Two decades ago, when Dan Lungren was a Republican congressman from Long Beach and a key player on immigration issues, his colleagues in the House took his word for it when he said illegal immigration was a big and growing problem. Most of them had never heard from their constituents about the matter.

Today, Lungren is back in the House representing the Sacramento suburbs after a stint as California attorney general. He is still working on immigration. But he no longer has to explain the significance of the issue to members from other states.

"It was a regional issue before," Lungren said this week in a conversation with The Bee's editorial board. "Now it's a Chicago issue. It's a South Dakota issue. It's an Iowa issue. It's a Nebraska issue. We didn't have that then. ... Now everybody is aware of it."

With that widespread familiarity has also come contempt. Anger and fear about immigration, especially illegal immigration, have spread nationwide. As a result, a compromise immigration bill drafted by a bipartisan group of senators and the White House is under attack, especially from conservatives. They contend that the bill is short on border security and would make it too easy for illegal immigrants already here to become citizens.

But a Washington Post poll released this week suggests that overall, Americans support the kind of reform Bush and the senators are proposing.

Fifty-two percent support giving illegal immigrants who are working the right to remain here legally, and 53 percent would expand guest-worker programs to allow more people to come here for jobs.

Support for those changes is even higher in California, according to recent surveys here. And that's not a surprise. Despite taking in more immigrants, and more illegal immigrants, than any other state over the past 20 years, California has one of the nation's most vibrant economies. Studies show that even illegal immigrants add life to an economy, improving wages for everyone except those at the very bottom of the economic ladder.

Even the most critical study, a frequently cited paper by Harvard economist George Borjas, found that only high school dropouts saw a dip in real wages caused by illegal immigration, and for them it was a reduction of at most 8 percent, and probably less. Everyone else was a winner.

The goal of immigration reformers in Congress is to strengthen enforcement at the border to try to reduce illegal immigration, while allowing more people to come here legally, especially if they have a job awaiting them. But Lungren says he learned from his last experience with the issue that enforcement is easier said than done.

Lungren rounded up Republican votes for a 1986 law that granted amnesty to illegal immigrants already in the country while enacting sanctions against employers who hired workers here without the U.S. government's permission.

"One of the lessons I learned out of being there 21 years ago is that we failed with enforcement after we passed that bill in (1986)," Lungren said. "There's a legitimate reason people ought to be suspicious about promises of Congress. ... We have not had any administration, Democratic or Republican, that was focused on enforcement since we passed the '86 law."

Lungren wants any new law to contain very specific provisions requiring the hiring of 6,000 Border Patrol agents and 1,000 new workplace inspectors, plus a quick and secure electronic system to allow employers to verify that applicants for jobs are here legally.

While he supports an increase in special visas for high-tech and other workers who have jobs awaiting them, he thinks any new mass guest-worker program should be limited to agriculture, which he says is the only industry that has truly proven a need for foreign workers. And those workers, he says, should be required to return home for at least two months every year.

As for the 12 million illegal immigrants believed to be living here now, he would grant legal status only to those who were in the country before Jan. 1, 2002. And if those people wanted to obtain permanent legal status or citizenship, they would still have to go through normal immigration procedures. The compromise bill in the Senate would give legal status to everyone who was here on Jan. 1 of this year, and put them on a special path to citizenship.

Lungren says he thinks there is a "50-50" chance that Congress will pass a comprehensive bill this year, but only if some of the issues he and others are raising are addressed.

"When it comes over to the House, I think they make a huge mistake if they try to force it down the throats of the members," he said. "Those are tough issues that we are going to have to work out, but they are legitimate issues. They're not issues where people are just bringing them up to try and stop this. Now, there are people who want to stop anything. But there are a good number that are really in a quandary as to how to make it effective."