Warday

Of course, the place is also tension-ridden. In Los Angeles, militant Asian Returnists whose native countries won’t let them come back compete for barrio space with Chicanos and hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from the other states. The American illegals are by far the worst off. Because they are de facto criminals, they are helpless and are ruthlessly exploited. The division between rich and poor is exceedingly sharp. Beverly Hills and Nob Hill glitter with Rolls-Royces and Mercedes-Benzes.

In California, the rest of the United States is thought of as a foreign country, poverty-stricken and potentially dangerous. The local press reports it only incidentally. A bus plunge killing a hundred in Illinois will appear at the bottom of page forty of a Times that headlines the discovery of strontium 90 in Anaheim.

It is possible to be greedy here. It is possible to be blind. Impressions:

A movie is being made at the corner of Market and Powell as we leave San Francisco—massive reflectors, Brooke Shields looking like a goddess as she steps from her air-conditioned trailer.

There are casting calls in Billboard West and The Hollywood Reporter Street-corner newsstands, which used to line up the porno papers, now feature half a dozen small-time political journals, state and Chicano separatist papers, the Aztlan Revolution, and Westworld and Ecotopia, the journals of two geographical separatist movements.

In California, more than anywhere else, you hear talk of dividing the United States. “California First” and “Forget the Rest” are common T-shirt slogans.

There is also a lot of radiation paranoia. Vendors commonly advertise their fruits as “radiation-free.” There are walk-in clinics where for fifteen cents you can get a whole-body scan or have objects checked. The government regularly warns people to avoid the black market because of the danger of contaminated goods from “abroad”—which must mean the rest of the United States.

Immensely wealthy Japanese move about in tremendous Nissan limousines with curtains on the windows.

You can buy all the Japanese and English papers: Asahi Shimbun in Japanese, English, and Spanish editions; the London Times and Express in English, and something called The Overseas Journal for British residents. It’s all about where to get English cars fixed in California, and how to avoid the embarrassment of old-fashioned American hairstyles by going to local branches of chic London salons.

I found it difficult and dangerous to get into state government offices to obtain documents. In fact, I couldn’t do it. But there were vast files of them at Berkeley, in the archives of university departments that shall go nameless. They reveal something about the inner structure of California’s immigration policies.

They say more than their authors realize.

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