Jobless Bill Snarled in Immigration Issue : Benefits: An emotional debate in the House pits the unemployment package against a delay in welfare for blind, disabled and elderly immigrants.

The House, in an emotional debate that demonstrated the depth of feeling over immigration issues in America, voted overwhelmingly Thursday night to block a bill that would have extended jobless benefits after it became entangled with the question of providing welfare to immigrants.

On a 274-149 procedural vote, House members stunned Democratic leaders by preventing the bill from coming to the floor for consideration. The action effectively forces the leadership to resubmit the legislation today and to delay the payments it would provide to blind, disabled and elderly immigrants, using those savings to give unemployed Americans five more weeks of unemployment compensation.

Almost all House Republicans and about half the Democrats voted to block the bill.

Rep. Bill Archer (R-Tex.) summed up the tone of the debate when he called on his House colleagues to put “Americans and taxpayers first,” rather than choosing “welfare for aliens over unemployed American workers.”

After the vote, many members said the action reflected a growing public inclination to blame immigrants--legal and illegal--for many of this country’s economic woes. To some degree, they said, the same force is at work in President Clinton’s uphill battle for the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“We do have a climate in this country that can lend itself to singling out immigrants,” said Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. “That’s the reality we have to deal with.”

“Unfortunately, we’re left with taking money from one disenfranchised group and giving it to another disenfranchised group,” Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) said.

But others insisted that it was a painful choice born of a difficult budgetary climate--one in which Americans no longer will tolerate higher taxes or deeper debt. “There is no place to find revenue, and I think we’re all going to have to start understanding . . . the cupboard is bare,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) said.

Rostenkowski’s committee, struggling to find a way to pay for extending jobless benefits into February, initially approved a bill that changed the terms under which legal immigrants could receive welfare benefits available to the blind, disabled and elderly.

Rather than allowing qualified immigrants to receive the benefits after three years in the United States, the committee proposed a five-year residency requirement. The move would have generated $331 million--enough to extend jobless benefits an additional five weeks.

But when the Hispanic Caucus in the House objected, the House Democratic leadership intervened, scaling back the jobless benefits in an effort to preserve the welfare benefits available to immigrants.

Rostenkowski and others objected strenuously, accusing the leadership and the caucus of putting the interests of 38,000 eligible immigrants ahead of those of unemployed Americans who would lose their benefits.

Now the leadership apparently will have to return to the original version of the bill that was approved by the Ways and Means Committee. However, Latino members said they had been assured by Democratic leaders that another means of funding for the immigrant program ultimately will be found.

With high unemployment persisting long after economists have declared the latest recession over, the bill would provide the fifth extension of emergency jobless benefits for long-term unemployed who have exhausted their regular, 26-week benefits without finding work.

An estimated 750,000 workers would be eligible for the extra benefits. Those in California and four other states suffering the most severe economic problems would qualify for 13 weeks of additional payments. The jobless in all other states would receive seven weeks of extended benefits.

After expected House passage, the Senate is expected to go along and the President is expected to sign the measure.

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Times staff writer William J. Eaton contributed to this story.