Senate Votes to Revamp Laws on Immigration

The Senate, moving to stop a record wave of illegal aliens across U.S. borders, Thursday overwhelmingly approved a controversial bill that would revamp the nation’s immigration laws for the first time in two decades.

The bill gained solid bipartisan support--passing 69 to 30--but the margin was significantly smaller than the 4-1 majorities that approved similar legislation in 1982 and 1983. Neither bill became law.

Provisions of this year’s bill, some of them new, have ignited opposition from powerful special-interest groups, including Latinos, organized labor, conservatives and business.

Uncertain Prospects

A companion measure faces uncertain prospects in the Democratic-controlled House, where it passed by a razor-thin margin last year, with the legislation dying when a House-Senate conference committee could not resolve differences between the House and Senate versions. House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Tex.) said Thursday that the House bill probably will not be voted upon this year.

Like the two earlier bills approved by the Senate, the legislation approved Thursday would slap stiff fines of up to $10,000 per violation on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. Although existing law prohibits aliens from entering the country without permission, it is not a crime to hire someone who has done so.

Opponents contend that the proposed fines would lead to widespread discrimination against job seekers who have dark skin or accented speech.

The bill also would offer amnesty and eventual U.S. citizenship to illegal aliens who could prove that they had lived in this country continuously since Jan. 1, 1980. That provision has drawn fire from conservatives who claim it rewards lawbreakers.

Left unaddressed in the bill was the issue that bogged down last year’s House-Senate conference committee: a House-passed provision that would make it illegal for employers to refuse to hire job seekers simply because they are not U.S. citizens.

Estimates of the number of illegal aliens living in this country vary widely, from 2 million to more than 12 million.

But while illegal immigration has grown, support for the Senate bill slipped. Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), its sponsor, blamed several provisions attached to the bill for the first time this year.

One new provision would delay amnesty for up to three years until a commission determines that employer sanctions and beefed-up border enforcement are effectively reducing illegal immigration.

Growers Seek Bill

This year’s bill also includes a program, sought by growers of perishable crops in California and other Western states, that would allow up to 350,000 foreign seasonal farm workers at a time into this country. The “guest worker” program would expire in three years unless Congress votes to extend it.

The growers had insisted that they could not find enough U.S. citizens willing to work in their fields at harvest time and that the existing foreign worker program--despite modifications offered by Simpson--is too cumbersome to make legal foreign workers available quickly enough.

However, Richard Fajardo of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund argued that the massive program “really makes a mockery of immigration control” and sends a signal to Latinos that “we welcome folks because we need them, but we welcome them in the fields, not in our communities.”

Wilson Votes for Program

Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), who led the drive to include the agricultural worker program and had opposed past immigration legislation, voted for it. Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) voted against it, as he has in the past.

The Reagan Administration has supported the Senate version of the immigration bill in the past and Simpson expressed confidence that it would favor the measure approved Thursday.

Among other provisions in the bill:

--An amendment, sought by farmers and opposed by the Reagan Administration, requiring law enforcement agents to obtain warrants before searching open fields for illegal aliens.

--More funds for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Labor Department to beef up enforcement of immigration laws.

--Allocation of $3 billion over four years to states with large illegal alien populations to reimburse the states for the costs of providing welfare and other benefits to newly legal aliens.