A pair of Orange County representatives joined Proposition 187 organizer Barbara Coe at a rally on the Capitol steps Tuesday to stress what they said was the extra burden illegal immigrants place on social services in this country.

Republican Rep. Ed Royce from Fullerton--who has been linked in news account to a woman who may have worked for him while illegally in the U.S. during the 1980s--told about 50 immigration issue activists that illegal immigrants pose a threat to the prosperity that attracts them to the United States in the first place.

“As a free nation, we have both the right and the responsibility to take control of our border,” he said.

Activists from Orange County’s American Conservative Party and Alternative Focus, both groups concerned with immigration, have joined similar organizations from around the country in Washington for Immigration Reform Awareness Week in an effort to highlight immigration issues with lawmakers.


On Monday, about 100 demonstrators from the groups picketed in front of the White House to protest what they call a swelling population of illegal immigrants in the country. They will emphasize the need to stem illegal immigration at a press conference today.

“This is really a historical moment for us. We’ve broken the monopoly of our opposition,” said Patrick Skain, who coordinates the Bay Area Coalition for Immigration Reform in San Francisco.

Skain named groups such as the El Paso, Texas-based League of United Latin American Citizens Foundation and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund as the opposition.

Officials of the groups don’t agree with his analysis.


“There has been a great surge of popular thinking about immigration reform, but in reality I believe the tide is shifting the other way,” said Larry Trejo, a LULAC spokesman. “People who are for the American way of life are gaining ground on those who would make us an isolationist nation.”

Trejo said the Washington campaign of the Federation for American Immigration Reform isn’t a threat to the work of his organization, which is now in its 65th year. He charges backers of the immigration movement as being Hispanic-bashers with their push for measures limiting services to illegal immigrants.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, seemed sensitive to Trejo’s criticism at times, striking a more conciliatory note by calling the immigration reform effort a “love-based movement” and not aimed at any particular group of people.

But the proponent of tough immigration control also sounded a harsher tone. He won cheers from the crowd when he called it immoral for government-provided medical services to go to people living in the country illegally.


The money “should be spent for our people, not some cockamamie liberal idea that we should spend money on everybody in this world,” he said.

Coe, an Orange County resident who helped organize the support behind the Proposition 187 ballot initiative to limit government services to illegal immigrants, charged that immigrants cross the border at the financial, social and cultural expense of Americans.

A report from a bipartisan House task force on immigration is due later this month to provide suggestions for a House subcommittee working on legislation that Republicans say will solve the problem. The House is expected to vote on a bill in mid-July.

Royce was unavailable to comment on published reports Tuesday that said he employed an illegal immigrant during the 1980s when such an action was a violation of the law.


The news reports cited letters written by Royce on behalf of America Bowen, urging her consideration for a program that could grant her U.S. citizenship. America Bowen is the wife of Bill Bowen, an American citizen, the story reports. The reports indicate Royce acknowledges hiring Bill Bowen but denies knowing America Bowen was an illegal immigrant.

In 1987, when the Bowens did odd jobs around the Royces’ house, according to the news account, a law making it illegal to hire anyone who had entered the country illegally had been in effect for one year.