House Passes Bill to Crack Down on Illegal Immigrants

The House overwhelmingly approved a far-reaching crackdown on illegal immigration Thursday night but struck from the bill a series of new restrictions on legal immigrants, including the number and type who would be allowed in the country.

The bill, passed by a 333-87 vote, would further restrict public benefits for illegal immigrants, increase penalties for smugglers and document counterfeiters and boost border enforcement by adding 5,000 more agents and 14 miles of triple fencing near San Diego.

The most contentious aspects of the legislation would allow states the option of denying free public schooling to students in this country illegally, would increase cooperation between local law enforcement officials and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and would permanently ban those who violate immigration laws from ever legally entering the country.

Although most legal-immigration restrictions were removed, the bill still would cut public benefits for legal immigrants and make their sponsors financially responsible for their well-being.

The bill originally would have cut legal immigration by 30% from the 800,000 currently allowed, and would have disallowed the adult children and siblings of U.S. citizens from receiving family visas.

“Americans got the whole loaf on illegal-immigration reform and half the loaf on legal-immigration reform,” said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), putting the best face on the breakup of the bill that he sponsored. “Three-fourths of a loaf tastes pretty good.”

The bill pleases neither immigrant-rights groups nor strong foes of illegal immigrants. The hard-line Federation for American Immigration Reform announced its opposition to the bill Thursday after lawmakers stripped legal-immigration reform and weakened worker-verification provisions.

“Despite a variety of high-minded sounding attempts to reform immigration policy, Congress--with the full support of a do-nothing administration--is on its way to passing another bill that may only make things worse,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the federation.

The move to excise legal-immigration reform from the bill was a blow to those who argued that foreign workers were reducing wages and taking jobs from U.S. citizens. The reform was also aimed at reducing the huge backlog of immigrants seeking to join family members in this country by eliminating adult children and siblings from the eligibility list.

Backers of legal immigration argued that those who come into the country legally help the nation’s economy. They said that restricting reunification of families runs counter to the country’s long immigrant tradition.

“In a country of 260 million people, 700,000 legal immigrants [a year] is not an exorbitant amount,” said Rep. Dick Chrysler (R-Mich.), who argued for deleting many of the proposed changes in legal immigration. “We are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants.”

He was aided by a bipartisan coalition of groups, ranging from labor unions to the Christian Coalition. The 238-to-183 vote to retain current immigration levels cut deeply across partisan lines.

“This was a statement about the future of this country,” said Rep. Howard L. Berman of Panorama City, the leading Democratic advocate of maintaining current legal-immigration levels. “Hope won over fear.”

The elimination of legal-immigration reform from the bill decreases significantly the chances that the House will address the issue this year. Already, the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to consider legal and illegal immigration in two separate bills. The Senate is expected to approve a similar illegal-immigration bill next month.

On illegal immigration, the House bill aims to tighten security at the border but acknowledges that some people will still elude the new Border Patrol agents and barriers there.

Other provisions would attempt to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to find work and receive government benefits. And deportation procedures would be streamlined to remove those in the country illegally, especially those who committed crimes.

The bill would reduce the approximately 30 identification documents that immigrants now can present to employers to just six. And it would treat those who forge immigration papers like counterfeiters of U.S. currency.

The legislation calls for a pilot program--an expanded version of one already underway in Orange County--that would allow participating employers to check the immigration status of new hires in a government database. To defuse opposition from businesses and civil libertarians, the program is voluntary.

The bill would forbid illegal-immigrant parents from receiving government benefits, even if their children are U.S. citizens, a provision that critics called “anti-child.” Current law forbids illegal immigrants from receiving benefits for themselves but allows parents to receive the benefits for citizen children.

Lawmakers rejected an effort to create a special visa for up to 250,000 temporary foreign agricultural workers.

Farmers worried that the immigration crackdown would deprive them of needed workers. Government studies have estimated that anywhere from a quarter to half of all farm workers are illegal immigrants, although the Labor Department says the nation has more than an adequate supply of legal farm laborers.

The nation already has a limited “guest worker” program, started under 1986 immigration legislation, that permits farmers to bring immigrants to the country for temporary work assignments. But those so-called H-2A visas are viewed by farmers as overly cumbersome and are little used. Last year, 400 sheepherders were the only guest workers in California under the program. Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy) had sought to expand the program to make it easier for growers to quickly fill the field with pickers.

The proposal raised the ire of migrant workers’ groups who want to improve working conditions in farming.

President Clinton opposed an expanded guest-worker program as well, endorsing the bipartisan Commission on Immigration Reform’s conclusion that it “is not in the national interest and . . . would be a grievous mistake” because once the workers are in the country they are not likely to leave.

But the farming industry contends that consumers will be the losers if their products are not swiftly harvested.