NYT: "California Eases Tone as Latinos Make Gains"

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"Students after school in Glen Avon, east of Los Angeles. Latinos now make up more than two-thirds of many cities in that region."

From the New York Times:

California Eases Tone as Latinos Make Gains [2]

By JENNIFER MEDINA

LOS ANGELES — A generation ago, California voters approved a ballot initiative that was seen as the most anti-immigrant law in the nation. Immigrants who had come to the country illegally would be ineligible to receive prenatal care, and their children would be barred from public schools.

But the law, which was later declared unconstitutional by the federal courts, never achieved the goal of its backers: to turn back the tide of immigrants pouring into the state. Instead, since the law was approved in 1994, the political and social reality has changed drastically across the state. Now, more California residents than ever before say that immigrants are a benefit to the state, according to public opinion polls from the Public Policy Institute of California. 

As Congress begins debating an overhaul of the immigration system, many in California sense that the country is just now beginning to go through the same evolution the state experienced over the last two decades. For a generation of Republicans, Gov. Pete Wilson’s barrages on the impact of immigration in the 1990s spoke to their uneasiness with the way the state was changing. Now many California Republicans point to that as the beginning of their downfall. 

Today, party leaders from both sides, and from all over the state, are calling for a softer approach and a wholesale change in federal policies.