AUSTIN, Texas -- When Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush went to a local church agency last fall to praise it for promoting "self-sufficiency," he didn't ask about an issue readily acknowledged by workers at El Buen Samaritano, an Episcopal mission.

The mission's clients largely are undocumented immigrants working illegally in Austin.

A spokesman for the Bush campaign says the Texas governor knew the agency "helped people in need and that many are Spanish-speaking immigrants." But the campaign did not raise the issue of the immigrants' status, treatment that suggests a profound shift in the role immigration plays in the nation's political debate.

Gone are the fiery, anti-immigrant rhetoric of Pat Buchanan and the controversial legislative proposals of California's then-governor, Pete Wilson. No longer are Republican leaders railing about porous borders or extolling the virtues of security fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Less than four years ago, undocumented immigrants were the most potent emblem of anti-immigrant sentiment that smoldered through much of the country. That resentment extended well beyond the narrow issue of illegal immigrants, providing political power behind congressionally mandated cuts in government benefits for all non-citizens and calls for reductions in legal immigration.

Yet in the space of a single national election cycle, the mood of the American public appears to have shifted dramatically, with anti-immigrant sentiment at its lowest in a generation. The Bush candidacy's casual treatment of the subject, as well as Austin's easy acceptance of a wave of new immigrants, underscores some key forces at work in a reshaped immigration debate.

During the current economic boom, fears of job competition from immigrants have eased. As persistent government budget deficits have given way to rosy scenarios of long-running surpluses, the vitriol has gone out of complaints that new immigrants, legal and illegal, can burden public services.

And as the rapidly growing Hispanic electorate joins the iconic "soccer moms" as a fashionable political constituency, candidates ardently court voters sensitive to immigrants' unflattering portrayal in campaign commercials a few years ago. Their votes are particularly important in key states such as California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey and New York.

The new attitudes toward immigration have permeated the rhetoric of the presidential campaign. They are an important part of the logic behind the Republican Establishment's embrace of the Bush candidacy, which has been buoyed, among other things, by his demonstrated appeal to Hispanic voters. And they are producing a new atmosphere toward immigration policy in Congress.

"It's a remarkable sea change," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigration group.

Among the legislative changes on the table this year are an increase in visas available to skilled foreign workers, an expansion of the program permitting employment of foreign farmworkers and an amnesty for the estimated 6 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors a more restrictive immigration policy, acknowledges his camp is "completely on the defensive at this point."

What a change a few years, and a few thousand points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, can bring.

In 1996, when Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole desperately needed to revive his California campaign in the weeks before the election, he unleashed television commercials blaming illegal immigrants for high taxes, crime and deteriorating public schools. Two years earlier, Pete Wilson had come from behind to win the California governor's office and gain national prominence by championing Proposition 187, which denied illegal immigrants virtually all government services, even an education for their children.

Pat Buchanan's pitchfork populism of 1996 included a call for a fence and ditches along the border with Mexico.

In the months before the '96 election, Congress passed a tough deportation bill and a welfare reform bill that denied food stamps and Social Security disability benefits to non-citizens, even longtime legal residents. Although the Senate did not concur, the House passed legislation declaring English the official national language and, in most cases, banning the government from providing services or documents in a foreign language.

This year, Bush, the presumptive Republican nominee, regularly offers audiences the reminder that "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande River." He has said he very well might have crossed the border to support his own family if he had been born poor in Mexico.

Vice President Al Gore also is using supportive rhetoric. The Democratic candidate speaks of how immigration has made the nation "not only culturally richer, but also spiritually stronger."

In a complete turnabout, the AFL-CIO last month endorsed amnesty for illegal immigrants now in the country and backed an end to federal sanctions against employers who hire undocumented workers. Organized labor had vigorously lobbied for that provision when it was enacted in the mid-1980s. In recent speeches, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said high immigration levels are one reason record-breaking economic expansion remains strong.

Among the public, sentiment in favor of restricting immigration is at its lowest since 1977, as measured by a periodic Gallup poll taken last year. The number of Americans who said they favor lower levels of immigration was still considerable, at 44 percent. But in 1995, fully 65 percent of the public wanted lower levels of immigration.

Likewise, polls by the Pew Research Center indicate a shift in attitudes toward immigrants already in the country. In 1994, only 31 percent of Americans said new immigrants strengthen the country versus 63 percent who said they were a burden. In 1999, the public was more evenly split, with 46 percent considering immigrants a source of strength and 44 percent considering them a burden.

The swing has been even more significant in California, home of Proposition 187. There, in a poll taken last month, 54 percent of respondents said they consider immigrants a benefit, versus 34 percent who consider them a burden. Only 2 percent of the public consider immigration an important issue; 20 percent said so two years earlier.

All this comes at the end of a decade that has brought more immigrants to the U.S. than any other. Demographers expect that this year's census will show more than 1 in 10 Americans to be foreign-born for the first time since 1930.

Austin, Bush's current hometown, provides a tidy example of those forces behind the transformation in public opinion.

An exemplar of the new economy, the Austin area has an unemployment rate just above 2 percent. The region's fast-growing high-tech sector includes stock option-enriched "Dellionaires" from the locally based Dell Computer Corp.

Dell chief executive Michael Dell flew to Washington last month to push for an increase in visas for skilled immigrants, which he said is desperately needed to alleviate "a huge shortage of workers" that threatens the technology industry's growth. The high-tech industry draws heavily on skilled immigrants from throughout the world, especially India and Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Hispanic voters suddenly are all the rage with political consultants and party strategists.

Hispanics are expected to surpass African-Americans as the nation's largest minority group by 2005. Their political power is enhanced because their numbers are especially large in California, Texas, Florida and New York, which together provide more than half the electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

According to the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, the number of Hispanics registered to vote has jumped from 5.1 million in 1994 to a projected 8.25 million in 2000. Voter participation levels among Hispanics also have gone up slightly, though they are still less likely to show up at the polls than the population at large.

Tony Garza, a Hispanic Republican elected to the Texas Railroad Commission, predicts the political rise of Hispanics will counter anti-immigrant sentiments well beyond the current economic boom.

"The potential is as cyclical as the economy itself. But what's going to smooth it out over time is that the more significant a political and economic force we become, the more we will deter it," Garza said.

Alan Kraut, a history professor at American University, said anti-immigrant sentiment regularly has re-emerged in the country's past, even after new immigrant groups have gained political power. "There is still an undercurrent of anti-immigrant sentiment there," Kraut said.

"If the market goes bust and the economy turns sour, it'll come out again. It always has in the past."

A healthy economy helps Americans accept newcomers.