Immigration limitation

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California is being transformed by "massive illegal immigration," says one fifth-generation resident. In neighboring Arizona, residents have formed armed militias to patrol the Mexican border.

From Maine to Iowa to North Carolina, small-town residents are protesting what many call an "invasion" of immigrants. And some warn that terrorists are taking advantage of U.S. immigration policy.

One recent poll showed that 85 percent of Americans consider illegal immigration a "serious problem." That poll, conducted in March by Roper ASW, found that two-thirds of Americans would support reducing legal immigration to fewer than 300,000 newcomers a year, less than a third of the 1 million who came to the United States in 2002.

Immigration seems to be a concern everywhere except Washington, where -- except for the 66 members of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus -- neither Republicans nor Democrats appear interested in tackling the issue.

"How many people in America want to be called a racist?" Victor Davis Hanson says, when asked why politicians avoid the immigration issue. He answers his own question: "Not very many."

Being called a racist has been a new experience for Mr. Hanson in the two months since he published "Mexifornia: A State of Becoming."

A professor of classics at California State University at Fresno, Mr. Hanson is a military historian who says he reluctantly agreed to write a book about illegal immigration at the urging of his publisher.

He credits a "strange alliance" of special interests with stifling popular unrest about immigration.

"You have the power of the employers that have a lot of money -- meat-packing, restaurant business, agribusiness, hotels, construction. They like to have a perennial supply of cheap labor, all the better if it's illegal and it won't be able to organize or advocate for higher wages," Mr. Hanson says in a telephone interview.