In spite of recent referrals to the decline of boundaries between nations and cultures that is a feature of globalization, issues of immigration remain much debated in the United States in the late 1990s. This paper examines the ‘Mexican Question’ in California with regard to history, as it most definitely continues to shape Californians’ attitudes and political sentiment. The result is a view of an American region that by no means reflects the dissolution of borders between cultures that is held by some theorists to be occurring at the present time.