Relating to A National Emergency Declared By the President on February 2019--Veto

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I applaud President Trump for the restraint, the resolve, and the commitment to constitutional principles that he demonstrated when he decided not to have the United States go into Syria, not to continue to involve our troops in a looming conflict in Syria.

I agree that it is a horrible situation. I agree that we have people running both Syria and Turkey who are not our friends and who have shown significant hostility toward us. It is precisely because of that and not in spite of it that we shouldn't be there, especially when you take into account that we do not have a declaration of war relative to Syria. We do not have an authorization for the use of military force with regard to Syria. Under our system of government, the U.S. Constitution placed the power to declare war or otherwise authorize the use of military force in Congress. This was no accident. It is the branch of the Federal Government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals.

This was a significant break from our previous system of government-- the one that was based in London. In Federalist No. 69, Alexander Hamilton explained that this was no accident, that under the British model, the King, as the chief executive, had the power to take the country to war. It was Parliament's job, then, to follow along, to figure out what to do about it and how to fund it.

This would not be the case in the American Republic. This is not the case under our Constitution. Yet, sadly, for decades we have had a Congress consisting of Republicans and Democrats, Senators and Representatives who have allowed the legislative muscle to atrophy, who have refused and declined to exercise the power to declare war.

In that context, I have heard Republicans and Democrats, Senators and Representatives alike, defer again and again and again to Presidents of every conceivable partisan combination, saying: Let the President decide what we do.

Through our own inaction, we have essentially relinquished the power to declare war.

Why does this matter? This is the only connection the American people have to the power to declare war. When we send their brave sons and daughters into harm's way, we owe it to them to have an open, public robust debate and discussion in which we make a deal with them, in which we outline the terms for our engagement.

We don't have that in Syria. There are those who are upset that we don't, and I understand that they are upset that we don't. If they are upset that we don't, it is not as though we are a victim. We are the actor, not the acted upon. We have the power right here and right now to bring up a proposal. If they want to declare war with regard to Syria, let's have that discussion.

I am not a fan of war. I am not a fan of war starting on behalf of the United States anywhere in the world right now, but if somebody wants to make that discussion, let's have it, and let's debate it.

But what people shouldn't be doing is criticizing President Trump, who has shown restraint and shown deference to the American people, who wants to protect our sons and daughters who would be protecting us. He is saying: Maybe, just maybe, when you have a bad guy in Turkey, wanting to do some things in Syria with regard to the Kurds, maybe, just maybe, when you take into account the fact that Turkey is, in fact, a NATO ally and we have a NATO article 5 obligation to do something about that, that is going to lead to full-blown war. We should therefore respect him. We should be grateful to him for taking that step of restraint.

This President has been unique in modern history in not blindly deferring to the military industrial complex. I thank him for that and salute his willingness to stand behind our brave men and women.

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Mr. LEE. I am not familiar with this legislation. I don't serve on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. I have friends who do. I have friends who couldn't be here today but who have asked me to voice objection on their behalf.

On behalf of the senior Senator from Tennessee, Senator Alexander, I object.

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise yet again today to speak about an issue near and dear to my heart and an issue that has become the focus of many of my passions here in the Senate, and that is the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. This is an important and overwhelmingly bipartisan piece of legislation. It is a piece of legislation that passed the House in July by an overwhelming vote of 365 to 65.

Two of these things should strike the American people as remarkable: No. 1, that something with that much of a bipartisan margin passed in the House of Representatives, and No. 2, that it deals with immigration, and it was still that overwhelmingly bipartisan.

As I explained in this Chamber before, the concept of this legislation is simple. Our current method for allocating green cards caps the total number of green cards that nationals of any one country may receive. In practice, this results in severe de facto discrimination on the basis of country of origin. Immigrants from countries with large populations are restricted to receiving the same number of visas as immigrants from smaller countries. Their wait times have ballooned, in some cases stretching out literally for decades. The problem compounds over time, and it has become even more unfair than it was many decades ago when it was first enacted into law.

I repeat, this happens for absolutely no reason other than the country in which the immigrant was born. Let's say that two immigrants--one from India and the other from Germany--with the exact same skills, the exact same degrees, and the exact same job experience apply at the same hour of the same day for an employment-based green card. The German might wait maybe 12 months to receive a green card. Well, the Indian applicant will almost certainly wait a decade or far more. This kind of system is antithetical to American values and to the interest our country has in recruiting the very best and the very brightest from around the world irrespective of race, religion, or country of origin.

It is simply unacceptable that in 2019 our immigration system still contains country-of-origin discrimination as a defining feature. The per-country caps simply must go. They are wrong. They were never good policy. Whatever policy they might have had in mind decades ago, it escapes me--except, in fact, that the policy itself was wrong at the outset. It has become more wrong over time as these problems have compounded.

The obviousness of the moral error embedded within this legislation is more profound and easily visible today than it has ever been. If you were to describe this to anyone, they would scratch their head and say: Why would you want to do that unless you are engaging in some type of discrimination that we as a country understandably abandoned a long time ago and should no longer embrace?

The harm inflicted by any kind of invidious discrimination, whether it be on the basis of race or sex or country of origin, does not exist simply in the abstract, in the ether; the human suffering caused by it happens to be real and heartbreaking.

Although, in the time we have here this afternoon to discuss this, I am sure I can't come anywhere close to doing justice to all the people who are being harmed by the per-country cap system, I would like to share at least a few of their stories so that you understand how this law operates. I find that when you tell stories about a law, people understand the law and they understand what needs to change about the law a lot more than they would have otherwise.

Agna Hingu is a registered nurse who lives in South Jordan, UT, currently working at a nonprofit healthcare organization in Utah. She received her bachelor's degree in this country. She has lived in this country for the past 10 years. Languishing in the decade-long backlog, she is now being forced to consider leaving the United States due to the continuous uncertainty of her immigration status and the incessant renewals of temporary visas. If she leaves, she will take her talents and her training with her, depriving Utah's residents of a smart, skilled, kind, and caring nurse.

Ashish Patel first came to Utah legally in 2005 on a temporary high- skilled work visa. Since that time, he has worked hard at his job, paid taxes, followed the law, got married, and had two kids, both of whom were born as American citizens. In February of 2011, Mr. Patel's petition to earn a green card was approved. Despite this and despite the fact that 8, going on 9 years have now elapsed, his green card remains unissued. Why? Well, solely because of the arbitrary, wrong, discriminatory per-country caps. Ashish Patel is still in the backlog even as immigrants of other countries who have applied years and years after he did and years and years after he received his approval have already been granted permanent resident status. If Mr. Patel had emigrated from any country in the world other than India, he would already have his green card today.

Dr. Chaitanya Mamillapalli is an endocrinologist who has been serving in central Illinois for the past 9 years. He came to the United States in 2007. He will likely not receive his green card for at least another decade. His daughter was 1 year old when she came with her parents to this country. In a few years, she will age out of her temporary visa, and Dr. Mamillapalli will face a decision that confronts many people stuck in the backlog community: Does he separate from his daughter as she loses her temporary status, or does he abandon his life in the United States in order to keep his family together?

Dr. Priya Shanmugam lives in Louisiana and is an aerospace engineer who studied at the University of Alabama and at UCLA. She dreams of working for NASA. After 13 years in the backlog, she is still waiting for a green card. As a result of that, she cannot fulfill her dream of joining America's space team and helping put the first person on Mars. Until she finally gets her green card, our country will continue to lose out on her talent.

Dr. Krishnendu Roy is a professor of computer science and head of the Department of Computer Science at Valdosta State University in Georgia. He studied for his degree in Louisiana and has lived in the United States for over 16 years. During that time, he shaped the lives of countless students in Georgia through the classes he teaches by organizing computing camps for K-12 students and by mentoring the robotics team in his community. He has followed the law, and he has done exactly what is required of him under our immigration system in order to earn his green card. Yet he remains stuck in the backlog, with no end to his wait in sight.

Dr. Sri Obulareddy is an oncologist working just outside Dickinson, ND, who came to the United States in 2006. She moved to North Dakota because the area is experiencing a shortage of specialized physicians. Her impact on the community has been invaluable. Recently, she tried to return from a trip to India, but approval for her visa was delayed for 6 weeks, forcing her patients to travel as far as 100 miles as they scrambled the find a temporary physician. The pain this caused her patients would never have come about if she had not been subjected to an arbitrary, discriminatory cap based on her country of origin and had already received her green card.

Ash Kannan lives in Oklahoma. His story is a heartbreaking example of the devastating effects of the long wait for a green card and the effects that a family can endure under this system. Ash and his wife lost their toddler son to a congenital disease about 3 years ago. The illness that took their son could have been treated had they been able to move to a different home, one closer to the medical facility that provided the necessary treatment. They were unable to do so, and their son was thus unable to receive the care he required, that he needed, because Ash was forced to remain with the same employer while he waited in the green card backlog and, consequently, was unable to move.

These are just some of the names and stories of some of the hard- working, law-abiding immigrants who have come to the United States to build lives and to contribute to our communities but who have been told that because of the countries in which they were born, they have to wait decades in the green card backlog before they can start living the American dream.

These stories stir us to action, and they darned well should. They should remind us that while policymaking is often messy and complicated, it is sometimes simple and straightforward because sometimes you stumble across something that is a good idea. Sometimes you stumble across something that was a bad idea that was put into law decades ago that should be taken out of the law. Sometimes the solution to our problems is clear and beyond question. In those cases, all we need is the will to act.

I have yet to hear someone offer a reasoned defense of the per- country caps as meritorious or sound public policy on their own terms, and that is because there is no such defense, at least not one that anyone would be willing to defend in public. Country-of-origin discrimination, whether it be in our immigration system, in our justice system, in the employment context, or in housing, is wrong and inconsistent with the values upon which our country was founded. It becomes even more repugnant when its human consequences are as obvious and tragic and focused on people of a particular country of origin as they are here.

With respect to the ancestors of the people now serving in this body, what if there had been something in place that had arbitrarily and unfairly discriminated against people from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Denmark, or other countries from which people have been immigrating to America for centuries?

We should think about that for a moment and think about how we would never have been able to have enjoyed the blessings of America. I think it is equally wrong for us to identify a single country that we punish, that we exclude uniquely against other countries of origin in the context of employment-based immigrant visas.

I understand and recognize that while the per-country caps themselves are completely indefensible--and they are--some people have concerns about how eliminating the caps might impact fraud and abuse within the H-1B system. That is a legitimate concern.

To address those very concerns in this Congress, I have negotiated with Senator Grassley an amendment to the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act to include some new protections for American workers in how we process applications for H-1B visas.

The amendment does three things. First, the Grassley amendment would strengthen the Department of Labor's ability to investigate and enforce labor application requirements. In addition, it reforms the labor condition application process to ensure the complete and adequate disclosure of information regarding the employers' H-1B hiring practices. Finally, it closes off loopholes by which employers could otherwise circumvent the annual cap on H-1B visa workers.

These are important and worthy reforms that I was happy to add to the bill. Indeed, we saw an example just last month of the positive impact these reforms would have. In September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a $2.5 million settlement with an Indian consulting firm for H-1B visa fraud. That firm was exploiting the so- called ``B-1 in lieu of H-1B'' loophole. One of the new provisions we added to the bill this Congress would help close that specific loophole.

Importantly, the Grassley amendment, like the underlying bill, consists of provisions that have long enjoyed support from Members of both sides of the aisle. They are drawn primarily from an H-1B reform bill that has been championed by both Senator Grassley and Senator Durbin. They are also modeled, in large part, on an amendment to the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act that Senator Schumer negotiated with Senator Grassley in a previous Congress.

I am grateful that Senator Grassley was able to come to the table and work with me and others in good faith on a reasonable compromise to this bill. I believe the deal we struck is a fair and even-handed way to address longstanding concerns about our H-1B system, while eliminating country-of-origin discrimination in how we allocate skills- based green cards.

As I have said in the past, there is no question that immigration, if not the single most politically fraught issue, is one of the most politically fraught issues in Congress right now. That makes it all the more important for us to at least come together to get something done in those areas in which we can find common ground. It is a little bit like eating an elephant. You can't swallow the whole thing at once, either the elephant or the donkey. You have to do it one bite at a time. Why not start with an area in which there is broad-based, bipartisan agreement? That is what this bill is. The Fairness for High- Skilled Immigrants Act is an important step toward common ground.

Unquestionably, there are broader debates on immigration policy being had in Congress and across the country right now. Some wish to reform our immigration system by increasing the number of green cards we issue while others wish to move to a more merit-based system. That debate is almost certainly not going to be resolved this day, today, or this month or this year or, perhaps, even during this Congress.

Notably, however, many Senators on both sides of that debate--ardent champions of both liberal and conservative immigration reforms, who ordinarily could not be farther apart when it comes to immigration policy--are cosponsors of the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. The reason this is the case is that they recognize that regardless of what else we might do to reform our immigration system, country-of- origin discrimination is outdated, outmoded, immoral, morally indefensible, and inconsistent with our values. It is also a problem that we can solve right now.

The other reason the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act has been so successful in attracting support from both sides of the aisle and from every end along the political continuum is that we have scrupulously avoided the typical poison pill provisions that so often doom attempts at immigration reform. We have also quite carefully avoided this becoming about so many things that it is going to become controversial no matter what.

This bill is not comprehensive immigration reform. It is not anything close to that. That is, in fact, why this bill is something that we can get done right now. It is the reason it was able to pass the House of Representatives with 365 votes.

While it does not fix many of the other flaws that plague other components of our broken, outdated, outmoded, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly-era immigration law system, it is a great and important step toward reform. If we are ever going to have a chance at modernizing and repairing our immigration laws, we need to recognize that we cannot necessarily solve all of our problems at once. The fact that this is the case should not stand in our way of starting the work the American people sent us here to do.

1044 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I ask unanimous consent that the Lee amendment at the desk be agreed to, that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, how much time remains?

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I will be brief.

Just as the per-country cap system is a quintessential example of the poorly designed, broken system and of what a poorly designed broken system looks like, the objection that we have heard today is, I fear, emblematic of the broken state of affairs that we face when it comes to the immigration process.

I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons this bill has been able to achieve as much support and as many cosponsors as it has and why it was able to pass the House of Representatives with 365 votes is that we have avoided poison pill efforts. The adjustment of the overall numbers that my friend and distinguished colleague from Illinois has proposed would doom this bill. He knows that it would doom this bill.

To what avail? To what end? What good would it do to doom this bill?

The fact still remains that regardless of where we put the overall number for employment-based green cards, we still have a problem in that we are treating people from India unfairly, arbitrarily, and discriminatorily. This has impacts everywhere. In Illinois today, there are over 40,000 green card applicants, plus their spouses and children, who are stuck in an interminable green card backlog that is morally indefensible.

We must change this. I hope and I encourage my colleague to change his mind. We can pass this today. We could make our country a better place as a result.

Thank you.

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