Republican Strategy on Illegal Immigrants Set for Failure

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/us/24iht-letter.html

Arizona Republicans believe they’re riding a big anti-illegal-immigration wave to success in November. Mr. Wilson can regale them with how he pursued a similar strategy in 1994, winning re-election with 55 percent of the vote after embracing Proposition 187 to cut off state-funded education and health programs for the children of illegal immigrants.

Mr. Wilson might also remind his political neighbors that, since then, the only other member of his party to win a major statewide election is the pro-immigration Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was elected governor in a recall vote in 2003. Thanks to Mr. Wilson, the Republican brand is seen as anathema to much of the fast-growing Hispanic vote in California.

“There are a lot of similarities between what’s happening in Arizona and what happened in California in 1994,” said Sergio Bendixen, a political pollster and consultant specializing in the Hispanic vote. “That made California a deep blue state,” or Democratic, “and Republicans are making the same mistake now trying to benefit on anti-immigration.”

There is short-term allure. Polls in Arizona and nationally show support for a measure signed into law by the state’s governor last month that allows police to detain anyone who can’t produce proof of citizenship when stopped for infractions as minor as running a red light, or deemed suspicious. Hispanics know these anti-immigration measures have a partisan coloration. The Arizona law passed on a virtual party-line vote, with no Democrats in support, and only one Republican state senator in opposition. It was signed by a Republican governor.

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