WASHINGTON - Not long after the pubs shut their doors for the night, the Bronx's Little Ireland sprang back to life yesterday. Hundreds of the city's newest wave of illegal Irish immigrants - students and carpenters, waitresses and nannies - descended on Woodlawn's main strip, bundled against the cold and cracking jokes as they waited in the dark to board buses headed for Washington.

A few hours later, as the Senate Judiciary Committee began its second day of crafting an immigration bill, the busloads from the Bronx joined nearly 2,000 other Irish from across the country, canvassing the halls of Congress in T-shirts emblazoned with "Legalize the Irish."

Of the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in America, the 50,000 illegal Irish are just a tiny drop in the pool, but yesterday the newly formed Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform proved a unique force in the drive for a legalization program.