STATES SUFFER BLOW ON COSTS OF ALIENS MEASURE

--WASHINGTON - In a jarring defeat for states and western agriculture, House-Senate immigration conferees on Friday adopted a new guest-worker program and a federal grant system that critics fear will not cover the cost of legalizing millions of aliens. A disgruntled Hispanic lobbyist who has fought the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill for two years said he thinks the bill now has a 60 percent chance of becoming law. 'The string is thickening,' said a happy Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Long Beach, referring to the oft-used remark that the bill has been hanging by 'a thread' for months.

Though Simpson sounded upbeat about getting an agreement, Democrats close to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the amendment's author, said he was 'not optimistic.'

It did cause problems for California officials, however, who said the state's costs under the bill could run from the 'tens of millions' into the 'hundreds of millions' of dollars.

'We would have preferred 100 percent reimbursement,' said Karen Spencer, Gov. Deukmejian's Washington lobbyist.

If the bill gets out of the conference committee it will then go to the House and Senate. On the House side, the bill, which in an earlier form passed by only five votes, faces a Democrat-controlled chamber very divided on the issue.

The party's presidential standard bearer, Walter Mondale, opposes the bill. But his clout was questioned after he delivered a punchless speech Thursday at a Hispanic dinner. One lobbyist called it 'the worst speech I ever heard by a major candidate' before a sympathetic crowd.

In the Senate, the bill faces the threat of a filibuster.

In recognition of the difficulties still remaining, Lungren said that 'what we've got to do is a lot of missionary work' to bring over the uncommitted in each house.

The immigration bill is designed to control the tide of illegal immigration into this country by making it illegal for employers to hire undocumented workers. To make that program more palatable for Hispanics, the bill offers legal residency to millions of illegal aliens who entered the United States before Jan. 1, 1981.

Since both chambers passed different versions of the bill, a conference committee began work more than a week ago to draft a compromise bill.

Farm lobbyists threatened this week to mount a strong effort to defeat the bill after it became clear that a favorable labor program in the House bill would not survive the conference.

That program incorporates some of the features of the House bill

Farmers are concerned that Labor's administration of the program will be so rigid that crops will be rotting on the ground while the government slowly reviews the emergency applications for workers.

San Joaquin Valley farmers now rely on thousands of illegal aliens to bring in their crops.

Simpson's offer of a $4 billion/four-year block grant program to help the states cope with the costs of legalizing aliens was rejected Thursday. But after the word 'block' was removed and the program then became a simple grant plan, it passed the conference committee easily Friday.

Although the change in language may have satisfied the conference, state fiscal officers are not as happy with it. They also are concerned that the grant program is not a part of the bill itself, but will be part of the 'statement of managers.'

The administration's own projected cost of the program has been around $10 billion. But administration officials believe the cost of legalization should be shared with the states.