LOS ANGELES - Private storefront clinics in Hispanic neighborhoods are nearly empty. They're seeing half as many patients as before the passage of Proposition 187.
But big hospitals say Hispanic immigrants are back.
The two opposite effects, which experts can't explain, continue to ripple across the state nearly two weeks since voters approved Proposition 187's ban on illegal immigrants receiving public medical and educational services. The measure also requires teachers, doctors, police and state workers to turn in illegals.
Even though two courts blocked implementation of the measure, turmoil is growing.
To 187 supporters, that's just fine. They say they are achieving their goal making illegal immigrants feel not welcome.
"We are getting word a lot of people have quit their jobs, pulled kids out of school and are in the process of leaving," said Ron Prince, head of the Proposition 187 campaign.
Republican Gov. Pete Wilson repeated his support Friday in a Washington speech, as 50 people protested the measure many decry as bigotry.
"It's very wrong and unfair to reward people with public benefits for breaking our immigration laws, and especially to do so at the expense of needy legal residents," he said.
Those working with immigrants say life is inching back.
Patient calls to public clinics fell by as much as 40% right after the vote, officials say. Patients began trickling back after the courts acted.
"The word was out: Even if 187 was passed, we would continue business as usual," said Los Angeles County Department of Health Services spokeswoman Toby Staheli.
Still missing: some expectant mothers, even though the federal government pays for pre-natal care. The county's pre-natal clinics show a 4.2% decline over last year, Staheli said. Private obstetrics clinics recorded a similar dip.
In the neighborhood clinics, patient counts are down, but no one knows how many immigrants get care there.
"It's just guesswork," said Robert Tranquada, University of Southern California health-administration professor.
Patients are also shying away from the hospital serving poor in Orange County, the cradle of the Proposition 187 movement, said David Langness, spokesman for the 250-member Hospital Council of Southern California.
To reassure patients, hospital and clinic officials are insisting they would not blow the whistle, at least while the court orders remain in place.
"The hospital has been providing quality health care to the community for more than 100 years, and this care has been given to our patients regardless of financial or immigration status," reads signs in English and Spanish on the glass doors of the giant California Hospital Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles.
A fiery letter, blaming 187 on bigotry and discrimination, went out from the Clinica Medica La Fe in Hawthorne, a growing immigrant neighborhood where cases are down to as few as one a day. "Before this started, we used to get 15 to 20 patients a day," said office manager Verna Martinez.
The nearby San Jose Dental Group is offering cut-rate extractions to people too scared to visit public dental clinics.
"You cannot let them go when they have pain," said office manager Toni Gordillo.
Bang Vu Pham, a physician at St. Paul Clinica Medica in Hawthorne, said his patient load is in freefall despite his impassioned opposition to 187.
"In South Vietnam, we fight the Vietnamese communists, if they're shot and wounded, I treat them," he said. "If I know I have to go to jail, still I give treatment to these people."
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles says it had fielded up to 150 reports of hospitals demanding immigrant documentation.
"We've gotten calls from people who've been asked for their documentation in pharmacies, in banks and then refused service," says the coalition's David Paz Solden.
Says county health official Staheli: "These are the same numbers (of complaints) the county supervisors get."
Cost of illegals' medical care How California says the cost of providing emergency and pregnancy-related services to illegal immigrants has risen: '92 $400 million
