These days I find myself wondering how the heated national immigration issue relates to Hawai'i. But, beyond that, I wonder how all this fits with other world trends such as globalization.

On the surface at least, Hawai'i seems removed from the spirited national debate that often seems to center on images of Mexican illegals streaming across the Mainland border. In addition, Hawai'i still has an ongoing tradition that expects and welcomes a variety of immigrants, including more Latinos.

The local figures quoted are hardly alarming. Hawai'i foreign-borns number about 214,000 or some 17 percent of our total population of 1.3 million.

Hawai'i's total immigrant stock (immigrants and their children later born here) is listed at 433,000 or almost 36 percent of our population, the second highest share in the country. Most are from the Philippines with smaller shares from Japan, China and South Korea.

Hawai'i's growing yet not fully visible Hispanic community is a story in itself, which I have told in previous columns. It makes up maybe 100,000 of our total 1.3 million. That 100,000 includes an estimated 30,000 Puerto Ricans (divided between older plantation-era folks, or "Local Ricans," and newcomers) plus an uncertain number of Mexicans and others from Latin America.

Figures on illegal immigrants here are vague and vary at best since most immigrants here illegally don't stand out or volunteer to be counted. A 2003 federal estimate was a low 2,000 out of the more than 10 million illegals nationally. But before that a 1996 estimate put Hawai'i's illegal alien population at about 9,000.

At any rate, those involved here believe the figure now is more than 2,000, maybe double or greater. Many of those here did not enter Hawai'i or the Mainland illegally. Rather they overstayed after coming legally on visas as students, workers or tourists.

The group includes many Filipinos, a growing number of Chinese and probably quite a few undocumented Canadians.

The number of legal and illegal Mexicans in Hawai'i is uncertain. On one level in this time of low unemployment they are the new plantation and farm laborers on Neighbor Islands. But others are on O'ahu working in janitorial jobs, restaurants, or skilled construction work.

Most are said to be quiet and hard-working. Some have been exploited. Many quietly send money back to Mexico. A few have been involved in crimes.

While Hawai'i's overall picture of illegal aliens, or as some would say, undocumented workers, is relatively benign and even beneficial, that doesn't mean there are no costs to taxpayers in such areas as health, legal and educational services. Some of the needed federal funds for such expenses have been declining.

So Hawai'i is not just an innocent and unconcerned bystander on the national issue. What happens in the national debate over a new immigration law should concern us.

And, as I read the comparisons, Hawai'i's interests would be much better served by the comprehensive Senate bill that balances the possibility of an earned amnesty for many current illegals with tighter border controls. In contrast, the unrealistic House bill would give us tougher border controls unbalanced by enough realism or compassion.

But, as that debate goes on and heads for a conference committee with the possibility of no solution this election year, that still leaves some intriguing concerns about where the nation is headed. Many believe no bill would be better than the unrealistic House measure.

One is alarmist moves to proclaim English our national language — which it defacto is without some new act of Congress. In addition, I feel that one of our problems in the evolving world is that we don't speak enough foreign languages, including Spanish.

That still leaves the larger question of how latinized the United States will become. Already one in seven Americans is of Hispanic origin. Nor are they just clustered in the Southwest.

Some anti-immigrant American fears today echo those of a century ago when poor Irish, Italians and others from Europe poured into the country. Hawai'i had its own bouts of haole and Hawaiian concern that poor Asians here would rise up and take over — which they did, but not in any anti-American way.

Still, the Mexican situation is different in one important sense: Not only do we have a deep rich-poor economic gap, we have a long common border that makes it easier for people and cultural influences to flow back and forth, legally or otherwise.

On this situation, I like some of the ideas of American writer Richard Rodriguez, who is of Mexican heritage. Writing in the Washington Post recently, he noted: "The Americanization of Mexico is as inevitable as the Mexicanization of the United States, though the cross-pollination will never be equal because the United States is the more potent transgressor."

Rodriguez sees many problems for Mexico, including the continuing flow north of so many of its hopeful youths. But he concludes: "Because of the illegal immigrant, we are all entering the hemisphere. There are now too many Mexicans in 'America' and too many 'Americans' in Mexico for any of us to avoid the New World: the united states of Americas."

At this point, I don't foresee Mexico or part of it becoming our 51st state — not any more than I could envision parts of our Southwest restored to Mexico or as part of some new third nation, as advocated by some Latino radicals.

But the need to reform our immigration law reflects not just a dysfunctional system that is too hard legally and too easy illegally. That need for reform also reflects a changing world of high-tech development, new economic and security patterns, and new concepts of the role of nations and their states.

That is a much bigger picture for Hawai'i — and the subject of a later column here.

John Griffin is the former editor of the editorial pages of The Advertiser. He writes frequently for these pages.