Senate Takes Up Proposal for New Curbs on Legal Immigrants

The Senate began debating a sweeping immigration reform bill Thursday that would place new restrictions on legal immigrants while stepping up efforts to catch those illegally here.

The central issue for many lawmakers is whether the United States has changed so much that legal immigration, long viewed as beneficial to the country, is now thought to do more harm than good.

“This is a totally different United States,” said Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), author of the reform legislation. “We are now a mature nation with a host of serious domestic problems . . . and sustained and excessive immigration is viewed, rightly or wrongly, as compounding our domestic problems.”

But others argued that immigration remains a vital national supplement, providing a continuing flow of labor and helping Americans reunite with families abroad.

“This bill as written speaks to our fears, it speaks to our anxieties it speaks to the pessimism that lurks in each of us,” said Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio). “It says the best days are over. If we do this we start to act as a small country.”

Republicans and Democrats joined in eloquent defenses of legal immigration and urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to split the current bill into two: legal immigration changes in one bill and illegal immigration in another.

Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.), sponsor of an amendment to separate the two, said combining them is like considering tougher sentences for drug dealers along with changes in the approval process for prescription drugs “just because the word ‘drug’ is used in both.”

But Simpson argued that keeping the bill intact is essential “because the biggest problem we have in America is people who come here legally and become illegal.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) expressed support for Simpson’s view, accusing Abraham and others of trying to “split the bill so that you can kill” the legal immigration provisions, which she argued are important to California.

“The numbers have become so great, particularly in California, and the resources so scarce that the infrastructure is overburdened,” Feinstein said.

Times staff writer Sheri L. Wassenaar contributed to this story.