Roybal Offers Eased Bill on Immigration

Rep. Edward R. Roybal (D-Los Angeles), who has been instrumental in blocking passage of immigration legislation in the past, offered his own bill as the 99th Congress opened Thursday.

The bill, for which Roybal is seeking co-sponsors, would punish employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens but not obligate them to determine whether any job applicant is an alien.

Roybal and other Latino members of Congress bitterly opposed previous bills to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens already in the United States while seeking to stem the entry of more by making it unlawful to hire them.

The Latino legislators charged that proposed sanctions against employers in the earlier bills would result in discrimination against job applicants who look or sound foreign even if they were American citizens or legal immigrants.

Roybal said that his bill would provide for sanctions against employers who hire illegal aliens but would put the burden of proof on the government.

He said also that his bill would prohibit a national identification system, which he and other Latinos contended could have been set up under earlier bills.