Candidates Skirt Immigration Issue

"Now, they may think it, but there's no vehicle for them to act on it."

The issue still stirs passions, however.

In Monrovia's Old Town over the weekend, retired engineer Joel Zneimer, 76, declared himself "totally against" the new driver's license law. He also backed restrictions on public services for illegal immigrants.

"Why should you give benefits to people who have broken the law?" Zneimer asked as he ate ice cream with a friend. "I pay enough taxes without having to support half of Mexico."

Down the Pasadena Freeway at Alhambra Park, where Latino families picnicked with carne asada and mariachi music, Xavier Flores, a loan executive in Los Angeles, said he supported the driver's license law and resented those who blamed Latinos for the state's problems with illegal immigration.

"Anytime a knucklehead says, 'Send 'em back to Mexico,' I say: 'This is Mexico!' " said Flores, a sixth-generation American of Mexican descent. His ancestors arrived in the Southwest before the United States conquered what was then Mexican territory, he said, asking, "Why doesn't anyone ever say, 'Send 'em back to Canada?' It's racist."

But both Flores and his neighbor, Gabriel Gomez, said they also supported curbs on illegal immigration. Gomez, a Los Angeles plumber and third-generation Mexican American, said his business has suffered from the cut-rate competition of illegal immigrants.

"When you get illegals doing the job at half the price, you can't compete," Gomez said, adding that if their numbers were reduced, "it would give opportunities for those of us who really deserve them."

In addition to the state's demographic shifts, several other differences help account for the changed political mood, analysts say.

A decade ago, Californians faced their worst recession since the Great Depression, fanning resentment toward illegal immigrants who were perceived as low-cost labor competition. Today's economic downturn is less severe and centered more on parts of the economy not regarded as havens for illegal immigrants, such as high-tech, according to Johnson.

Georges Vernez of the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica speculated that immigration reform had lost some steam because of the court decisions that invalidated most of Proposition 187.

The 1996 federal welfare reform law also "quieted the resentment of taking away services from the native-born," Vernez said.