PERSPECTIVE ON PROPOSITION 187 : A ‘People’ Treaty Urgently Needed : Immigration was the one issue NAFTA skirted; U.S., Mexico must face it before Californians’ loathing goes national.

The United States and Mexico now have one more thing in common: discontent with each other.

Less than a year ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement was hailed as the advent of multifaceted collaboration between the two countries. California’s passage last week of Proposition 187 flies in the face of that cooperative vision. When voters shouted loud and clear “Mexicans, go home!” they demonstrated the depths of resentment Californians feel toward the burgeoning Mexican presence.

California’s use of a ballot initiative to deny state-funded services to undocumented immigrants underscored the lack of leadership on the immigration issue. Unless Washington makes immigration a matter for bilateral attention, the Proposition 187 debacle will jeopardize the future of U.S.-Mexico relations, the electoral prospects of the Democratic Party and the very spirit of North American integration.

The anti-Mexican sentiment, fueled by the reelection campaign of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, caught Presidents Bill Clinton and Carlos Salinas unprepared. During the marketing of NAFTA, both presidents lobbied intensively, cut back-room deals, courted constituencies on both sides of the border, wooed labor and environmental advocates and invested substantial amounts of political capital for the sake of free trade. In order to assure the safe passage of the treaty, they left the thorniest issue on the integration agenda--immigration--unaddressed. As Proposition 187 grew in appeal north of the border, Salinas was devoting his attention to his post-presidency career. Clinton’s response was the so-called Operation Guardian, which focused on adding to the Border Patrol, a haphazard policy that proved to be too little, too late. The shortsightedness on both sides of the border will be paid for by the thousands of Mexicans living under the Damocles sword of Proposition 187.

This first NAFTA backlash in the ballot box suggests that for many Californians, collaboration with Mexico should be limited to trade and deportation. Many of those who voted in favor of 187 said that they did so to “send a message” to the federal government. What they failed to realize is that in the era of U.S.-Mexico interdependence, domestic politics have become a bilateral affair. The “message” sounds like entrenched racism to Mexicans, who now view 187 as yet another example of the imperial attitudes that fueled the invasions and interventions of the past. Proposition 187 is not perceived in Mexico as a California-specific, faulty piece of legislation that will probably die in the courts, but as nothing short of betrayal by an untrustworthy ally.

Unless the immigration issue is tackled in a constructive way, Mexico and the United States will probably revert to a historic cycle of confrontation and recrimination. Mexican and U.S. leaders who fought for NAFTA now have the political responsibility to hammer out a binational accord that goes beyond trade: an immigration agreement that both sides can live with. Instead of engaging in ineffectual nationalist posturing, incoming President Ernesto Zedillo should assemble a team of immigration negotiators who are as savvy and successful as their NAFTA trade counterparts and beckon the Clinton Administration to the bargaining table. Instead of wallowing in self-doubt and despair, the Democrats should seize the opportunity to develop a binational immigration policy that could unite their party’s divided ranks. By taking the lead on immigration policy, wounded Democrats might recover the initiative they handed over to Republican Mexico-bashers, who would like nothing more than to poison the bilateral relationship.

Conservatives in the United States have realized that the immigration issue can be an effective political battle horse, and in all likelihood, they will attempt to use it to storm the White House in 1996. Unless Proposition 187 is stopped dead in its tracks, the fear and loathing that marked California’s election season will become the trademark of the next presidential campaign. Anti-Mexico sentiments could easily spill over into the Southwest, breeding political polarization and bringing to an end a short-lived period of harmony in U.S.-Mexico relations.

If its advocates were correct, if NAFTA was about creating a new partnership between Mexico and the United States, Proposition 187 is its first real test. NAFTA was conceived to avoid discrimination against goods. A U.S.-Mexico treaty on immigration should be devised to prevent discrimination against people.

The U.S.-Mexico border has often been described as an open wound. NAFTA was expected to heal it, albeit through a long, slow and imperfect scarring process, by creating a basic framework for cooperation between the two countries. But if California’s intemperance inaugurates yet another era in which, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, men, women and children are judged not by the content of their character but by the color of their skin, the wound that binds Mexico and the United States may never heal.