Los Angeles: The New Ellis Island

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dreams, not unlike the teeming masses at the turn of the century. Many have left such misery that their dreams are extremely modest. Today in L.A., there are refugees from ugly politics—Soviet Armenians, Lebanese, Iranians—and also entrepreneurs arriving with capital already in hand. But most are not well-off and most came from countries of the "Pacific rim": Mexico and El Salvador, across the ocean to Samoa, and still farther west to the Philippines, Taiwan, Viet Nam and South Korea. Congress opened the floodgates in 1965 when it replaced racial and national quotas with an overall annual limit of 290,000 immigrants.

The statistical evidence of the immigrant tide is stark. In 1960 one in nine Los Angeles County residents was Hispanic, and a scant one in 100 was Asian. Today one in ten is Asian. Nearly a third of the county is now Hispanic, as are almost two-thirds of L.A. kindergartners. Nor is this ethnic sweep a limited, inner-city affair. Although whites have been a minority in the hemmed-in city of Los Angeles for some time (in 1980, 48% of a population of 3 million), the Anglos are now, suddenly, also shy of a majority throughout the whole county (3.8 million out of 7.9 million). Today everyone in L.A. is a member of a minority group.

Why L.A.? It is closer to Seoul, Mazatlán and Singapore than other big U.S. cities. The immigrants are reassured that the local climate, at least, is not mean. And they seek safety in numbers.

In fact, there are not necessarily any welcoming hugs from ethnic brethren who have made the trip earlier. L.A. has for decades had solid, stable populations of hybrid Angelenos—Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans and so on. They do not always know what to make of the newcomers. And many L.A. Blacks simply feel besieged, resentful.

But at least the blacks are aware of the immigrant surge. Most White locals seem oblivious. It is a city where people drive on freeways, and so see mainly roofs and treetops; it is easy to ignore remarkable changes in the grittier quarters and homelier suburbs. In L.A., all neighborhoods except one's own are out of the way. Stockbroker Jay Marshall, who lives in the upscale Westwood section, did not know until last week that there was an enclave of 150,000 Koreans downtown. His awareness of L.A. Hispanics is dim. "I know they live in places that are terribly overcrowded," he says. "But I don't know where that is." Stan Rosenfield, a publicist, has lived on the affluent, white west side for 15 years. He recalls seeing "Mexicans" during visits to an amusement park in the San Fernando Valley: "I'm only aware of them when I go to Magic Mountain, and then they're all around me."

What does a Taiwanese grocer living in Glendale have in common with a poor Guatemalan living in Boyle Heights? They may both watch the same local television, although the Guatemalan has Channel 34, in Spanish, and the grocer can stick to Chinese-language Channel 18. But they must certainly share the sense of being quasi-Americans: every immigrant has to cope with pressures to assimilate. They are supposed to fit in, but they may never be wholly accepted. "We do not think in American terms of a melting pot," says Paul Louie, a second-generation Chinese American. "We prefer the metaphor of a rainbow or a salad."

Indeed,