Though the roots of most Americans lie in other lands, there is among them a streak of xenophobia that can be broad. Chinese and Irish immigrants were the targets of nativist hostility in the 19th century, as were Eastern European Jews and Southern Italians in the early 20th. Japanese-Americans were confined to detention camps in World War II. Now the unwelcome mat is spread for many Latinos and Muslims.

Much of the focus these days is on undocumented immigrants, but under President Trump the mood has turned conspicuously anti-foreigner in general. The president wants to sharply reduce even legal immigration. He is also ready to impose the strictest limits of modern times on refugees fleeing persecution and deprivation in their homelands — those huddled masses enshrined at the Statue of Liberty.

We have seen all this before. In line with its mission of examining how major news events of the past shape the present, Retro Report reflects in this video documentary on another moment of backlash against the “other.” This was California’s Proposition 187, a 1994 referendum born of hostility to the large numbers of Mexicans crossing a porous border without proper papers. Supporters of the initiative asserted that those people were coming to California to cash in on its social programs. That, they said, had to stop.

Under Proposition 187, unlawful arrivals were to be denied access to public schools, nonemergency health care and other basic services. Doctors and teachers would also have been required to become informers: letting the authorities know of people presumed to be in this country illegally. “It’s like bringing a Big Brother into the schools,” President Bill Clinton said in opposing the measure.