From the WSJ Opinion Archives
CROSS COUNTRY
ILLEGAL ALIENS! (in Arkansas)
Fortunately, Mike Huckabee is no Orval Faubus
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.--Arkansas is fighting for its soul again. It feels a little like 1957, when the Crisis of Central High became a permanent footnote in the history of the American civil rights movement. That confrontation was a turning point in the state's history, and the state turned the wrong way.
It didn't have to happen. Arkansas had some forward-looking politicians, like Rep. Brooks Hays and former governor Sid McMath. But it also had Orval Faubus, a governor who very much wanted a third term, and saw a way to get it: by exploiting the race issue. Instead of confronting the mob at Central High, he turned back the Little Rock Nine. And he was rewarded not just with a third term in the governor's office but six terms in all.
It would take decades for the state to get over the Furious Fifties, but by 1997, on the 40th anniversary of the Little Rock Crisis, the Little Rock Nine were welcomed back to Central High with inspiring ceremony. A governor named Mike Huckabee was there, and so was a president named Bill Clinton, and this time the big doors of the old high school swung wide open for them. Things had changed.
Of late, one can sense some of that same old ill will in the air. This time the fear and anger aren't stirred by the prospect of racial integration but by immigration, specifically the specter of ILLEGAL ALIENS! The way it's said, you might think they were coming from some hostile planet instead of across the Rio Grande.
But these are different times and, more to the point, Arkansas has a different governor. When Mike Huckabee--Republican politician and Baptist preacher, not necessarily in that order--outlined his agenda at the opening of this year's session of the Arkansas Legislature, it included a proposal sure to stir controversy: He asked that the children of illegals, now grown into promising young men and women, be treated like everybody else when it came to applying for scholarships to state colleges and universities. His was not only an appeal to the state's sense of justice, but to its reason. What shall it profit a state if it denies young people an education that would allow them to become productive citizens?
Mike Huckabee's modest proposal immediately set off alarm bells. To quote one state senator, "We think he's talking about illegal aliens." No more needed to be said. There's a rising resentment of immigration out there just waiting to be catered to. And one politician in particular has started to cater to it. He's Jim Holt, a state senator from Springdale in Northwest Arkansas, the booming corner of the state where Tyson and Wal-Mart are headquartered. Northwest Arkansas's chicken plants, construction industry, and general need for labor have proved a magnet for Hispanic immigrants, not to mention a growing colony of Marshall Islanders. This influx of hard-working immigrants--legal, illegal or not-quite clear--has proven more boon than problem to the state.
But that's not going to stop Jim Holt. He may be a notoriously ineffective legislator--it's hard to think of a bill he's ever passed--but he can be a highly effective agitator. When he ran as the Republicans' sacrificial lamb against U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln last year, he roared like a lion--and polled a surprising 44% of the vote. The tenor of his campaign can be summed up by his comment that the federal judiciary was a greater threat to the country than al Qaeda.
And now Sen. Holt has introduced a bill, modeled after Arizona's Proposition 200, to make sure that immigrants without proper documentation don't vote in elections. Some of us hadn't realized that was a problem in Arkansas; proper identification is already required to register and vote, and you wouldn't think illegals would want to call attention to themselves by showing up at the polls.
But the bill goes further, much further, than assuring clean elections. It would require proof of citizenship for state services: education, medical care, any and all. Jim Holt explains that it's not a matter of bigotry but justice: These folks broke the rules to get here, and shouldn't be able to get any benefits the rest of us don't. He doesn't give any examples of the benefits an illegal immigrant gets that the rest of us don't, but Sen. Holt has never been a detail man. The people his bill appeals to get his drift well enough. The co-sponsor of this bill in the state Senate says folks don't want to provide prenatal care for pregnant women who aren't here legally. "I know," he acknowledges, that some of us will point out that "those kids are going to be citizens, and we want them to be healthier. But the other side is, what kind of message is that sending?"
Well, yes, what kind of message does that send? That we're foresighted enough to want these future Americans to be healthy and well-educated? That we don't punish the children for the sins of the fathers? Do we really want to make these little suckers second-class citizens while they're still in the womb? There may be some differences of opinion in this state, and country, about when life begins, but these two state senators seem agreed: Discrimination should begin at conception.
In real life, as opposed to politics, would Jim Holt really deny some poor Mexican who's just been mangled in a car wreck the emergency treatment he needs? Jim Holt ran for the U.S. Senate last year as a practicing Christian; his campaign signs bore the fish symbol. Would he just pass by people who are hurting and in need of help--like some kind of Bad Samaritan?
Jim Holt's bill is less a serious proposal than an angry gesture. It's bound to be popular with the kind of folks who write angry letters to the editor warning that ILLEGAL ALIENS! are about to take over. But in Governor--and Reverend--Huckabee, Arkansas now has a leader who will call Jim Holt's ugly little bill what it is: "inflammatory, race-baiting demagoguery." That may be the big difference between now and 1957: a leader who exhibits--much abused term--moral values.
Mr. Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
