E-Mail This Article to a Friend Xeno warrior (continued)
	Related stories Turnaround: A reader's guide: Governor Mitt Romney bares his soul and sets the record straight between the lines of his critically defamed book. By Adam Reilly. Upward mobility: Mitt Romney wants to ride the national conservative wave into the White House, but he better make sure it doesn't wash him right out of the State House. By Kristen Lombardi.

On top of all this, there’s the administration’s ongoing assault on state-funded services for legal immigrants. Since his January 2003 inauguration, Romney has "consistently gone after those benefits that assist immigrants," according to State Representative Antonio Cabral, a New Bedford Democrat who heads the legislature’s human-services committee. Take the FY ’04 budget. In his "House 1" suggested budget, Romney proposed wiping out all $785,720 in funding for domestic-violence services that cater specifically to immigrants. Today, the program, which used to serve 1452 abused immigrants from 25 countries, has yet to be re-funded.

During the same budget cycle, Romney gutted the safety net for legal immigrants by eliminating Medicaid benefits for as many as 9800 adults. In November 2003, the legislature tried in a FY ’04 supplementary budget to restore health coverage to 2800 of these immigrants — the aged and disabled only. Yet Romney vetoed the $5 million budget item. When the legislature overrode the veto last January, he took a different tack: he wiped out the coverage in his budget for FY ’05. Although the legislature replaced the line item in its version of the budget, the governor still ended up vetoing the provision earlier this summer.

Meanwhile, in another part of the FY ’05 budget, Romney took aim at legal immigrants enrolled in the Emergency Assistance to the Elderly, Disabled, and Children (EAEDC) program, which provides cash assistance to 1875 indigent immigrants whose annual incomes equal just $3644 or less. Unlike with health-care benefits, Romney did not end up getting what he wanted; legislators managed to salvage the $303 in monthly benefits that these immigrants rely on.

Even simple symbolic gestures seem beyond the grasp of this administration. Romney, for one, has failed to meet with the state’s prominent immigrant-advocacy groups, including MIRA. He has failed to meet with his own advisory council on immigrants and refugees, a 15-member board theoretically established to examine immigrant-policy questions and offer recommendations. Remarkably, Romney has not yet even reappointed council members, forcing them to operate in a kind of exile for the past year, let alone heeded their advice. This year, for instance, the council urged the governor to provide health-care benefits for legal immigrants, to offer in-state tuition rates for undocumented immigrant youths, and to back granting drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens — advice he patently ignored.

In the words of one Boston-area advocate, who has served on the advisory council in the past, "Romney has offered no symbolic act or gesture demonstrating that he embraces the immigrant community. He has not found a way to communicate with the non-native born. Just meeting with people would be enough."

TO HEAR Romney’s defenders tell it, the image of a governor out to get immigrants just doesn’t hold water. Rather, they contend that Romney is fighting the good fight for the immigrants in this state — in a broad-stroke, big-picture way. Rick Colon, who heads the Boston-based Latino Professional Network, a group of corporate and business leaders that generally supports Romney, says he and many of his colleagues view the governor and his actions through a more "pragmatic and businesslike" prism than others in the immigrant community do. "The governor," Colon says, "is taking a macro look. He’s plotting a course for the state as a whole. As the ship turns down a path of economic vitality, everyone will benefit from a healthier Massachusetts," including immigrants.

Fehrnstrom, for his part, maintains that the Romney administration "recognizes the important contributions made to our state and nation by the immigrant community." He cites the governor’s positions on adult education, English immersion, and increased charter-school choices for "inner-city Latinos" as examples of the type of policies that "can help newcomers achieve the American dream."

As for the advisory council, Fehrnstrom acknowledges that tension has existed between Romney and council members over the past year, but he says things have improved of late. Currently, the governor’s office is finalizing a list of council members who will be officially appointed next month. It has assigned an administrative liaison to serve on the council. And while Romney has disagreed with the council’s recommendations on nearly every policy question, Fehrnstrom says, as if extending a symbolic nod, "We value their input."

But to immigrant advocates, it seems, the damage has already been done. The governor has racked up so many negatives that they are likening him to Pete Wilson, the California governor whose record on immigrant issues ultimately became overtly xenophobic. In 1994, Wilson made a name for himself by pushing the draconian ballot question known as Proposition 187, which attempted to deny illegal immigrants such basic services as emergency health care and public education. Romney, by contrast, has not trumpeted such a blatantly anti-immigrant agenda. But he has positioned himself right-of-center on most issues to date.

Which, of course, raises questions about the political risks he faces. After all, Wilson’s attacks on illegal immigrants turned out to be his greatest mistake. "Latino immigrants felt they needed to send a message that we are not going to be scapegoated anymore," says Rosalind Gold, the senior policy director of the Los Angeles–based National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. Although Proposition 187 was defeated, it served to mobilize California’s Latino immigrants like never before. In 1994, according to Gold, 1.2 million Latinos voted in the state elections, up from 1.1 million two years before. That number has steadily risen; by 2000, as many as 1.6 million Latinos were voting in state elections.

As a result, Wilson’s Republican Party took a hit among Latinos. In 1998, when Democrat Gray Davis ran for governor in California, 81 percent of Latinos voted for him, as compared with 20 percent for Wilson’s Republican successor, Dan Lundgren. This, despite the fact that Lundgren did everything he could to distance himself from Wilson. "There was a major alignment that occurred between Latino immigrants and Democrats, all because of Pete Wilson," Gold says.

Here in the Bay State, unlike in the Golden State, the immigrant community doesn’t carry much political weight. But that is likely to change, given the state’s current demographics. According to the 2000 US Census, approximately 428,000 Latinos live in the Bay State, about half of them immigrants. Add those who have emigrated here from non-Latin countries, and the total number of immigrants in this state hovers around 772,972 — or 11 percent of the state’s 6.3 million residents.

"The raw truth is that we don’t represent a major threat to somebody like Romney today," concedes Vega, of Centro Latino de Chelsea. "But we will sooner or later."

Perhaps the administration understands this trend. Perhaps Romney and his officials are working to reverse the tide. Boston city councilor Felix Arroyo, who has routinely denounced Romney’s record on immigrant issues, says that he’s prepared to give the governor and his administration the benefit of the doubt. If Romney can show what Arroyo calls "some sensitivity to our immigrant issues," then the councilor says he and others will be able to get behind the administration.

But if Romney cannot, Arroyo — and many advocates — predict yet another swift reaction from the immigrant community come re-election time, in November 2006. As Arroyo puts it, "When somebody slaps your face, you say ‘Ouch.’ We are going to say a collective ‘Ouch’ to Romney."

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com