in 2013, local
law enforcement officials are prohibited from detaining immigrants for
longer than necessary on minor offenses so that they can be turned over
to federal officials for possible deportation.
Steinle's killing
prompted swift criticism of the city's more permissive policy from GOP
presidential candidates and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from
San Francisco. Steinle's parents testified in an emotional hearing on
Capitol Hill and Republican lawmakers in Congress have pushed several
measures to clamp down on sanctuary cities.
In California,
however, the backlash has been notably more muted. One Republican state
senator, Jeff Stone of Temecula, has said he intends to introduce a bill
that would require cities and counties to fully cooperate with federal
immigration authorities. But none of his GOP colleagues in Sacramento
has so far chimed in with calls for action.
The
shift in tone is also evident in Republicans' voting records. Some of
the earlier immigration measures —benefits such as in-state tuition and
financial aid for higher education, for example — were generally opposed
by Republicans, as were measures intended to limit deportations and
enforcement.
A handful of GOP members voted in 2013 in favor of
the driver's license law; several more backed the measure allowing
professional licenses the next year.
This year, a sizable number
of Republicans have voted for a proposal that would grant work permits
to farmworkers living in the country illegally. GOP state Sen. Andy
Vidak of Hanford authored a resolution calling for federal immigration
reform that included a path to citizenship.
"There is a growing
recognition now that we're a state of rich diversity. We're a state of
immigrants and that's a positive," said Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen (R-Modesto), the GOP leader of the Assembly.
Olsen,
who said the national debate around illegal immigration has taken on a
tone that's "too strident, too harsh," said her party is increasingly
open to state action in the absence of immigration reform at the
national level.
Nevertheless, she said some of California's new
laws have gone too far — particularly those that dip into the state's
coffers, like expanding college financial aid or healthcare to those who
are in the country illegally.
The shift in the GOP's tone is
coming in part because of demographic realities — Latinos have surpassed
whites as the largest ethnic group in the state, and California's
sizable Asian population also has large numbers of immigrants.
Recent
polls by the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times and the Public Policy
Institute of California have found broad support for a path to
citizenship for those in the country illegally.
Even those who advocate for stricter immigration laws acknowledge their side has won few victories in recent years.
"Citizens
are out of the loop on these immigration bills," said Joe Guzzardi,
spokesman for the group Californians for Population Stability. "I
question whether or not any of them would have passed on the ballot,
especially the ones dealing with outlays of taxpayer money."
