Congressmen Plan Similar Immigration Reform Bills : Legislation: Proposals by Gallegly and Beilenson would deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

Ventura County’s two congressmen, moderate Democrat Anthony C. Beilenson and conservative Republican Elton Gallegly, said Wednesday they plan to introduce similar bills to amend the Constitution by denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

The proposed amendments are part of ambitious immigration reform efforts that both lawmakers plan for the new session of Congress.

Beilenson, who represents a district stretching from the southwest San Fernando Valley to Thousand Oaks, also introduced a bill last session to alter the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to all children born in this country regardless of their parents’ legal status.

And he co-sponsored a nearly identical bill to one proposed in 1991 by Gallegly, who represents most of Ventura County. That was the first signal that Beilenson, a longtime civil rights advocate, was stiffening his stand on immigration.

Latino groups have accused Beilenson of changing to attract votes in a district that became more conservative after the 1990 reapportionment.

“I think the district change really had a lot to do with it,” said Cecilia Munoz of the National Council of La Raza in Washington. “He was not outspoken on these issues before.”

Beilenson, however, said he has long been concerned with illegal immigration, and his position changed as problems grew worse.

“It’s becoming evident that one of the unintended incentives of our law is that Latinos come here to have their babies,” he said. “Thirty thousand births in public facilities last year were from people who came here illegally.”

Despite bipartisan support in the last Congress, neither Beilenson’s nor Gallegly’s proposed amendments moved out of the House Judiciary Committee. A constitutional amendment needs a two-thirds approval from both houses of Congress before going to the states for ratification.

Beilenson said his proposal has a better chance this year, with the House now under Republican control.

It went nowhere last session, Beilenson said, because “some of the Democratic powers were not nearly as attentive as they should have been.”

Along with the amendment, Beilenson this week plans to introduce a bill calling for counterfeit-proof Social Security cards as the sole means of worker identification--a move he said would prevent immigrants from working illegally.

A third Beilenson bill would establish the Border Patrol as an agency independent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Beilenson views the two operations as playing opposite roles: One keeping people out of the country while the other allows people in.

Wednesday, Gallegly--named by House Speaker Newt Gingrich as chairman of the new National Task Force on Immigration--announced his own packet of anti-illegal immigration legislation. It calls for an end to welfare payments to illegal immigrants, a tamper-resistant green card and 2,000 more Border Patrol agents by 1996.

Concerned over the difficulty of passing a constitutional amendment, Gallegly said he will not introduce his own amendment until its wording is fine-tuned. While Beilenson and Gallegly have now agreed on ways to combat the immigration problem, neither strayed from the party line on big votes over the past four years.

For instance, the two were on opposite sides of a proposed ban of federal funds to the National Endowment for the Arts and on a seven-day waiting period for handgun purchases.

They also differed over the Persian Gulf War. Beilenson opposed the use of American troops while Gallegly proposed American deployment even before President Bush made that move.

The immigration debate, said Munoz of the National Council of La Raza, has not proven to be a partisan matter.

“It’s an interesting place where economic, racial and ethnic issues overlap,” she said.

States News Service