Give them gold. That is what Senator Specter is promoting to solve the problem of America’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

In an attempt to placate the immigration debate roiling Congress, Mr. Specter, a Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has proposed a new status for illegal immigrants already in America. Instead of a green card, the coveted document signifying legal permanent residence, they would receive gold cards.

The problem is, nobody seems happy with the approach. Immigrants and their advocates see it as creating a permanent underclass of temporary workers, because gold cardholders will never be able to apply for citizenship. Advocates for closing the border, meanwhile, see it as little more than an amnesty by another name.

The Judiciary Committee, under pressure to draft a bill the entire Senate can consider, appears no closer to agreeing on a legalization or guest worker program. The fourth day of hearings yesterday moved at a sluggish rate, prompting Mr. Specter to tell the committee, “We are quite a ways from having a bill.” Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican of Tennessee, set today as the deadline for the committee to come up with a bill for the Senate to consider.

The committee is divided over whether to take an enforcement-only approach or one that also includes a legalization plan. On one side is the argument, championed in a House bill that passed quickly through Congress last year, that securing America’s borders must be achieved before comprehensive immigration reform can be considered. On the other side, which includes President Bush and business interests, are proponents of an approach that would balance creating new legal avenues for immigrants with stepped-up enforcement.

Among the second group, there has been bitter debate, mostly about what to do with the illegal immigrants already in America. One Senate bill, introduced by Senators McCain and Kennedy, a Republican of Arizona and a Democrat of Massachusetts, would allow them a path to citizenship without leaving the country. Another, backed by Senators Cornyn and Kyl, Republicans of Texas and Arizona, respectively, would require immigrants to return to their country of origin before applying for legal status.

The gold cards were supposed to be a bridge between the two. In addition to creating a guest worker program, under the Specter plan illegal immigrants who have been working in America since before January 2004 would be eligible for two-year renewable visas.

Many immigrants and their advocates in New York, however, aren’t buying it. “With this gold card you can swipe your way into indentured servitude,” the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, Chung-Wha Hong, said. “It’s a guest worker program, no matter what color the card is. It doesn’t lead to a path to citizenship.”

The Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, which plans to launch a campaign for “green cards, not green beer” on St. Patrick’s Day, described temporary visas as just a “Band-Aid.” “To call it a ‘gold card’ gives it more value than it deserves, ” the executive director of the Irish lobby, Kelly Fincham, said. “It’s clearly not what we’re seeking.”

The American Immigration Lawyers Association warns that immigrants will not sign on to the gold card scheme. “Given the highly tenuous nature of the gold card status, many workers will elect to forgo participation in the program rather than risk deportation,” the director of advocacy, Marshall Fitz, said in an e-mail.

Meanwhile, a syndicated columnist, Michelle Malkin, was afraid too many would sign on. “Specter’s plan amounts to an unprecedented mass governmental pardon for millions of immigration law-breakers,” she wrote on Sunday.

As the arguments continue over a solution, one thing is becoming clear: All sides agree that America’s 12 million illegal immigrants will not be receiving green cards, or gold cards, anytime soon.