http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3963731.html
June 13, 2006, 2:39AM

Ex-California governor says GOP timid on immigration
Wilson claims lawmakers fear being called racist


By GEBE MARTINEZ
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - The political godfather of California's initiatives against illegal immigrants in the 1990s said Monday that lawmakers who favor citizenship opportunities for such workers do so only because they are afraid of being labeled racists and nativists.

"I think a great many Republicans have been intimidated, and I, frankly, am quite disappointed," former California Gov. Pete Wilson said during a speech at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.

Calling illegal immigration a threat to the nation's security and culture, the Republican also called for a fence to be built along the entire 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border before a path to citizenship is offered to the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country.
Wilson refrained from directly criticizing President Bush, a longtime friend who has appointed him to foreign policy advisory boards. Bush supports a guest worker program and other facets of the Senate bill that includes an "earned citizenship"program.

Instead, Wilson directed his criticism at the Senate.

"I don't trust the Senate. They are looking for another stopgap. They are temporizing. They are not facing the issue because it's politically unpalatable," said Wilson, also a former senator.

Wilson added that advocates of immigration controls believe their tax dollars are being used to support services for illegal immigrants.

"That is not racist, it is not nativist," he said.

As governor, Wilson pushed for Prop. 187, a 1994 initiative that denied state funding for health care and education services to illegal immigrants. The initiative passed but was overturned by a federal court; California has been a safe Democratic state in presidential elections since then.

In the Los Angeles Times, the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, recently said Wilson fell prey to the idea of short-term political advantage when he backed the initiative.

"I know he felt he was doing the right thing, but matters are worse now and the Republican Party is now the minority party in California," Bush said.

Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, agreed that an enforcement-only bill without Bush's approach will hurt the party's outreach to Hispanics.

"One of the most dangerous pitfalls facing the Republican Party this year is that the party does again on a national scale what it did in California under Pete Wilson," she said.

The problem in California was the anti-Hispanic tone that enveloped the initiative campaign, Jacoby added. She recalled the television ad that contained night vision video of illegal border crossings and the narrator's deep voice warning: "They keep coming."

Wilson discounted punditry that suggests Republicans were hurt by the Prop. 187 campaign. He also defended the ad.

"Liberal critics of that ad may not have liked it then or now, but it is beyond dispute. They did keep coming," he said.gebe.martinez@chron.com