Spending Cuts May Doom Immigration Law Overhaul

Immigration law reform, which almost cleared Congress in 1984 and is back on the legislative agenda, may be ambushed this year by a new foe--the drastic spending constraints Congress imposed on itself when it passed the Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing law last December.

The immigration legislation now pending in the House and Senate is designed to end the fugitive status of many people now living illegally in the United States and, at the same time, curb the influx of aliens into the country.

Any such change in the law, however, would raise the cost not only of immigration control but also of government health and welfare programs. Tens of thousands of immigrants with the new legal status would become eligible for a wide array of state and local benefits, and the federal government would have to compensate the states and localities for the costs.

The $11.7 billion in federal spending cuts to take effect March 1 and far larger spending reductions scheduled for Oct. 1 under Gramm-Rudman are likely to leave little room for expensive new programs, many lawmakers and lobbyists involved with the immigration issue agree.

(Even though a federal court last week struck down its automatic spending cuts as unconstitutional, the deficit-reducing mechanism of Gramm-Rudman will continue to operate, subject to final congressional approval.)

“Before Gramm-Rudman, it (immigration legislation) was a questionable endeavor,” said Rep. Romano L. Mazzoli (D-Ky.), chairman of the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee. “With Gramm-Rudman, it makes the question marks even larger.”

Although serious ideological differences long have fueled the debate, backers and critics alike say that Congress may seize on the cost issue as a new excuse to bury an immigration package that was passed by the Republican-controlled Senate last year and is awaiting action in a significantly different form in the Democratic-run House Judiciary Committee.

“In the end,” predicted Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), the deficit-cutting law “may be the knife in the back of the immigration bill.”

Barnaby Zall, general counsel of the Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, agreed: “Gramm-Rudman is sort of the bull in the china shop, and nobody’s sure which way it’s going to kick.”

Not on Priorities List

Although the Administration has publicly endorsed the concept of an immigration overhaul, President Reagan’s fiscal 1987 budget set aside no funds to pay for such a program and it was not listed among the President’s major policy initiatives for the coming year.

Lawmakers have wrestled for several years with formulas for stanching the flow of illegal immigrants into the country and in 1984 nearly passed a reform package before a dispute over safeguards against discrimination erupted in the last days of the congressional session.

The concept was revived in the House last year by Mazzoli and the Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Peter W. Rodino Jr. (D-N.J.), and in the Senate by Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.).

Although the two measures differ widely in detail, both approaches would offer eventual amnesty to many illegal workers already in the country, and both are designed to discourage new immigrants by slapping hefty fines and possible jail terms on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

House negotiators are struggling with the thorny issue of whether an amnesty bill should have provisions allowing Western growers to import large numbers of foreign workers to pick crops.

Labor Shortage Disputed

The Senate added such a program to its version after farmers who rely on foreign workers at harvest time complained that giving large numbers of now-illegal immigrants legal status could create a labor shortage in the fields. Farm worker organizations and other groups contend, however, that the domestic labor supply for such work is adequate. They charge that the growers are merely trying to keep wages low.

The Senate completed action on Simpson’s bill in September, and Mazzoli’s subcommittee finished its hearings in November; but Rodino has yet to schedule a full committee session on the bill, and some members are grumbling about the delays.

“The budget cuts, Administration inattentiveness (and) lack of leadership within the House to bring it to the floor make prospects bleak right now,” said Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), a former chairman of the congressional Latino caucus.

One complication of the immigration debate is a lack of firm data on which to base cost projections.

For example, when Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose) last year asked the Congressional Budget Office to predict the costs of an amnesty program, CBO estimates ranged from hundreds of millions of dollars a year to billions, depending on which of the numerous variables were considered.

“The estimates presented here are very uncertain,” the report cautioned. “ . . . Actual costs of the alternatives costed here could be well above or below CBO’s estimates.”

Most troubled by the potential economic impact of immigration changes are government officials in states that have large numbers of illegal aliens, such as California and Texas. Both the House and Senate bills bar aliens with the new legal status from receiving federal welfare benefits. Either measure would, in effect, pass that burden to state and local governments.

The House bill, as now written, promises local governments full reimbursement for the extra costs they incur from picking up what would otherwise be the federal share of expensive programs such as Medicaid and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The Senate bill, on the other hand, sets a $600-million annual ceiling on reimbursements for the first five years of any amnesty program.

Senate analysts estimated that $600 million would be more than adequate, but some local officials are not so sure. For example, a Los Angeles County study completed in December estimated that the Simpson bill by 1991 would raise the county’s welfare costs by nearly $299 million, almost half the reimbursement pot for the whole nation.

The more liberal Rodino bill would cost the county less overall but would raise the total federal, state and local welfare expenses associated with immigrants given legal status in Los Angeles County to $484.5 million by 1991, the report predicted.

Berman, a former farm labor lawyer who has opposed previous immigration proposals, predicted that financial questions will complicate the effort to reach a full accord on the issue.

“For that legislation to work the way it’s supposed to, it’s going to take a massive infusion of money,” Berman said. “At a time when revenue sharing is about to end and different programs involving grants to the states (are about to be) massively scaled back, the hope of getting reimbursement is very scant.”

Not all lawmakers involved in the immigration debate agree that the cost factor could ultimately sink the bill. Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Long Beach) said that government officials will realize that future expenses will amount to less than the tax revenues they lose under current immigration policies.

“There are taxes not being taken in by federal, local and state governments because of folks not reporting the incomes,” Lungren said. “ . . . It (the bill) will rise or fall on other issues.”