Immigration Bill Sent to President : Revision Could Affect Millions, Alter Hiring of Illegal Workers

The Senate gave final congressional approval Friday night to a sweeping revision of the nation’s immigration laws that could profoundly affect the lives of millions of illegal aliens and hiring practices of every employer in the country.

Sent to President Reagan on a 63-24 vote, the controversial measure represents a fragile, hard-won compromise that fuses a range of special interests into a plan designed to deter millions of poverty-stricken aliens from sneaking into the country every year to look for work.

Reagan, despite reservations over anti-discrimination safeguards in the bill, has pledged to sign it.

Measure Called Flawed

Both critics and backers alike acknowledged that the legislation is flawed and fraught with uncertainties, and its passage evoked little euphoria. “It’s a monstrous s.o.b.,” conceded Senate Majority Whip Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), its chief sponsor. “ . . . But it will be as sure as hell a lot better than anything we’ve got now.”

Other supporters, saying during debate that the surge of illegal aliens has grown to dangerous dimensions, declared that something had to be done to forestall an irrational backlash against those who look or sound foreign, whether here legally or not.

“One of the tests of a great nation is the integrity of its borders, and we’re losing that,” said Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.).

Bentsen’s Texas colleague, Republican Phil Gramm, mounted a last-ditch effort to talk the bill to death in the waning hours of the congressional session, but his colleagues voted 69 to 21 to force an end to the filibuster.

Gramm contended that provisions offering legal status in a blanket amnesty to many illegal aliens who entered the country before 1982 and a more generous amnesty to farm workers would backfire and lead to more unlawful entries by foreigners betting on approval of a future amnesty.

But Simpson said that failure to act would only aggravate the problem, allowing many employers to continue to cheat and exploit their illegal labor. “Let’s go back to what made America great--greed,”’ he snapped sarcastically. “I think we fought a war about that kind of thing 100 years ago or so. Slavery. . . . If you’ve got the status quo, you’ve got a real society of discrimination.”

Californians Back It

Both California senators, Republican Pete Wilson and Democrat Alan Cranston, voted for the measure. The vote represented a change of heart for Cranston, now in a tight reelection battle, who last year voted against the initial Senate version of the legislation. Wilson had voted for it.

The measure, which the House passed by 238 to 173 Wednesday, threatens industries, shopkeepers and homeowners alike with hefty fines and even jail terms if they knowingly hire an illegal worker. At the same time, it would offer legal status to illegal aliens who have lived in this country continuously since Jan. 1, 1982, or before.

The final passage caps a 15-year congressional struggle for immigration revisions that was thwarted time and time again, once while at the brink of approval in 1984, by charges that it would cause labor shortages and greater discrimination against ethnics.

Faithful to its cliffhanger history, the final package neared collapse several times and had been declared dead by its frustrated sponsors only last month in a dispute over the special amnesty for farm workers. But it was hastily revived with further revisions and compromises. Even after support jelled in both houses for the legislation, the Gramm filibuster and indications that Reagan had concerns about the measure provided last-minute suspense over its fate.

Central to the final package are the employer sanctions, which are intended to cut off the jobs that attract illegal aliens and to correct a curious legal anomaly that makes it against the law for an illegal worker to be in the country but allows an employer to hire him. The penalties range from $250 to $10,000 for each illegal alien an employer knowingly puts on the payroll. Habitual offenders can be sent to jail for up to six months.

To assuage fears of industries that depend on alien labor, the package offers legal residency to aliens who have been here almost five years and specially accelerated legalization for farm workers who have worked here for as little as 90 days in a 12-month period ending last spring.

Federal estimates on the number of aliens who will successfully apply for legal status range from several hundred thousand to 1.4 million.

The concerns of Latino groups fearful that some penalty-conscious businesses will avoid hiring any foreigners were addressed by a provision banning employers from refusing to hire job candidates merely because they are not citizens.

Fear of Lawsuits

Reagan, a long-time supporter of immigration overhaul, expressed concerns that that provision would trigger an avalanche of job discrimination lawsuits, but Simpson secured his endorsement for the package in a meeting Thursday, guaranteeing that there will be no call for a new federal bureaucracy to administer the law.

State and local governments were promised up to $4 billion through 1994 to reimburse them for the extra local welfare and school costs associated with legalization. Newly legal aliens are barred from receiving most federal welfare benefits for five years.

Despite predictions that legalization would draw more illegal immigrants gambling that legal status could be eventually gained and Gramm’s complaint that the amnesty and farm worker programs “rewarded” some for breaking the law, civil liberties groups defended the bill. They said that amnesty was vitally needed to end the plight of an exploited underclass unable to defend itself against persecution in the courts.

Monument to Mediocrity

In the end, even the measure’s authors agreed, the struggle to reconcile competing concerns produced a monument to mediocrity, a complex hybrid designed to maximize and broaden support rather than fully satisfy the interests of any particular interest group.

“You can either just sulk in the corner and say ‘I can’t get what I want’ or you can compromise,” Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Long Beach) told House colleagues recently. “This is a grand compromise. It satisfies no one entirely and it does violence to no one entirely.”

Still lingering over the debate on immigration overhaul are major questions. Because the very nature of their illegal status keeps illegal aliens underground, estimates of their numbers and impact on the economy are shaky at best.

The National Academy of Sciences puts the number of illegal aliens at between 1.5 million and 3.5 million, the Census Bureau says about 6 million and some lawmakers contended during debate that it was as high as 12 million.

Must Muster Courage

Also open to speculation are how many of the eligible illegal aliens will muster the courage to apply for residency after years of distrust of authorities.

What is apparent is that the alien influx into the United States has been growing. When Rep. Peter W. Rodino Jr. (D-N.J.) authored his first revision bill 15 years ago, about 200,000 persons were arrested at the border each year. By 1985, the number of apprehensions had soared to a record 1.2 million and this year the Immigration and Naturalization Service expects them to hit 1.8 million--about 5,000 a day. Most experts believe that for every illegal alien stopped, one to two more get through.

“When you add up the numbers of people that come into this country illegally every year, on the low side that would amount to around 2 million people--or the equivalent of four new congressional districts,” Lungren said.