IMMIGRANT EDUCATION BAN RIPPED : POLICE SAY BILL WOULD PUT ILLEGAL ALIEN KIDS ON STREETS, LEAD TO CRIME.

Byline: Eric Schmitt The New York Times

Some of the nation's largest police organizations are urging Congress to drop a proposal in a House immigration bill that would allow states to deny public education to illegal immigrants, arguing that if enacted it would lead to more crime.

``Forcing young people out of school and onto the streets would have disastrous long-term effects on public safety,'' Matt L. Rodriguez, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, said in a letter to Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., the majority leader.

The proposal, an amendment in the bill that passed by a wide margin in the House last month, has caused a split among Republicans but has Dole's strong support. The Senate is likely to consider the proposal next week when it takes up a major immigration bill.

The police organizations, including the Fraternal Order of Police, a major police union, as well as the Chicago Police Department, wrote last week to Dole, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, urging him to reverse his support for the proposal.

The issue brings together a number of hot political topics in the presidential campaign: illegal immigration, crime and children's education. Dole, House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, and many other Republicans, particularly those from border states like California, strongly support the plan.

They say a federal requirement that all states educate all illegal immigrant children is a magnet for illegal aliens and an unfair burden on states. California spends $1.8 billion a year to educate more than 350,000 illegal immigrant pupils.

``The governor of the state of California ought to have the option to deny free public education to those in our country illegally,'' Dole said when he visited the Mexican border near San Diego two weeks ago.

But the law-enforcement agencies have allies among some border-state governors as well as educators and others. The Supreme Court has held that such children have a constitutional right to a public education, and many critics say the Republican plan is a mean-spirited political gesture that will throw hundreds of thousands of children into the hands of violent street gangs.

``To us, it is far better to have these youngsters in a structured, nurturing, learning environment than to have them out roaming crime-ridden neighborhoods,'' said Gilbert Gallegos, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents 270,000 officers in local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies.

The House bill contains many other provisions that law-enforcement officials applaud. The legislation is designed, for example, to tighten America's borders against illegal immigrants and give the authorities broader discretion in deporting illegal aliens.

Many Democrats contend that by including the education provision in a bill that the administration otherwise embraces, Republican leaders are virtually daring President Clinton to veto a popular bill.

Any doubts about the issue's political sensitivity and priority among Republican leaders were laid to rest last month when Gingrich, in a highly unusual step, took to the House floor to support the amendment, offered by Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Oxnard. He denounced illegal immigration and pleaded that states be empowered to decide who they educate in their public schools.

``Come to America for opportunity,'' Gingrich thundered in a three-minute speech. ``Do not come to live off law-abiding taxpayers.''

Gov. Pete Wilson is a staunch supporter of the measure, which resembles one of the provisions in Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigration measure that California voters approved in 1994 but which has since become entangled in the courts. ``This is a hard-earned victory for the people of California who have made it clear, time and time again, that they do not want to foot the bill for continued illegal immigration,'' Wilson said after the House approved the plan.

But many other Republicans, including Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York, as well as other governors of states with large immigrant populations, say that tossing undocumented children out of school will not help solve the nation's illegal immigration problem.

``I believe once that child is living in our state it makes sense to educate the child,'' George W. Bush, the Republican governor of Texas, says in a position letter to constituents on the subject. ``The view that Mexican nationals will return home if their children are uneducated is simply not the case.''

In addition to the Chicago police and the Fraternal Order, the police agencies that have written Dole are the National Association of Police Organizations and the International Union of Police Associations, to which the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department belongs.