MEXIFORNIA Victor Davis Hanson 83 even a Hispanic employee could quite decipher. Forty minutes later I went home without reaching the teller. No economist calculates the billions that are lost in time and efficiency in California daily when thousands of aliens must have translators and be instructed in the basics that millions of Californians take for granted. Instead, we all oblivi- ously go about our business and hope the old system can transform a Native American from central Mexico into a suburbanite—without impinging on his indigenous culture and heritage, of course. • A visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles is an hour- long disaster. English seems not to be spoken on either side of me; the line does not move; and the customers cannot understand the myriad forms to be filled out for their trail- ers, vans and cars. • My daughter’s car was hit in an intersection by a young Mexican who ran a stoplight, propelling her vehicle into a neighboring yard. The Mexican-American policeman took no report, issued no citation and let the driver off—after getting her phone number. • In a car parked deep in our orchard, a man of about forty was slapping and cursing a younger woman. Was he armed? Was she in danger? I approached the car, asked him not to hit the woman and then to leave. He did—as both cursed me on the way out, the victim far more than her abuser. Such are the whirling images that now surround someone liv- ing in California, at the epicenter of illegal immigration. The other day I went up to my office at California State University, then to the library, and at last to the department office. It was late sum- mer and the campus was largely deserted after summer school had ended—except for hundreds of young grade-schoolers, the vast majority of them Mexican and Mexican-American. Race seems the unspoken prerequisite for participation. There are literally dozens of programs for such underprivileged, geared for kids from