COLUMN ONE : Congress’ Ticket for Foreigners : ‘Private bills’ have granted citizenship or residency to many who were ineligible under U.S. law. The famous and the notorious have fared well, but not poor refugees.

Onetime soap opera star Michael Wilding never would have become an American had Congress not made a law just for him.

Wilding, a British subject, had been convicted in 1974 of possessing and growing marijuana--crimes that barred him from immigrating to the United States.

But unlike the thousands of would-be immigrants who are routinely excluded from this country because of criminal convictions, Wilding had two powerful connections--his mother, Elizabeth Taylor, and her sixth husband, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.)

In a matter of months, the Senate passed a tiny, unheralded piece of legislation for the sole purpose of granting Wilding temporary residency--on the same day it approved the sweeping 1988 anti-drug act.

“Ah, yes, that’s American democracy at work,” said Dave Simcox, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative Washington think tank.

Wilding was the beneficiary of an obscure avenue of immigration called the private bill, which allows otherwise ineligible foreigners to become U. S. residents or citizens.

Over the past half-century, the method has been used sporadically--6,700 bills passed in the last 50 years, only a few dozen in the last five--but the rolls are dotted with the names of the rich, famous and notorious: sports and media mogul Jack Kent Cooke, New York bookmaker Martin Aloysius Madden, and New York debutante Hope Namgyal, who renounced her citizenship to become the last queen of the former Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim and then asked for it back after her husband was deposed.

Supporters say private bills fill a critical role in immigration by serving as a court of last resort, granting relief to foreigners whose cases fall into the cracks of U. S. immigration law.

But others say it is an uncomfortable blend of humanitarianism and favor-granting for the well-connected that often confirms the adage that it is who you know that counts.

“It’s the plaything of the Establishment,” said Arthur C. Helton, director of the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. “It’s not something a Salvadoran peasant can ever hope for.”

There is no easy way to categorize the beneficiaries of private bills. Over the years, many celebrities have benefited from private bills. But many others have been bluntly rejected.

There are hundreds of cases of heart-rending need that Congress has resolved through private bills. Yet, there also are many cases, such as the athletes who crop up each Olympic year, with problems that pale in comparison to those of even the most ordinary illegal immigrants.

Tennis stars, for instance, have fared terribly over the years, with rejections for both Martina Navratilova and Ivan Lendl.

But Olympic hopefuls have done quite well, with successful bills for swimmer Tracey McFarlane, soccer player Jean Willrich, skiers Audun Endestad and Jana Hlavaty, and gymnast Marina Kunyavsky, who did not even make the Olympic team.

Refugees have generally done poorly in the private law sweepstakes, but convicted drug users have had smashing success, winning dozens of bills.

Mixed in are a few hundred Chinese seamen who bribed attorneys with special connections, dozens of orphans, a few Russian defectors, a 111-year-old Albanian immigrant who wanted to vote in one U. S. election before she died, and a British-born Marine corporal who was killed in Vietnam and posthumously granted citizenship.

At least one convicted murderer, Boris Kowerda, was allowed to immigrate through a private bill. Congress sympathetically noted that the victim was the Soviet ambassador to Poland.

“It is believed that the crime committed by Boris Kowerda falls within the category of ‘purely political offenses,’ ” the House Judiciary Committee reported in 1955.

Private immigration bills spring from Article I of the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to “establish a uniform rule of naturalization.”

Congress has interpreted the phrase to mean that it has the right to take up individual cases and grant exemptions to the general law as it sees fit.

As late as the 1960s, private bills routinely numbered in the hundreds each year--with the 59th Congress holding the record of 6,248 private immigration bills passed from 1905 to 1907 compared to just 692 public laws during the same period.

But over the past 30 years, the number of private immigration bills has plummeted--the result of reforms instituted after several notorious cases.

The first scandal to illuminate the world of private bills was the 1969 Chinese seamen fiasco, in which 702 ship-jumpers were allowed to enter the country.

A Senate investigation in 1970 found that 80% of the bills were funneled to Congress through four New York attorneys, who were paid as much as $750 for each bill.

Half the bills were sponsored by just four senators--Daniel Inouye, Gaylord Nelson, Daniel Brewster and Harrison A. Williams.

The senators said the bills were handled by aides and that they had no knowledge of them. They were cleared of any wrongdoing.

In another case, Rep. Henry Helstoski of New Jersey was indicted in 1976 on charges that he solicited thousands of dollars in bribes to introduce private immigration bills.

His case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution barred the use of votes or speeches in Congress as evidence against a legislator. The charges against Helstoski were dismissed in 1979.

The most recent blow came in 1980, when FBI undercover investigators, posing as Arab sheiks, asked several members of Congress if they would introduce private bills allowing them to become U. S. residents.

As a hidden video camera rolled, four House members and one senator were caught taking cash or stock from the phony sheiks. Six House members and one senator were convicted of various criminal charges.

Several changes in immigration law over the years also have reduced the number of private bills.

Drug users once routinely solicited private bills to delay their deportation or to become permanent residents of the United States.

But partly in response to the high number of private bills for drug users, Congress changed the law in 1981, allowing a waiver if an applicant had been convicted of possessing fewer than 30 grams. The exclusion for drug dealers and drug producers remained intact.

Today, barely a handful of such private bills clear all the legislative hurdles, which include a review by the House and Senate subcommittees on immigration issues, and a special house panel of “objectors,” whose job is to screen private bills.

Only two such bills were passed last year: one, granting residency to an adopted Argentine teen-ager who was too old to be sponsored for residency, and the other for the widow of a U. S. citizen who failed to secure residency for his wife before he died.

Despite the greater scrutiny, there are still cases that push the boundaries of the private bill provision’s original intent.

Consider the case of Tracey McFarlane, the Canadian who came with her family to the United States in 1978 when she was 12.

The family settled in Palm Springs and was content to remain Canadian citizens until 1983, when McFarlane, then a high school teen-ager, had begun placing in the top spots in national swimming competitions and dreamed of the Olympics.

She could have tried out for Canada’s Olympic team, but she considered herself an American and wanted to swim for her adopted country.

She had become a permanent resident in 1984, but to join the American Olympic team she had to be a citizen, which requires at least five years of residency. McFarlane knew she would miss the deadline for the 1988 Olympics by a year.

She was introduced by a swimming coach to Jim Wright, then Speaker of the House, who pushed her bill through Congress, fending off challenges from lawmakers who demanded equal treatment for tennis star Ivan Lendl and Jens Peter Berndt, an East German defector who also wanted to join the American swim team. Both Lendl and Berndt were rejected.

In 1988, a few months after her bill was submitted, McFarlane was granted citizenship, largely on the strength of her long residence in the United States. She went on to share an Olympic silver medal in the women’s 400-meter medley relay.

“I can’t say I had an extraordinary case,” McFarlane said, “but I feel I deserved it.”

For every Olympic athlete who wins a special favor from Congress, there also are dozens of desperate immigrants caught in the tangled web of immigration law who seek relief through private bills.

Common cases include the adoption of overage orphans who cannot be sponsored as immigrants by their parents and foreigners who married U.S. residents but were unable to become residents themselves.

Need alone does not always guarantee quick attention, or any attention. The key is winning the backing of a congressman.

In 1976, Sonanong Poonpipat, a native of Thailand, married William P. Latch, a teacher and journalist who had traveled to Bangkok and decided to stay. They built a home and with their two children began putting down roots.

Their world was shattered when Latch, on assignment for NBC News, was killed by rebel tank fire during the 1985 coup attempt in Thailand.

Latch’s father, Billy, was notified of his son’s death by the U.S. State Department. He was stunned when he learned that he had a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren in Thailand. His son had never told him.

Latch, a gruff 70-year-old independent oil driller and ex-Marine in Durango, Colo., had never hidden his opposition to interracial marriage, but he felt that it was his duty to care for his son’s wife.

He wrote a long letter to Poonpipat, who had no relatives in Thailand, suggesting that she and the children come to the United States.

Poonpipat visited the United States in 1985 and came for good a few months later.

The children were U. S. citizens because of their father, but Poonpipat was a Thai national who could only enter the country as a tourist.

Latch’s father believed that the situation was resolved until he received a letter from the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, informing him that Poonpipat’s tourist visa had expired. The children could stay, but she had to leave.

A solution was found through one of his son’s friends, an aide to Sen. Hank Brown of Colorado. Brown introduced a private bill in 1986 to grant Poonpipat permanent residency.

“It is the strong desire of the family for the children to be raised near where their father was raised in the American Southwest,” he wrote to Congress. “Nothing would be served by denying them the opportunity to stay in the United States.”

Despite what seemed to be a compelling case, it took Congress four years to pass a private bill making Poonpipat a permanent resident.

“It’s just discouraging that the wheels grind so slowly,” Latch said.

Poonpipat and her children now live about 45 miles away from Latch in Bloomfield, N. M., where she occasionally works as a seamstress or waitress.

Latch concedes that they are not particularly close, separated by a chasm of culture and language. But he adds, they are family, bound, however tenuously, through his son.

“I’m grateful,” Latch said. “He was my son and this was my responsibility. It was something I owed to him and myself.”

Private Laws

An obscure avenue of immigration called the “private bill” allows otherwise ineligible foreigners to become U.S. residents or citizens. Over the past 50 years, Congress has passed just 6,700 such measures. Supporters say that bills serve a critical role as a “court of last resort” in immigration law. But detractors say it’s a dubious process that has often been used to aide the rich, famous and well-connected.

* The private law for Michael Wilding, son of Elizabeth Taylor, granted him a personal exemption from the exclusion against convicted drug users and granted him temporary residency with the promise of permanent residency after three years.

* Jack Kent Cooke, owner of the Los Angeles Lakers and the Washington Redskins, became an immediate U.S. citizen through his private bill, which allowed him to bypass the usual process of becoming a permanent resident and then waiting five years.

* Martin Aloysius Madden, a British-born race track owner, gambler, bookmaker and brother of World War I-era gangland leader Owen Madden, managed to halt his deportation on charges of “moral turpitude” through a private bill sponsored by then New York Sen. Herbert H. Lehman.

Private Entrances

Here’s a look at private immigration bills introduced and enacted by Congress in selected years. The figure has dropped as Congress has tightened the rules on private bills.

CONGRESS YEARS IN BILLS LAWS SESSION INTRODUCED ENACTED 102nd Congress 1991-present 49 2 101st Congress 1989-91 127 7 100th Congress 1987-89 194 20 98th Congress 1983-85 454 33 96th Congress 1979-81 902 83 94th Congress 1975-77 1,023 99 92nd Congress 1971-73 2,866 62 90th Congress 1967-69 7,293 218 88th Congress 1963-65 3,647 196 86th Congress 1959-61 3,069 488 84th Congress 1955-57 4,474 1,227 82nd Congress 1951-53 3,669 729

SOURCE: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service