House Bill Preserves Farm-Worker Plan : But Panel Would Require Warrants for Raids on Open Fields

A House panel fine-tuning immigration reform legislation Thursday opted not to tinker with a fragile compromise farm-worker program that could make or break the bill but restored controversial language restricting raids by federal agents looking for illegal aliens.

The action in the House Agriculture Committee completed a series of committee reviews of the package designed to curb the rising tide of illegal workers entering this country and sets the stage for consideration of the bill by the full House in September.

The measure, like a Senate version passed last September, would offer amnesty to many illegal workers already in this country while seeking to deter new job seekers from sneaking across the border by--for the first time--making it illegal for employers to hire them.

Preservation of the farm-worker plan, grafted to the package by the Judiciary Committee last month, is considered crucial to the bill’s survival. The compromise involves a complex plan to satisfy the demands of Western growers for foreign-born labor that stops short of a more sweeping Senate formula allowing farmers to import up to 350,000 temporary guest workers at a time.

Warrants for Searching Fields

On a voice vote, the Agriculture Committee added a provision--opposed by the Reagan Administration--that would require federal agents to obtain warrants before raiding open fields as they search for illegal aliens. At present, agents may conduct surprise immigration raids on fields, though they need court approval before searching factories and other buildings.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service contends that a search warrant requirement would punch a large hole in the immigration bill, serving to tip off illegal aliens before a raid and giving them a chance to flee. But growers and their supporters claim that it is unfair and disruptive to subject their workers to surprise searches while prohibiting such raids at other facilities.

Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Monterey) told the committee that one farm worker in his district was killed last week while fleeing immigration agents during a raid. “People scattering from these raids often jeopardize their lives,” he argued.

The search warrant debate is not considered central to the fate of the bill, but the farm-worker controversy is.

Growers, who at present rely heavily on illegal workers, insist that perishable fruits and vegetables would go unpicked and rot on the ground if new hiring curbs go into effect.

Cheap Source of Labor

But critics of the Senate provision claim that growers are merely after a cheap, easily exploitable source of labor. They threatened to scuttle the bill if a similar plan is added to the House version.

Two years ago, the Agriculture Committee endorsed a guest-worker program similar to the current Senate plan when Congress last considered the issue of immigration reform. And that immigration bill ultimately died in House-Senate conference committee when negotiators could not agree on the final shape of the farm-worker plan.

The House bill would give many illegal aliens in this country since Jan. 1, 1982, the chance to gain legal status. But the farm-worker compromise would effectively create a second, more generous legalization program offering amnesty to illegal aliens who could prove that they had worked in the fields for at least 60 days during the 12-month period that ended last May 1.

Tenuous Agreement

So tenuous was the agreement struck between growers and longtime opponents of a guest-worker plan that the slightest attempt to alter it in the Agriculture Committee might have caused the deal to unravel and doom the legislation.

“If any of the elements are discarded along the way, then all of the parts of the package come apart,” Rep. Sid Morrison (R-Wash.) cautioned during the committee deliberations.

As it is, the fate of immigration reform still hangs by a thread. Haggling over the farm labor question has effectively pushed action on the bill so far back that, even if the House approves it next month, there may not be enough time left on the legislative calendar to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions.

Faced with elections in early November, congressional leaders hope to adjourn by the end of September.