Funding fraud

JOSEF Stalin once boasted that the capitalists would sell him the rope he would use to hang them. If Stalin had been a little shrewder, he would have applied for a government grant to pay for the rope.

That's what a California-based organization known as Hermandad Mexicana Nacional (Mexican National Brotherhood) has managed to do, to the tune of millions of taxpayer dollars. Line A of Hermandad's articles of incorporation, filed with the California Secretary of State in August 1985, states that "the specific and primary purpose" of the organization is "to provide non-profit, low-cost legal services to undocumented immigrant workers and their families and other low-income families."

In addition to being granted nonprofit, tax-exempt status, Hermandad has been the recipient of tens of millions of dollars in federal and state contracts. A review of Hermandad's annual IRS reports between 1988 and 1993 reveals that more than $20 million worth of contracts was directed their way by the California Department of Education. In 1991 - 92 alone, the organization received nearly $8 million in funding from the state.

According to Gabriel Cortina, a deputy superintendent for the California Department of Education, the money was largely federal funds that the state received to help pay for English classes for formerly illegal aliens who received amnesty under a 1986 law. An estimated 1.8 million of the 3.1 million aliens who were given amnesty live in California.

Hermandad would probably have continued to escape public scrutiny had it not wound up in the middle of the disputed congressional race between Loretta Sanchez and Bob Dornan in Orange County last November. Miss Sanchez, a Democrat, defeated the incumbent Dornan by a margin of just 979 votes.

Dornan cried foul and pointed a finger at Hermandad, alleging that it had registered noncitizens and even illegal aliens in the 46th congressional district. Moreover, Dornan's attorney, Michael Schroeder, claims the taxpayer-funded English and citizenship classes were being illegally used for political purposes. In addition to being taught verb conjugations and the fundamentals of the U.S. Constitution, students in Hermandad's classes were receiving political indoctrination and being registered to vote even if they didn't meet the legal requirements.

These government-funded classes also provided a springboard for the political career of Hermandad's executive director, Nativo Lopez, who won a seat on the Santa Ana school board in last November's election. Lopez has been a vocal advocate of turning the growing Hispanic population into a political force in California. His election to the school board and the election of a Latina to Congress from the Republican stronghold of Orange County were seen by Lopez and others as the first dividends of their effort to register voters.

Coming from Dornan, considered by many to be Congress's Dennis Rodman, accusations of vote fraud could be dismissed as "B-1 Bob" bluster. However, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times found that 30 per cent of a sample group of voters registered through Hermandad were noncitizens. Schroeder, who is also chairman of the California Republican Party, alleges that aliens were given completed voter-registration cards for their signatures, a practice that is clearly illegal. Of about 1,100 voter-registration forms that he has been given access to, Schroeder claims that 570 of them belonged to people who had not completed the citizenship process, and 102 to illegal aliens. An additional 11,000 voter-registration cards submitted by Hermandad in the 46th District remain to be examined.

Similar findings of registration irregularities are confirmed by the independent watchdog organization the Fair Elections Group, based in Torrance. According to the group's executive director, Karen Saranita, 95 per cent of the voters who registered through Hermandad requested absentee ballots, compared to a normal rate of about 20 per cent. Use of absentee ballots, explains Miss Saranita, makes it much more difficult to ensure that the person voting is actually the same person who registered to vote.

LIKE Claude Rains in Casablanca, federal and state officials have expressed shock at learning that Hermandad has been engaging in questionable activities. Aside from the forthright declaration in its articles of incorporation, the organization and its founder, Bert Corona, have a long and overt history of working on behalf of illegal aliens and a close association with the militantly irredentist Aztlan movement. Corona, in fact, publicly broke with the United Farmworkers Union leader, Cesar Chavez, over Chavez's support for deporting illegal immigrants in the 1960s. Chavez believed that easy access to illegal-alien labor was undermining the union's ability to bargain on behalf of its members.

Corona has had some creative ideas about how to use government money to prepare would-be citizens for naturalization. In his 1994 memoirs, he wrote, "we took our students in large numbers to the state capital in Sacramento and to Washington, D.C., to lobby for more amnesty classes. The time they spend lobbying is counted as part of their time in class. This is how they learn civics."