Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Defense, State, Foreign Operations, and Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act,

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. 2740.

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, I would like to speak briefly about an issue important to me, about an issue important to many Americans, and I would like to speak briefly about Senator Durbin's recent request for a hearing concerning the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act.

The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act is a bill that many Senators have worked for, for nearly a decade, and it has long been a top priority of mine. I have introduced this bill in every single Congress, ever since I was first elected to the Senate back in 2010.

During that time, it has been a subject of widespread debate and discussion. There has been a period of time in which a lot of people have learned a lot about this area. The debate and the discussion has occurred both on the Hill and off the Hill throughout the United States.

Other Members, including Senator Schumer, have sought to pass the bill, as I am doing. Whether that passage occurs by unanimous consent or through some other form matters less to me than that we get it passed, but we do need to get it passed. This year, we have come closer to making this important and bipartisan reform a reality, closer than we have ever come before at any point over the nearly decade that this has gotten a lot of attention.

In early July, the House of Representatives passed the bill on the Suspension Calendar by a wide bipartisan supermajority vote of 365 to 65. Around that time, I negotiated an agreement with Senator Grassley to help advance the bill by adding provisions drawn from the Durbin- Grassley H-1B reform bill.

Senator Grassley has for many years, openly and publicly, made it known that he had concerns with the bill. I was therefore very pleased that we were able to sit down and work out an agreement to address those concerns, while keeping the bill narrow and focused on the immediate problem that it is trying to solve. That is eliminating the country of origin discrimination in our employment green card system. I thank Senator Grassley for working with me on that.

The process by which I have tried to advance this bill through Congress has been open, transparent, and straightforward. I have sought and continue to seek unanimous consent to pass the bill on the floor. If any Member has raised concern about the bill, I have been willing to work with them quickly and in good faith to address their concerns.

That is why, after reaching an agreement with Senator Grassley, I also worked with other Members to resolve their concerns. For much of the past few months, I simply didn't know who, if anyone else on the Democratic side of the aisle, might have had concerns with the bill. We were told that there might be holds on the Democratic hotline, but we were not told who exactly might be holding the bill, and no one approached me with objections.

I certainly had no reason to think that Senator Durbin would have concerns with the bill. As I have explained before, he was a leading cosponsor of the bill in a previous Congress. What is more, the only substantial difference between the bill he supported and the bill I put forward in this Congress is the addition of the amendment that I negotiated with Senator Grassley, which is drawn almost entirely from provisions of the Durbin-Grassley H1-B reform bill.

In September, I learned that Senator Durbin did in fact have concerns about the bill in this Congress. As I have with other Members and as I have expressed the willingness to do with other Members, I am ready and willing to work with Senator Durbin in good faith to quickly and reasonably resolve any objection he may have, while preserving the bipartisan support that this bill has long enjoyed and that it deserves to enjoy.

As I have said before, I don't believe that any further factual development concerning this bill is necessary. Indeed at this point, I believe a hearing can serve no purpose other than to delay speedy action on this important reform and jeopardize our ability to act before the end of the year.

For that reason, I do not support Senator Durbin's calls for a public hearing. Every day that we delay action on this bill is another day that suffering experienced by immigrants stuck in the green-card backlog continues and indeed intensifies. That is precisely why I will continue to work to pass this bill at the earliest possible date.

The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act arguably has wider and more bipartisan support than any other immigration bill that has been considered in this body in recent years. The reason for that is that it is focused on a single, serious, solvable problem that I think we can all agree needs to be solved.

Whatever other reforms you think might need to be made to our immigration system, with good reason, we can all agree that America should not treat immigrants differently based on their country of origin. There is no reason for this bill to become yet another casualty to the polarized, partisan divisions that plague immigration policy.

I look forward to working with Senator Durbin to resolve the concerns he may have about this bill. I reiterate that, once again, this is a narrowly focused bill, one that focuses on a simple but long-standing problem, a problem that subjects some immigrants to needlessly lengthy delays for no reason other than their country of origin. This is from a bygone era that we shouldn't be perpetuating in this country.

We need to fix the problem. The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act would do that, and I encourage all of my colleagues to join me. We are almost there, but we need to get it over the finish line.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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