Senate Votes 3-Year Limit on Alien Program : Wilson’s ‘Guest Worker’ Plan Would Die Unless Renewed by Congress

The Senate continued its tug of war over sweeping immigration legislation Wednesday, voting to end after three years a foreign farm worker program it had rejected last week and then approved Tuesday.

The three-year “sunset” provision--which would kill the program unless Congress voted to extend it--was passed on a voice vote after opponents lost a test vote by 55 to 39.

Approval of the amendment, offered by Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), was a blow to Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), who had resurrected the so-called “guest worker” provision Tuesday, obtaining approval of an amendment that would limit to 350,000 the number of foreign laborers the program would allow to work in this country at any one time. An earlier version of the amendment that did not include the 350,000 limit had been defeated.

Amendment Slows Debate

Debate on the immigration bill itself bogged down over an unrelated and non-binding amendment that would remove Social Security from the overall federal budget as soon as possible. Current law calls for it to be removed in 1992.

Separately, Census Bureau Director John G. Keane told a Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee that, if illegal aliens had not been counted in the 1980 census, two states--California and New York--each would have been entitled to one fewer congressional seat. Georgia and Indiana each would have gained a representative in the House.

The bureau, which concedes that its figures are rough, believes that it included more than 1 million illegal aliens in its count of California residents.

Subcommittee Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) said that he is considering introducing legislation that would require the census to differentiate between illegal aliens and legal U.S. residents in making the once-a-decade tally that determines how many representatives each state sends to Congress.

Trying for Final Vote

Today will be the fourth day in a row that Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), sponsor of the immigration bill, has tried to bring the legislation to a final Senate vote.

Versions of the bill, which would fine employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, have been passed by the Republican-controlled Senate in each of the last two sessions by 4-1 ratios, but the legislation’s slow progress this year indicates that the margin of support may have shrunk.

The bill would also offer amnesty within three years of enactment to illegal aliens who could prove that they have lived in this country continuously since Jan. 1, 1980.

Opposition to the bill is stronger in the solidly Democratic House, and few believe it will be considered there before Congress adjourns for the year.

Wilson, backed by a well-financed lobby of perishable-crop farmers in California and other Western states, had sought the expanded foreign worker program to ease the legislation’s burden on farmers to ease the legislation’s burden on farmers who rely heavily on illegal aliens

Those growers contend that they cannot find enough legal U.S. residents who are willing to do hard and unpleasant seasonal field work on short notice.

However, a coalition of opponents led by organized labor insisted that Wilson’s amendment was merely a tool with which farmers could exploit foreign workers and deny jobs to domestic laborers, who demand better pay and working conditions.

Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) said that the amendment “deprives Americans of an opportunity to work . . . . I think it’s un-American and anti-American.”

“We’re not through yet,” Michael V. Durando, a leader of the Western growers, said after the vote.

The “sunset” provision, he said, would allow Congress to terminate the guest worker program before farmers had an opportunity to fully implement it.

Durando said the farmers plan to “assess our opportunities and options in the House and proceed from there.”