The issue is immigration.

IN OCTOBER survey of New York City residents--hardly a hotbed of reactionary sentiment--found that 63 per cent of respondents considered immigration levels to be too high. A month earlier 43 per cent of Californians surveyed could not identify a single benefit of immigration, legal or illegal.

With evidence mounting that immigration is going to be the sort of political issue in the Nineties that welfare fraud and school busing were in previous decades, the Republican leadership--which for more than two decades has prided itself on being in tune with the concerus of the "silent majority"--has recognized that it must take a stand. However, the Republicans have falled to grasp exactly what the new concerns are. Republican leaders have convinced themselves that what really upsets the public is illegal immigration and that, in their confusion, Americans are lumping legal immigrants together with border-crashers. Moreover, many Republicans have bought into the Wall Street Journal argument that immigration is an economic boon. Consequently, the party's approach to immigration has been to couple a get-tough stand on illegal immigration with a dogged insistence that high levels of legal immigration are good for the country.

If the strategy is not rapidly abandoned, Republicans will lose the political high ground on this crucial matter. Controlling illegal immigration is a worthy objective, but illegals account for a fraction of total immigration.

The second part of the Republican strategy---championing the economic argument for high levels of legal immigration-is predicated on selling the American public something they are not interested in buying. Few Americans will be persuaded that the flood of mostly unskilled immigrants in areas like Los Angeles or New York City has been an economic windfall. And, more importantly, Americans see a destruction of their way of life. As George Will put it in his column this July, "America is not just an economy; it is more than an arena for wealth creation. It is a culture."

While Republicans on both sides of Capitol Hill are working feverishly to produce border-control legislation, a moderate Democratic senator, Harry Reid of Nevada, has come forward with a comprehensive immigration reform package that is as tough as the Republican approach to illegal immigration and calls for dramatic reductions in legal immigration. Under Reid's Immigration Stabilization Act of 1993, legal immigration would be cut from current levels of more than 800,000 annually to 300,000.

"You cannot separate legal and illegal immigration," says Reid. Coming from a state that is increasingly a haven for fed-up Californians, Reid has few illusions about the depth of their frustration. "Immigration, unless we change it, is going to be a festering problem. This issue is not going to go away."

Reid's view stands in sharp contrast to those of leading Republicans. "If we were to reduce illegal immigration, there would be less concern about legal immigration," says Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas. He chairs a House Republican task force on illegal immigration, which he calls "a defining issue" between the two parties. He points out that until this year every legislative initiative aimed at excluding illegals from receiving public benefits has come from the GOP.

Though he personally believes that legal immigration levels are too high and has introduced legislation to peg immigration levels to the unemployment rate, Smith does not believe that the political climate favors a reduction. "We just had legal immigration three years ago and it's not ripe to touch again," he says, referring to the Immigration Act of 1990, which increased legal immigration by 40 per cent on the dubious premise that the country was facing a labor shortage.

Smith's view is not much different from Republican opinion in the Senate. Two of the party's heaviest hitters, Bob Dole and Alan Simpson, are planning to unveil a comprehensive reform bill of their own, which will leave current legal immigration levels untouched. "I haven't heard any Republicans say [legal] numbers should be reduced," says Dick Day, a longtime aide to Simpson and the top Republican staffer on the Senate Immigration Subcommittee.

Indeed, Simpson himself is foremost among congressional Republicans who favor continued high levels of legal immigration-even though he is nearly single-handedly responsible for whatever semblance of sanity currently exists in U.S. immigration law. Simpson was a prime sponsor of the 1990 legislation.

There seems to be a stubborn dogma at the core of Republican ideology that says you must have a growing population in order to have an expanding economy. It is an ideology that, in part, reflects a traditional Republican affinity for the views of the business community, which equates immigrant labor with cheap labor. In reality, it is subsidized labor because the rest of society must absorb the costs of education, health care, and so on.

Republican support for high levels of legal immigration may also reflect the growing influence of the pro-life sector of the party. Religiously conservative Republicans who oppose abortion and other forms of family planning are loath to admit that any country, let alone the United States, could be overpopulated. In one of his Nike commercials, Spike Lee celebrates, "The mo' colors, the too' better." For many Republicans the motto seems to be, "The mo' people, the mo' better."

This misses the simple fact that, unlike the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, most Americans don't measure the quality of their lives solely by the size of the GNP. Turning what remains of the nation's redwood forests into expensive lawn furniture might be good for the economy. Eliminating environmental protections might maximize profits. The American people would favor neither solely in the name of boosting the GNP.

Republicans seem to be frozen by fear of political incorrectness on this issue. As if to pre-empt any charges of racism or xenophobia, they feel the need to justify a hard line on illegal immigration by affirming their support for generous legal immigration.

Dick Day describes Senator Simpson's sponsorship of the 1990 immigration increase as the senators "sword and shield against charges of racism," particularly since the law benefited Mexicans disproportionately. In the same vein, Representative Smith defends his forthcoming bill to curtail illegal immigration by saying, "We don't need to be defensive. The United States admits as many legal immigrants as all the rest of the world combined."

Perhaps Simpson and Smith haven't noticed: no one is asking them to defend their stance against illegal immigration. Some 90 per cent of the American public agrees that illegal immigration is a serious problem.

But, of course, no one has ever assumed the mantle of leadership by taking on easy issues. "It's easy to talk about asylum fraud and illegal immigration," says Senator Reid. "When you talk about legal immigration, you get called a racist."

While it may not be pleasant to be called names on the editorial pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post, it has been the Republicans' willingness to endure such attacks that helped them keep a firm grip on the White House for much of the past quarter-century, says Washington attorney William Chip. Chip advises a national coalition called Republicans for Immigration Reform.

He points out that both Richard Nixon in 1968 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 succeeded in wooing traditional Democrats by tackling issues that ordinary Americans cared about deeply, but which Democrats were reluctant to touch. "Republicans won't win many elections talking about 'family values,' 'the opportunity society,' and other abstractions," says Chip. "Reagan Democrats and Perot Republicans don't care much about those things. They care about violent crime, escalating immigration, and other forces that menace a way of life to which they feel entitled."

At the root of the growing concern about immigration is the public's sense that their country is being dramatically transformed without their consent. This concern cannot be addressed merely by cracking down on illegal immigration. Legal immigrants have essentially the same economic, social, and cultural impact as illegal ones, and legal immigration accounts for a much higher percentage of the influx.

Over the past 25 years the Republicans have had the edge when it came to reading the public mood. In 1993, it is a Democrat, Harry Reid, who was first to figure out what is really making immigration the issue of the Nineties. It's too late for Republicans to be first, but there is still time to avoid being left in the dust.