The Associated Press

PHOENIX € California's anti-immigration campaign might be in full swing in Arizona by next month.

Ron Prince, chairman of the Proposition 187 movement that California voters passed in 1994 with nearly 60 percent of the vote, said he will move to Phoenix within weeks to spearhead an initiative drive for November's general election ballot.

Petitions will be in circulation by late April, according to Prince, who said volunteers will obtain the required 112,961 signatures for the ballot ''within a couple of months.''

The petition must be submitted by July 3 to be on the November ballot, said Anne Lynch, Arizona's assistant Secretary of State.

Proposition 187 seeks to eliminate all social services, public schooling and medical care, except emergency care, to illegal aliens in the state.

It also requires state and local agencies to report suspected illegal aliens to the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the state Attorney General's Office.

A federal judge in November struck down parts of the proposition, saying the state can't deny federally funded services and it's unconstitutional to compel teachers, health-care workers and social workers to report the immigration status of applicants.

''It's a racist and reactionary movement specifically geared at those crossing the southern border,'' said Courtney McDermed, director of Cambio, the Valley Religious Task Force on Central America.

Prince said the anti-immigrant initiative will be very different in Arizona, given that some state statutes had closed doors on benefits to illegal aliens that were open in California.

However, he refused to predict what specific areas it would address.