It's back.

IT HAS become a recurring nightmare. Every four years or so, Congress finds itself grappling with one of its least favorite issues: immigration.

In the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), Congress granted amnesty to more than three million illegal aliens and sought to stem the flow of new illegals by imposing stiff penalties on businesses that employed them. Congress was satisfied that IRCA had dealt with the problem of illegal immigration once and for all.

Almost immediately, however, it became apparent that IRCA had failed to deal with an even larger problem: the admission of hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants every year with no regard to whether they might have anything to contribute to the United States. So, in 1990, Congress set out to reform the legal-immigration process, and, after all the special interests had had their say, it wound up with nearly a 40 per cent increase in overall numbers and almost no change in the selection process. Again, our congressmen went home satisfied that they had heard the last of this issue.

Now immigration is back on the congressional docket. Spurred by demands from the .governors of several big states that Congress reimburse them for the spiraling cost of services they are required to provide illegal aliens, many congressmen have come to recognize that the 1986 crackdown on illegal immigration contains a major structural flaw: it has no teeth.

More grudgingly, Congress is coming to see that the 1990 "reforms" of the legal-immigration process, which raised the quotas to 700,000 annually, were probably a mistake. Even Alan Simpson--long a proponent of generous levels of legal immigration, even as he has fought to control illegal immigration-now sees the need to reduce all forms of immigration; he has introduced a bill that would roll back the 1990 increases.

Simpson's newly minted Comprehensive Immigration and Asylum Reform Act of 1994 was introduced on March 2. In addition to cracking down on illegal immigration and abuse of political asylum, the bill calls for a five-year reduction in immigration quotas to 500,000 annually (about the levels we started at in 1990). The Simpson bill has bipartisan support, including such heavy hitters as Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd and Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole--an acknowledgment by both the Democratic and Republican leadership that our entire immigration system is seriously flawed.

This bill is a sort of watered-down version of legislation introduced last summer by Democratic Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. Reid's Immigration Stabilization Act, like the new Simpson bill, would retrofit IRCA's provisions against illegal immigration with a sturdy set of dentures while permanently rolling back legal-immigration levels to 325,000 annually. In an effort to attract support from the more liberal wing of his party, Reid has retooled his bill, deleting a controversial provision that would have denied automatic citizenship to U.S.born children of illegal immigrants.

The increased legislative activity is all to the good, but those in favor of comprehensive immigration reform still face a brick wall known as Ted Kennedy, who treats U.S. immigration policy as if it were his own private freedom. An anonymous Democratic staffer on Kennedy's Immigration Subcommittee (nobody on either the majority or the minority side seems to want to be quoted for attribution) told the San Diego Union-Tribune that even Simpson's modest proposal for reducing immigration "isn't going to see the light of day."

Simpson's staff expects that largely as a result of their close personal relationship, Kennedy will grant Simpson a hearing for his bill. However, Kennedy's staff has made clear that this will be nothing more than a courtesy to his long-time colleague. "There will be oversight hearings, and all this stuff will be brought up, but that will be all," Kennedy's staffer told the Union-Tribune. Reid is under no illusions about his chances of getting a hearing before Kennedy's committee.

And so, while no one is willing to say it for the record, everyone working on this issue knows that the road to reforming America's immigration laws will ultimately have to go around Kennedy rather than through him. Since the Senate does not have the sorts of rules about germaneness that exist in the House, the reforms in Reid's bill could be introduced--in small pieces, or even in their entirety--as amendments to other legislation. Bolstered by his increased stature as a party leader (he is being discussed, albeit as a longshot, to succeed George Mitchell as majority leader), Reid may now be able to make an end run around Kennedy if he is so inclined.

If neither the Simpson nor the Reid reforms succeed in fixing the problems that both parties now admit exist, a much simpler alternative has been broached in the House of Representatives; an outright immigration moratorium. Introduced in January by Republican Bob Stump of Arizona, the moratorium bill has surprised nearly everyone by attracting 61 co-sponsors, 17 of them Democrats. Stump's bill would simply declare an indefinite halt to immigration, excepting only refugees, and spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, who now number about 170,000 admissions a year.

"The American people," says Stump, "are sick of footing the bill" for the costs of immigration, which are estimated in the tens of billions of dollars each year. And he believes the only way Congress will ever really rid itself of this issue is to enact sweeping reforms. Of Simpson's five-year reduction to 500,000, Stump says, "I don't think he goes far enough."

Stump knows it will not be easy to get hearings for a bill introduced by a member of the minority party on a subject the leadership is not anxious to tackle. However, he is not discouraged. "It's a matter of time" until Congress is forced to pass real reform, Stump predicts. "This issue has really just surfaced in the past few years. People just now are becoming aware of the enormous costs" of our immigration policies.

Congressman James Bilbray--like Reid, a Nevada Democrat--has introduced legislation virtually identical to Reid's. Bilbray places the odds of immigration reform this year at about 50-50, and warns that there will be a political price to pay for inaction. "If we don't push it out this year we're crazy," says Bilbray. "I think there's a clamor out there for us to do something. If we don't, it's going to get worse and worse and worse."

Three options are emerging for Congress. The first is the Kennedy approach, which is to do nothing and hope that if the economy improves sufficiently, the issue will lose some of its saliency with the American public. The second is the path favored by Simpson, which is to make a small, temporary cut in immigration levels and postpone a final decision on U.S. immigration policy for another five years. The third approach, championed by Reid, Bilbray, Stump, and others, is to bite the bullet and institute comprehensive reform.

For the first time there may be an emerging consensus in Congress that a complete overhaul of the immigration system might be preferable to the aggravation of quadrennial repair jobs.

Mr. Mehlman is media-outreach director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.