One doesn't have to live in those areas to "see" it.
Not anymore, but for the last five to ten years, it's been largely a lonely battle for those of us in the Southwest. If you knew what was going on, that's good! Clearly you were more aware than "most" - and we did use the word "most." Almost without fail I could tell from the way people talked on the illegal alien and immigration threads if they were from an area thus far unaffected - usually because of their scorn for the rest of us.
That's not to say everyone is unanimous down here in AZ either though. The far left-wing nut jobs, the RINOS/globalists, and the illegal aliens themselves are still in a state of denial and think we should all be one big happy hemisphere.