October 18, 1986

Congress today gave final approval to a landmark immigration bill as it moved toward adjournment. By a vote of 63 to 24, the Senate agreed to the compromise bill, clearing the measure for action by President Reagan. The bill would prohibit the hiring of illegal aliens and offer legal status, or amnesty, to millions of illegal aliens who have lived in this country continuously since before Jan. 1, 1982. The chief sponsor of the legislation, Senator Alan K. Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, said President Reagan ''awaits this bill and has agreed to sign it.'' Mr. Reagan proposed similar legislation in 1981 to tighten control of the borders and to curtail the influx of illegal aliens. Radical Change for Employers The bill approved today, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, marks a historic change in American immigration policy. Under current law, illegal aliens may be deported, but it is generally not illegal for employers to hire them. Under the bill passed today, employers who hired illegal aliens would be subject to civil penalties ranging from $250 to $10,000 for each such alien.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission today gave the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire a permit to load radioactive fuel and to conduct low-power tests that do not involve a chain reaction. The action was taken immediately after an appeals board of the agency rejected a request by the Attorney General of Massachusetts for a delay in the license approval. In denying a stay, the appeals panel cited a similar case in which the full commission granted a fuel-loading license to the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island in December 1984, despite opposition from local and state governments in New York. Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, who had opposed the Seabrook permit, denounced the decision today as ''imprudent and unnecessary.'' Attorney General Francis X. Bellotti of Massachusetts, said the state would appeal the panel's decision against granting a delay to the full Nuclear Regulatory Commission and then, if necessary, to courts.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz made public today the texts of President Reagan's main arms control proposals handed to Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the Iceland summit meeting last weekend. Mr. Shultz said he did so to make it clear that the United States had proposed abolishing only both sides' ballistic missiles, not all nuclear forces. What Mr. Reagan actually proposed to Mr. Gorbachev in Reykjavik suddenly became an issue because Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, a leading Senate military expert, contended today that Mr. Reagan had told Congressional leaders that he had suggested abolition of all nuclear weapons. Other officials had said he had called only for banning ballistic missiles, the supersonic weapons that make up the backbone of both Soviet and American long-range and medium-range forces.

A day after releasing one prominent dissident, the Soviet authorities cleared the way today for the emigration of a Jewish couple seeking to go to Israel so that the wife can donate bone marrow to her brother, who has leukemia. The couple, Viktor and Inessa Flerov, have been trying to leave for Israel with their two daughters since last March. Mr. Flerov said he was summoned this afternoon to the Soviet visa agency and told he could prepare to leave. He said the family would leave in two weeks, the time they were given to complete the required paperwork and close out their affairs in Moscow.

Papers From Contra Plane Documents from a rebel plane downed in Nicaragua appear to show that the pilot flew cargo planes to American military bases.