During the1994 election, Californian voters saw a television commercial that depicted illegal aliens climbing over fences and crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. As these disturbing images flashed on the television screen, a female narrator ominously warned that around 3,000 illegal immigrants enter the United States on a given night. The ad then concluded by accusing the other party's candidate of being soft on illegal immigration.

That narrator was Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein. Chances are that non-Californians never saw or heard about Feinstein's commercial. But they undoubtedly know about then-Governor Pete Wilson's crusade against illegal immigration in the '94 election. The media pundits pilloried Wilson for pandering to the worst fears of Californians, while they essentially gave Feinstein a free pass. This double standard should not come as a surprise to conservatives.

It is an article of faith among the liberal cognoscenti that Republicans unabashedly oppose all newcomers to this country, legal or illegal. For instance, a recent front-page article in the Los Angeles Times article casually referred to the "anti-immigrant era of then-California Governor Pete Wilson." (Never mind that Pete Wilson carefully emphasized the difference between illegal and legal immigration and praised "the vitality and diversity that legal immigrants to California," while Feinstein supported a 40% reduction of legal immigration and demanded President Clinton to declare California an "immigration disaster.")

This crude caricature of conservatives as xenophobes has tainted the Republican Party in the eyes of immigrants. Since 1994, Latinos have registered as Democrats in droves, helping transform California from Reagan Republic into Clinton Country. And even Asian-Americans, who generally are conservative and vote more Republican even than whites in the 1992 election, have slowly inched towards the Democratic camp. As the Latino and Asian populations surge in the United States, Republicans flirt with political suicide if their party cannot change its tarnished image.

Of course, Republicans are culpable to some degree for this perception. Many conservatives in Congress indeed want to reduce immigration and have sponsored restrictive legislation. Furthermore, Republicans have faltered in allowing Democrats -- who shamelessly exploited Asian fundraisers -- to perform political jujitsu and characterize the GOP's investigation into shady fundraising as racially motivated.

At least now, Republicans have realized the potential fallout from alienating the burgeoning immigrant vote. Declaring himself a "new kind of Republican," President George W. Bush has made numerous overtures to the new Americans. Republicans, however, have been almost apologetic in wooing immigrants. This previous election cycle, the GOP ran a commercial where a young Latino lady pathetically pleads for fellow Hispanics to keep an "open mind" about the GOP. And during a campaign stop last year at California, Bush conceded, "The Republican Party here is viewed in some quarters as anti-immigrant, unfriendly to newcomers, so I know I have an image to battle."

This approach has not yielded much benefit: Bush made relatively limited inroads among Latinos and Asians this past election, despite heavy campaigning in immigrant communities. More importantly, this strategy cedes the high moral ground to Democrats. It tacitly confirms the media shibboleth that most Republicans were and, notwithstanding Bush, continue to be anti-immigrant. Republicans need not run away from the past. Instead, they should counter this misperception by trumpeting the proud pro-immigrant positions that many conservatives have taken in the past decade. Free-market conservatives have actively supported immigration because they have viewed immigrants as beneficial to the American economy.

It seems that liberals, and sadly, Republicans as well, have a short memory. In 1996, public opinion polls showed that a vast majority of Americans wanted to reduce legal immigration. The Clinton-Gore administration, undoubtedly influenced by these polls, initially endorsed a one-third reduction in legal immigration. While most prominent Democrats stayed silent on this issue, many high-profile Republicans came to the defense of legal immigrants. Dick Armey, for example, steadfastly praised immigration, despite polls that showed the dangers of doing so.

"Should we reduce legal immigration? I'm hard-pressed to think of a single problem that would be solved by shutting off the supply of willing and eager new Americans," he opined. Other prominent conservatives like William Bennett, Steve Forbes and Jack Kemp all vigorously defended immigration as well.

Conservatives also played a crucial leadership role in defeating anti-immigration legislation supported by a coalition of culturally conservative Republicans and pro-union Democrats. The bill had survived intact the treacherous shoals of the congressional committees, where previous anti-immigration bills had foundered. President Clinton -- always malleable to public opinion in an election year -- signaled that he would sign the bill, which would have reduced legal immigration by a third and enacted tougher provisions against illegal immigration.

Pundits predicted that the United States would reduce legal immigration for the first time in nearly seventy years. At the last minute though, Republican Congressmen Dick Chrysler and (now Senator) Sam Brownback introduced an amendment to separate the legal and illegal immigration provisions, essentially killing the legal immigration portion of the bill.

The fate of the Chrysler-Brownback seemed uncertain until conservative activist Grover Norquist conferred with Newt Gingrich and Ralph Reed on the eve of the amendment vote. Norquist convinced Reed to issue a statement that praised legal immigration as being an example of pro-family values policy. "Reed's letter probably convinced two dozen House Republicans to vote for the [Chrysler-Brownback] amendment," says Rick Swartz, an immigration lobbyist. Congressman Chrysler, who represented a union-heavy district in Michigan, paid a heavy price for his support for immigration: he lost his congressional seat that fall to Democrat Debbie Stabenow.

Republicans have also worked to increase the number of immigrants allowed into the United States. George W. should not forget that his father signed the Immigration Act of 1990, which increased the annual legal immigration quota by forty-percent.

Despite all these Republican efforts to defend and support immigration, the conventional wisdom holds that conservatives are hostile to newcomers. It's one thing that the left-leaning media would conveniently support this revisionist history. It's quite another when conservatives endorse it too.

Kenneth Lee is the author of Huddled Masses, Muddled Laws, and has written for The New Republic and the Weekly Standard.