
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, November 22, 1994                   TAG: 9411230061
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Short

2 TELL GOP: DON'T SHUN IMMIGRANTS

Two prominent Republicans, Jack Kemp and William Bennett, again joined the controversy over immigration policy Monday, saying that the GOP must resist anti-immigrant sentiment if it is to become the majority party.

And, continuing the party's squabbles over the divisive issue, Bennett criticized Republican Gov. Pete Wilson of California for trying to propel his state's Proposition 187 onto the national stage.

Wilson is proposing that Congress adopt a federal version of Proposition 187, which would deny all benefits except emergency medical care to illegal immigrants. The measure, endorsed two weeks ago by California voters, was a cornerstone of Wilson's re-election campaign.

``He's scapegoating, damn it, and he should stop doing it,'' Bennett, a former education secretary and drug policy director, said at an immigration conference sponsored by two conservative think tanks.

``He should not blame all the problems of California on illegals,'' he said. ``Now he's riding this horse nationally.''

Wilson rejected the criticism. ``My anger is directed toward the failure of the federal government ... first to secure the border against illegal immigration and then to safeguard state taxpayers from the actual cost of that federal failure,'' the governor said.

Kemp avoided direct criticism of Wilson. But he urged the GOP to avoid the mistakes he said it made at the turn of the century, when the party became ``the Know-Nothing party that was anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic (and) anti-black.''

by CNB