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LOS ANGELES - In November of last year, I went to watch conservative columnist Michelle Malkin speak at a Los Angeles bookstore about the gaping national security loopholes in immigration policy. Or, as the subtitle of her book Invasion puts it, "how America still welcomes terrorists, criminals and other foreign menaces to our shores."

It's not hard to be horrified by the basic brief against existing border security. More than nine million foreigners live in the United States illegally. Tens of thousands -- including Sept. 11 hijacker Hani Hanjour and 1993 World Trade Center bomber Eyad Ismoil -- came on student visas, then dropped out of school and off the authorities' radar.

A special "Visa Express" system with Saudi Arabia (since disbanded) allowed thousands of young Wahhabists from the cradle of radical Islam to obtain American visas at Saudi travel agencies. Untold numbers of illegals (including arrested Washington D.C. sniper suspect John Lee Malvo), responded to their deportation orders by posting bond money then disappearing into the system.

Malkin, a petite child of Filipino immigrants, made her case quietly for 20 minutes, then opened the floor for questions.

What do we do about the liberal media, the first guy wanted to know. What do you think, came question number two, about private citizens defending our borders from Mexicans down in Arizona?

"I call them patriots," Malkin replied.

Then a naturalized citizen from Quebec stood up and complained that he had gone into a neighbourhood store just that day, and the shopkeepers had the nerve to speak Spanish to each other.

"I learned English, but those people never will!" he thundered. "And you know what? Wait for another year or two or three, and forget about the English here. They will speak only Spanish.... It's already too late!"

This is a microcosm of the Great Immigration Debate 2.0, which has made a stirring if unheralded comeback after six years in the political wilderness. National security concerns, which show no signs of abating since the Sept. 11 massacre, have focused increasing media and government attention on the chaotic borders. The initial efforts are then sustained by the passion of people who are still as pissed off at the Mexicans as they were a decade ago.

In this process, the thick line differentiating Saudi terrorists from Central American farmworkers has become blurred. Victor Davis Hanson, a war historian and one of the stronger voices for assertive American military action to confront terrorism abroad, has just brought out a new book called Mexifornia: A State of Becoming. (The opponents to his policy prescriptions in both cases being the left-leaning "multi-culturalists".)

CNN Moneyline anchor Lou Dobbs, who created a stir last year by insisting on referring to the War on Terrorism as the "War on Islamists," has been running a series all month on "securing our borders," during which at one point he berated Undersecretary for Borders and Transportation Asa Hutchinson:

"I'm sorry, Mr. Secretary, I mean, that's the legal immigration policy, but a border policy that permits 700,000 illegal aliens a year to cross into this country is either no policy at all or it is simply a lack of enforcement of it."

It is here where Dobbs and other border-tightening advocates are slightly out of date -- the Department of Homeland Security has actually started enforcing laws and regulations its precursor agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had long let slide.

For the first time in memory, immigration authorities are raiding groups of day labourers -- typically undocumented Latinos who congregate outside of home improvement stores and truck-rental agencies -- asking for papers and deporting those who don't have them. When 82,000 Arabs voluntarily registered with the DHS at the agency's request, 13,000 were booted out of the country for not having their papers in order. Visiting reporters without previously ignored "journalist visas" are being sent on the next flight out.

Whereas INS officials let the world know their "priority" didn't involve tracking down every minor violator, the DHS is sending the exact opposite message. At a meeting I attended in June, a reporter asked Border and Transportation Security Directorate Public Affairs Director Dennis Murphy for guidance on whether newspapers should print illegals' names, and Murphy promptly compared the border-crossers to "bank robbers."

"A lot of people don't like to say this, but illegal aliens are lawbreakers," explained Ron Rogers, spokesman at the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "They may never have committed a crime in their life, but the fact is, when they entered this country illegally, they did. They are lawbreakers, and they're here illegally, and they are subject to removal."

The story is much different at the state and local level. Despite crushing budget deficits all over the country (including a mind-blowing US$38-billion in California alone), many legislatures are pondering bills allowing illegal immigrants to obtain special identification cards, in-state college tuition and even driver's licences. The campaigns are subject to intense local debate, pitting local Mexican consulates against a grassroots immigration-reform lobby tired of being marginalized by the media and dismissed as bigoted.

"Americans [are] being called racist because they don't want their country invaded by the south," complained one of Malkin's enraged readers. "I say 'the south,' because there aren't 15 million Chinese living in my neighbourhood yet, and the Korean menace hasn't arrived."

This sentiment may sound ridiculous and reactionary in a city where the "Koreatown" neighbourhood alone has more than 100,000 residents from the Peninsula, but at the same time there has been precious little public debate about Southern California's startling demographic revolution, even when Antonio Villaraigosa narrowly missed becoming the first Latino mayor in a century. It is taken as gospel by most journalists and civic leaders that immigration is good, and border-tightening rhetoric is inflammatory, but this consensus was arrived at without much citizen input.

The changing political winds could have a large and quick impact on enforcement policy. It was "political correctness" that kept border cops from busting day labourers and other obvious black marketeers, Rogers said. "The media and different groups were going to hammer us."

Now, with shackles removed by Sept. 11, the DHS feels freer to deport profiled aliens. Meanwhile, if the immigration-reform tide continues to rise, the shape of regional and national politics could hinge yet again on attitudes toward Latino immigrants in the West.

"When California went through that initial recession," Rogers recalled, "and there was all this attention focused on what illegal aliens were doing to the economy of California, all of a sudden politicians realized that if they wanted to get elected, they had to take a stand against illegal immigration."

Last decade, those politicians ended up out on their ears, and Latinos helped sweep Democrats into every statewide elected post. The next few months -- which could feature a landmark recall election to replace California Governor Gray Davis -- should be interesting indeed.

Politicians realized a few years later that immigrant-baiting doesn't work so well during an economic boom, and after previous rounds of border-tightening regulation drove record numbers of suddenly very active Latinos into the voting booth, where they have consistently rejected just about every Republican since Pete Wilson left office.

Matt Welch is an Associate Editor at Reason magazine and lives in Los Angeles. His work is archived at www.mattwelch.com