Immigration Bill Introduced by Lungren : Californian Trying to Push Revival of Painful Illegal Alien Issue

Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Long Beach), trying To press Congress into resurrecting the painful debate over immigration legislation,announced Friday that he has introduced a measure containing many of the elements of the controversial Simpson-Mazzoli bill that died in the closing days of the last session.

“I think time is a-wasting,” the House’s leading Republican supporter of the Simpson-Mazzoli bill said at a news conference. “We’ve got to do something.”

Passed by Both Houses

The original legislation, sponsored by Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Romano L. Mazzoli (D-Ky.), was passed by both houses of Congress last year but died when Senate-House negotiators were unable to agree on a provision to protect legal residents against discrimination by employers who might fear hiring anyone who appeared to be a foreigner.

Like the Simpson-Mazzoli measure, Lungren’s bill would impose penalties on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens and would offer amnesty to illegal workers who can prove that they have lived in this country since a certain date.

But Lungren’s legislation differs in some respects from the version of the Simpson-Mazzoli bill passed by the House last year. The most important difference is a more restrictive amnesty date--Jan. 1, 1980, instead of the Jan. 1, 1982, date in the House bill--and the measure does not deal extensively with the discrimination issue that had bogged down the Senate-House conference committee.

Lungren said of the anti-discrimination provision, “I don’t have an answer . . . . That is really where we have to do some more work.”

Few in Congress--preoccupied with the debate over reducing the federal budget deficit--are showing any appetite for taking up the immigration issue, which is controversial among many powerful groups, including minorities, organized labor and civil libertarians.

Roybal Offers Bill

Lungren said that House Democratic leaders, who control the scheduling of debate on legislation, have not given him a “clear signal” on when the House might be able to consider his bill.

Nevertheless, both sides of the issue have been organizing their forces for another confrontation.

A dramatically different version of the bill, aimed at preventing illegal aliens from taking legal workers’ jobs, already has been introduced by California Rep. Edward R. Roybal (D-Los Angeles), a leading Latino opponent of Simpson-Mazzoli. The Reagan Administration, which had backed Simpson-Mazzoli, has indicated that it is considering drafting a stripped-down version omitting many of its provisions on agricultural workers and other issues.

“I’m not trying to take the action away from Ron Mazzoli and Al Simpson, but I think we’ve got to have something on the table,” Lungren said. He added, “An ad hoc or stripped-down approach, as some have suggested, simply will not work.”