Well I am just shocked, shocked to see that the wingnuts are using swine flu to bash immigrants. As I predicted over the weekend as soon as I heard that there was a swine flu issue in Mexico, the usual suspects who believe that anyone from south of the border is inherently inferior, criminal, disease-ridden and just plain subhuman are using this issue to try again to rally Americans to hate their neighbors, whether they live next door or across an artificial line.

This is a sadly familiar story to those of us who study California history. As recounted in Nayan Shah's excellent book Contagious Divides, a 1905 plague epidemic in San Francisco was blamed on the city's Chinese residents, and became an occasion to physically quarantine the entire neighborhood. Serious proposals to expel the entire Chinese population were considered, and for about four decades afterward every Chinese person who came to the US was quarantined on Angel Island, in bleak and often unsanitary conditions.

Hell, even during the Black Death in the 1300s Europe was full of conspiracy theories blaming Jews for the plague, a meme that unfortunately persevered well into the 20th century, coming to a head in Hitler's Germany.

As usual, immigrant bashing is done by right-wing populists unwilling to admit that their ideology of subservience to wealth and power is actually what's behind the problem. In this case factory farms appear to have played a significant role in causing and spreading the epidemic. That's not a problem unique to Mexico - anyone who's read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation knows that similar conditions exist right here in the good ol' US of A.

There are other aspects of this issue that suggest the assumed superiority of American over Mexican is utterly baseless. While waiting in the San José Airport this morning I caught a report on a Texas town's concerns over swine flu. One man who came down with the flu - and who quickly recovered - said "well I think we just have a better health care system here than they do down there."

As many who have studied American pandemic preparedness are all too aware, of course, this is bollocks - our health care system is in tatters and would be totally unable to handle a serious flu epidemic. There too, the wingnuts blame immigrants, but the truth is that the system fails the native-born just as often, and for the same reason - because profit has been emphasized over safety and health. God forbid we actually focus on that!

That conservatives would be so quick to repeat these sordid lies should surprise no one, but it should outrage everyone.

The 1994 election was a turning point for California. Pete Wilson cruised to reelection and Republicans won 40 seats in the Assembly in a year friendly for Republicans around the country. But that election sowed the seeds of the Republicans' downfall in California, turning the state deep blue and sending the Republican Party into a death spiral.

The reason was Proposition 187. Scapegoating immigrants for economic problems is one of *the* most common political phenomena in California history, as the Chinese, the Japanese, the Filipinos, the Okies, and Latinos can tell you. The 1990s saw an upswing in immigrant-bashing and in 1994 a group of Orange County Republicans put on the ballot this attack on the rights of the undocumented. Prop 187 would have denied schooling, medical care and other social services to undocumented immigrants and their families.

It passed by a large margin in November 1994, but was never implemented. Courts granted injunctions against its enforcement, and in early 1999 when Gray Davis became governor, the state's appeals to uphold the initiative were dropped.

It was a pyrrhic victory for Republicans. The anti-Latino attitudes voiced by many Prop 187 supporters drove California Latinos into the arms of the Democratic Party. Voter registration soared, and many Latino immigrants became citizens to protect their rights at the ballot box. Since the 1996 election Republican fortunes have been in terminal decline in California, a party that has become a Zombie Death Cult more interested in purity fights than addressing California's needs.

Of course, anti-immigrant sentiment never really went away after 1994. By 2003 it had returned and played a role in Davis' recall, as the recession led to renewed immigrant-bashing and Arnold Schwarzenegger ran on the "driver's licenses" issue. Still, Arnold had little appetite for actually pushing anti-immigrant legislation while governor, and somewhat surprisingly, the anti-immigrant movement never tried to go to the ballot to revive Prop 187 or otherwise target the undocumented.

Until now.

Right-wingers have in circulation an initiative to raise Prop 187 from the dead:

Requires applicants for state, local, and state-administered federal aid to verify lawful presence in United States. Requires applications for public benefits submitted by undocumented parents on behalf of their lawful-resident children to be given to federal authorities. Denies birth certificates to children born to undocumented parents unless mother provides fingerprint and other information to be given to federal authorities. Limits benefits for children in child-only CalWORKS cases to federal minimum. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: If upheld in the courts, unknown potential one-time and ongoing costs to state and local governments due to changes in the application process for public benefits as well as changes in the way birth certificates are issued. These costs would be partly offset by additional new fees for certain birth certificates. Unknown, but probably minor, state and local law enforcement costs due to provisions in the measure creating new crimes, such as for the filing of false affidavits to obtain public benefits. If upheld in the courts, state savings of over $1 billion annually from prohibiting child-only CalWORKs cases, partially offset by state and county costs for children who shifted to Foster Care or county general assistance programs. Further unknown savings from the provisions changing the application processes for public benefits. (09-0004.)

This is not just a revival of Prop 187, of course - it goes after CalWORKS as well, an effort to scale back the safety net couched in an attack on the children of the undocumented. This is an especially sick and unconscionable attack on Californians in a time of crisis, especially the deliberate targeting of children in order to cause them pain and suffering.

Obviously this is part of the Republicans' 2010 election strategy. Despite the fact that earlier efforts in 2006 to ride anti-immigrant sentiment to victory failed spectacularly for Republicans, and despite the massive political price they paid after 1994 for backing Prop 187, they are at it again.

And although we'd like to think that Californians would reject this kind of horrific attack on our neighbors and community members, the wide margin of victory for Prop 187 in 1994, the passage of Prop 8 last fall, and the *long* history of immigrant scapegoating in California suggests to me that these have a very high chance of passage.

Progressives and Democrats will have to start organizing NOW to fight this, starting with a "do not sign" campaign.

And in a related move, George Runner has an initiative in circulation to mandate voters bring a photo ID to the polls. This maneuver has been used by Republicans to suppress the vote in several other states, including Georgia, and is of dubious constitutionality. I include it here because Runner is almost certainly going to sell this as a crackdown on the undocumented, who don't have that kind of photo ID.

Republicans nationally and here in California appear determined to treat 2010 like 1994. Progressives and Democrats need to be ready to fight back.