July 2, 1986

Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about a New York Times/CBS News poll on attitudes toward immigration misstated one finding. Of those surveyed, 42 percent said immigration should be kept at present levels or increased.

A high-level Israeli delegation has met with Justice Department officials to discuss prospects for criminal charges against an Israeli Air Force colonel who has been linked to a spy ring, sources close to both governments said today. Two sources said the Israeli delegation, which included the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Meir Rosenne, concluded the talks Monday without reaching agreement on the legal status of the colonel, Aviem Sella. A Reagan Administration official declined to say specifically what was discussed at the meeting but indicated that Israel had not won substantial concessions from the prosecutors. Navy Spy Case Involved Colonel Sella has been threatened with indictment in a case involving the purchase of top-secret American military documents by an Israeli espionage operation.

A nine-story-high experimental aircraft that combined four helicopters and a blimp crashed and disintegrated tonight during a test flight at the United States Naval Air Engineering Center here, killing one of five crew members. Three crew members, all civilian employees, were injured. The dead man was identified as Gary Oleshfski, 39 years old, of Bordentown, N.J. The craft is called a Helistat. Designed in particular to haul great loads of timber out of inaccessible virgin forests, it combined a 343-foot-long, one-million-cubic-foot Dacron bag - about five times the volume of a Goodyear blimp - and four old navy helicopters.

After months of failure by legislators and Governor Cuomo to come to agreement on several key issues, the majority leader of the State Senate said Tuesday that there was no point in continuing negotiations and that the Senate would end the legislative session today. Among the matters unresolved are a program to help elderly people pay for prescription drugs, a bond act to clean up the environment and stronger laws for the prosecution of members of organized-crime groups. ''There just comes a point when it's not worth negotiating any further,'' said the majority leader, Warren M. Anderson, a Binghamton Republican. Pressure for Compromise By making the statement and then allowing one day until the end of the session, Republicans are apparently hoping to pressure the Democratic-controlled Assembly and the Governor, a Democrat, to compromise on some of the key issues.

In this week of parades, celebrations and spectaculars, there are to be short and simple ceremonies rich with meaning. Across the country today, tomorrow and Friday, some 26,000 immigrants will raise their right hand, renounce their loyalty to the lands of their birth and swear an oath of allegiance to a new country - the United States of America. Almost all Americans, of course, were immigrants or the descendants of immigrants - some who came by choice, some driven here by hate, some pulled from their homeland against their will. With each new citizen comes a story, a saga, really, of flight or quest, of love or lament. What follows are the stories of four people who will this week become Americans: Armand Amzallag from Morocco, Mikhail Chernyak from Russia, Diego Bautista from Colombia and Thanh Quoc Lam from Vietnam.