Split-Up of Immigration Bill Urged : Politics: Ten GOP congressmen from California want separate measures on legal and illegal migrants. Request divides Republicans.

Hoping to pave the way for illegal immigration reform in Congress, 10 House Republicans from California have launched a drive to split a mammoth immigration package in half, creating two bills that would deal separately with legal and illegal residents.

“It is an insult to law-abiding citizens and soon-to-be citizens who patiently followed all laws and regulations to be lumped together in a bill with illegal aliens who have sneaked into this country and have knowingly and willingly broken U.S. law,” they said in a one-page letter drafted by Rep. Jay Kim of Diamond Bar, himself a legal immigrant from South Korea.

If successful, the move would greatly enhance chances for passage of some version of immigration reform in the House by carving out controversial sections aimed at legal residents and addressing what a majority of Californians believe is one of the state’s most pressing problems, observers on both sides said.

“California undoubtedly needs illegal immigration reform more than any other state in the nation, and the members from California . . . don’t want to do anything that would endanger passage. We shouldn’t mix the message in any way,” said Beau Phillips, aide to Rep. Frank Riggs of Windsor, one of the 10 Republicans who signed the letter urging separate votes.

The letter from the congressmen was sent to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which last month approved a bill requiring employers to verify the legal status of all new workers through a government databank. It also seeks to stem the tide of legal transplants to no more than 535,000 annually, down from 800,000 a year.

Hyde’s office has yet to respond.

The letter signals division in the GOP over how to best handle the contentious topic of immigration reform. A separate group of 35 lawmakers, most of them Republicans who support limits on legal immigration, have circulated a letter urging House Speaker Newt Gingrich to hold the bill together.

The issue will be decided by the Republican leadership; the bill is not expected to go to the floor until early next year.

Immigration rights activists who have fiercely opposed Republican reform efforts applauded the notion of a divided bill, saying it removes some of the language they find most offensive.

“Every group in the country working in the area of immigration is concerned that these issues have been merged and blurred,” said Charles Wheeler, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles. “Most of the incentive behind reforming our immigration laws stems from frustration over undocumented immigrants coming into the country and taking jobs. . . . It is not in the national interest to restrict families from becoming reunited or employers from maintaining their world competitiveness by hiring skilled [foreign] workers.”

But more conservative groups advocating the sweeping immigration package charged the California lawmakers with “mounting an eleventh-hour effort to gut it.”

“After years of hearings and debates, the Judiciary Committee produced a bill that holds the promise of beginning to clean up the mess that passes for our immigration policy,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington. He called it “almost unbelievable” that California Republicans would lead the drive to split the legislation “while their constituents are pleading for a break from the costs and stress of excessive immigration.”

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach, one of the first lawmakers to seek restrictions on federal benefits to illegal immigrants and a co-signer of the letter, said the effort to divide the bill does not suggest lack of support for revising laws governing legal immigration, however.

“Illegal immigration is the most threatening and overwhelming problem at the moment and we should make sure that gets done and handled,” Rohrabacher said. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to reform legal immigration as well. They are just two distinct groups of people.”

Among other lawmakers signing the letter were Robert K. Dornan of Garden Grove, a candidate for president, David Dreier of San Dimas and moderate Steve Horn of Long Beach.

Most of the lawmakers have long regarded the two immigrant groups as distinct. Rep. Sonny Bono of Palm Springs has been conflicted, however, voting in committee against an amendment that would have divided the bill into two, then signing the letter asking for just that.