Pushed by poverty and joblessness, Javier Reyes fled his native Michoacan seven years ago in pursuit of cold hard cash.

It was an act of desperation, an illegal exodus across a porous border separating his impoverished Mexican homeland from the land of opportunity. It was the gamble of a lifetime and it paid off.

Reyes earns $7.50 an hour working for an Oxnard flower grower. Through his employer, he became a legal resident under an immigration program that has legalized more than 1 million agricultural workers nationwide.

Reyes' wife, Oralia, and his brothers have joined him in the United States. Pooling their earnings, nine family members can afford to rent a home in Oxnard's Lemonwood neighborhood.

"We come here for a better life, to earn more money," said the 25-year-old laborer who came from a rural village where the workers were many but the jobs few.

"This is now my home, my country, and I intend to stay."

Ventura County is home to thousands of new, legal immigrants such as Reyes each year. A total of 3,549 new arrivals settled in the county during fiscal year 1992.

Ventura County's draw for new immigrants is the same as for newcomers of all ethnic groups--low crime, good schools and more job opportunities.

An increasing number of Korean immigrants, for example, are relocating businesses to the county from inner-city Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. Hundreds of foreign-born Chinese professionals have settled in east Ventura County.

Mexicans by far are the largest immigrant group in the county, followed by Filipinos.

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But more and more, in Ventura County and elsewhere, legal immigration is coming under fire. Immigrant advocates contend that newcomers are experiencing a backlash from a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment currently sweeping the state.

"The debate has become so vitriolic that we are all at risk," said Claudia Smith, regional counsel for California Rural Legal Assistance, which provides free legal help to Ventura County farm workers. "Documented, undocumented or citizen, people aren't making those distinctions anymore."

A majority of Californians say the flow of legal immigrants to the United States should be slowed, according to a recent Los Angeles Times Poll.

And 43% say they are not bothered by the possibility that a crackdown on illegal immigration could result in a backlash against all immigrants, regardless of legal status.