In 1994, when people debated California's Proposition 187, the dominant message -- even from those against the proposed law -- was anti-immigrant, say UC Davis and Vanderbilt University professors in a new book.

Even more pointedly, the messages were anti-Mexican, anti-Latino and anti-Chicano, according to the authors of "Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration and California's Proposition 187."

UC Davis American studies and Asian American studies scholar Kent Ono and Vanderbilt University communications scholar John Sloop reviewed more than 400 articles in The Los Angeles Times, 500 e-mail messages from an anti-187 Listserv, 25 national television spots, and 100 national and regional magazine articles.

"The bottom line is that even with the L.A. Times, which had the most coverage that we could find -- more than 40 reporters were working on the topic and the paper wrote a series of editorials that overtly said to vote against 187 -- the overall coverage negatively portrayed immigrants and immigration and created an especially negative view of Latinos, Chicanos and Mexicans," Ono says.

Ono said he found it curious that although estimates of undocumented Asians in the U.S. put them at one-third of the total population of undocumented people, Asians were not a subject of concern in the debate. (Undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Latin America comprise about 60 percent of the total.)

Ono and Sloop maintain that Proposition 187 was the beginning of a national retrenchment in immigration policy preceding Clinton's federal welfare reforms in 1996. Those reforms further curtailed social and health services for undocumented immigrants after three decades of more liberal social policies.

BOOK EDITORS: To obtain a review copy of the book, fax a request on media letterhead to Gary Kramer, Temple University, (215) 204-2419.