House Panel Endorses Major Revision of Immigration Laws

A House Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday endorsed a major revamping of the nation’s immigration laws after approving changes designed to enhance on-the-job conditions for domestic farm workers while restricting growers’ ability to legally import cheap foreign labor.

However, panel members cautioned that the final shape of so-called “guest-worker” provisions is far from settled and could be significantly altered when the full committee takes up the immigration question early next year.

On a voice vote, the Democratic-led body sent to the full committee a revised package of reforms that would impose sanctions on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, making it harder for them to find jobs and therefore giving them less incentive to enter the country. The measure also would grant amnesty to potentially hundreds of thousands of persons, mostly Latinos, now in the country illegally.

Differ in Detail

The broad outlines of the legislation are similar to a bill designed to curb illegal immigration that passed the Senate in September, but the two measures differ significantly in detail.

For instance, the subcommittee on a voice vote rejected a proposal by California Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Long Beach) that would have given growers of perishable crops the right to import up to 350,000 workers a year to pick fruits and vegetables. A similar provision, urged by growers who contend the domestic labor supply is insufficient to ensure the timely harvest of weather-sensitive crops, is included in the Senate bill.

Latino and labor groups contend that the supply of domestic labor is more than adequate and that greedy growers want access to foreign workers to hold down the costs of wages and benefits.

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), the leader of these forces, won 6-4 approval for his amendment requiring growers to quickly purge their payrolls of workers here illegally. The Senate legislation gives farmers three years to wean themselves from reliance on illegal aliens to pick crops.

Other Berman-sponsored changes approved by the panel would:

--Strip away part of a Senate-passed plan designed to streamline the procedures growers must follow to legally import foreign workers under a small-scale program already in existence. Advocates of the Senate plan said bureaucratic red tape make the program too inflexible for growers of perishable produce to utilize. But critics contended that the changes would make it too easy for farmers to bypass domestic workers and go straight to foreign sources when recruiting farm laborers.

--Retain the present requirement that growers make clean and safe housing on their land available to all seasonal workers they hire. The Senate version would give farmers the choice of providing either the housing or a stipend that laborers could apply to rentals elsewhere. Opponents argued that the supply of rural housing is critically short, leaving many workers literally out in the cold with or without the stipends.

Drafting Compromise

Despite Tuesday’s votes, liberals on the committee said they were attempting to draft a compromise guest-worker plan that would avoid a major clash in the committee between growers’ interests and those of Latino and labor groups. Fighting over the issue scuttled a similar package of immigration reforms in the closing days of Congress last year.

Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is organizing the mediation efforts, insisted that committee members were making progress in forging a compromise. “We’re close,” Schumer said. “But it ain’t over till the fat lady sings.”

But Lungren, miffed that he and other conservatives so far have been left out of the negotiations, said Schumer’s assessment of progress was overstated. “He’s far more optimistic than I am,” Lungren said.