Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006
COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 2006 -- (Senate - May 17, 2006)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it looks like we are beginning to make some progress. About 4 weeks ago, this amendment was introduced in its original form, and unfortunately debate was derailed. We were unsuccessful in moving on for further amendments and debate. Fortunately, it looks as if things have gotten back on track. We are starting to see votes and debate on amendments. I don't necessarily like the way all of the votes are turning out, but this is the Senate and majority rules and I accept that.
All of us who are interested in comprehensive immigration reform want to see this bill continue to move, to have amendments laid down, debated, and have them voted on. I am very pleased that it appears that we are very close to having, if not unanimous agreement, at least majority support on a bipartisan basis for the amendment that Senator Kyl and I laid down about a month ago and which has now been modified slightly to bring more people on board.
This amendment, quite simply, is designed to make sure that convicted felons and people who have committed at least three misdemeanors do not get the benefit of the legalization track contained in the underlying bill, whatever it may be. There will be other amendments later on that perhaps won't share the same sort of bipartisan and majority support. But this one at least seems to have gathered a solid group of Senators to support it.
In addition to convicted felons, those who have committed at least three misdemeanors would not be given the benefit of earned legalization under the bill. It would also exclude absconders. By that, I mean people who have actually had their day in court and have been ordered deported from the country but have simply gone underground, hunkered down in the hope they might be able to stay.
There have been some motions made regarding this amendment for waiver by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security for extraordinary circumstances. For example, if someone is able to establish that they didn't actually get notified, then as a matter of fundamental due process considerations they ought to be able to revisit that and to show that they did not get notice of the removal proceedings. We agreed that would be a fair basis to waive this provision.
Finally, it also appears that the other basis for waiver would be if the alien's failure to appear was due to exceptional circumstances beyond the control of the alien--a very narrow exception; and, finally, if the alien's departure from the United States would result in extreme hardship to the alien's spouse, parent, or child who is a citizen of the United States or an alien lawfully permitted to have permanent status.
We move it in the right direction. It is a fundamentally fair and commonsense amendment. I am pleased to support it and announce what appears to be a growing consensus that it should be accepted.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I assure my colleagues, I will not use but a fraction of that time.
I think one of the things that makes this issue of fences and walls along the border so controversial is because walls and fences are powerful symbols. Indeed, I know, in talking to some of our friends on the other side of the border, they worry what the message is America would send if we were to build, let's say hypothetically, a 2,000-mile wall between America and Mexico.
Well, suffice it to say that I think, as we have had this debate both in the Judiciary Committee and now here on the floor of the Senate--and as a lot of us have been working to try to better understand what is actually needed by the Border Patrol to secure our borders--our thinking has evolved.
Indeed, I was one of those who initially was somewhat skeptical of the idea of a wall or a fence. But now I find myself supporting this amendment. I would like to explain just for a minute why.
We sometimes joke among ourselves that if, in fact, Congress was to authorize and the Department of Homeland Security was to build a 2,000-mile wall, 50-feet high, across the border, it would probably see a boom in the sale of 51-foot ladders or what we would see is a lot more of those tunnels like we have seen in the news recently in California and elsewhere, people going through a tunnel.
We all know, if you do not go over a wall or a fence, and you do not go under a fence, you might go around the sides of the fence. So I have wondered whether this is, in fact, the most effective way to deal with the problem.
As I have told my colleagues, coming from a State that has 1,600 miles of common border with the country of Mexico, I hope you will go look at it and see what we are talking about. I fear sometimes when people talk about the border they are relying more on their recollection, perhaps, of a movie they have seen or a novel they have read. It is a tough and difficult place to deal with, and you can appreciate, when you go to the border, the challenges the Border Patrol has and why it is so easy, relatively speaking, for people who want to come across that border into the United States, notwithstanding our efforts to try to secure it.
But I do not believe we ought to seal the border. I do not believe we ought to close the border. But I do believe we ought to secure the border. And I believe now that some strategic barriers--and, yes, even some fencing, such as Senator Kyl and Senator Sessions have described--would be helpful.
Now, how did I arrive at that conclusion? Well, because we held a number of hearings. As chairman of the Immigration and Border Security and Citizenship Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, we have had a number of hearings, including the experts who have told us that, yes, it would be helpful in some areas along this 2,000-mile border to have some strategic barriers, some fences, some ways to funnel traffic so that the Border Patrol can have an easier job trying to actually detain people who come into the country illegally.
I would point out that under Senator Sessions' amendment, it would authorize the building of up to about 370 miles of fence. About 70 miles is already in place. So really we are talking about 15 percent of that 2,000-mile border which would be authorized to be built subject to the good judgment and discretion and professional decisions of the folks who are in charge. The Border Patrol, the Department of Homeland Security, they would be the ones deciding it because, frankly, I do not think we here in Washington are in any position to decide where it ought to go. We ought to leave it to the experts.
But the fact is, it is expensive. This leads me again to remind my colleagues that we can pass some pretty expansive legislation here, we can talk in grandiose terms about border security, worksite verification, and dealing with this great challenge that confronts us, but sooner or later we are going to have to pay for it. And the $1.9 billion the Senator from New Hampshire succeeded in getting appropriated in the supplemental appropriations bill is a mere downpayment on what it is going to cost. So I hope Senators who talk in very sincere terms, no doubt, about making sure this bill is enforceable will be just as emphatic when it comes to paying for these measures.
Let me say that we are not just talking about putting up some fencing in order to secure our borders. We are talking about doubling the number of Border Patrol agents. This is the primary law enforcement agency that is responsible for providing border security. The President announced on Monday night that he was going to authorize up to 6,000 National Guard troops to assist the Border Patrol on a stopgap basis, not to perform law enforcement per se but to provide support to the Border Patrol while we recruit and train more Border Patrol agents.
Now, one thing I do not understand is why we are told that the Border Patrol can only train 1,500 Border Patrol agents a year. We need more, and we need them faster. In the last 3 years, the United States and the coalition partners have trained a quarter of a million Iraqi security officers and police and army. Why we can train, with the assistance of our coalition partners, 250,000 Iraqis but we can only train 1,500 Border Patrol agents a year is beyond me. We need to find out why that is and fix it.
But I sincerely believe what we need is a combination of more boots on the ground--we need human beings. We need to roughly double the number of Border Patrol agents to about 20,000. And just by way of a footnote, let me point out in New York City alone there are about 40,000 police officers. So we are talking about half the number of law enforcement agents along our 2,000-mile border than they have in New York City. But they need some help.
We need the force multiplier that comes with technology. I know others have talked about this, but a couple days ago I went out to Fort Belvoir, VA, out to the Army's night vision lab and their sensor lab where they actually develop this technology for use by our military in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. What they demonstrated for me is some of the technology that is relatively inexpensive that is already being used by our military in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq that could be easily used by the Department of Homeland Security along the border. And this ranges from unmanned aerial vehicles that are airplanes, basically, with cameras on them that weigh about 10 pounds that can stay in the air for up to 4 hours at a time, which can also tie into ground sensors and cameras, thermal imagery, radar, and other things that could be used to be a force multiplier for our Border Patrol.
I think what we need is a combination of things to provide that security along the border. I do not favor a 2,000-mile wall, but I do not see what the objection is to using the necessary tools that are required in order to provide some chance of stopping the flow of humanity across our border.
Last year alone, 1.19 million people were detained coming across our southern border--1.1 million people. And people wonder why we have a problem? People wonder why we have a problem with controlling our borders when we do not have enough people, we do not have the technology, we do not have the strategic barriers there?
Well, part of the problem is we only have about 20,000 detention beds--20,000. That is the reason the Department of Homeland Security is engaged in this flawed idea of catch and release. In other words, you catch 1.1 million people, you send people back home more or less immediately who come from Mexico, a contiguous nation. But if they come from other countries, then we have to make arrangements to send folks back where they came from. That requires them to be detained somewhere for a while.
With only 20,000 detention beds, and 250,000, roughly, people coming from countries other than Mexico last year alone, you can see the problem. So people are released on their own recognizance and asked to come back for their deportation hearing 30 days hence. And guess what. Most of them do not show up. It makes you kind of wonder about the ones who do, knowing, as they must, that we do not have the people, the technology, and the infrastructure in place actually to enforce the law. Well, that is what we are trying to fix here.
So let me say, in conclusion, I think we have all evolved in our understanding of what it is going to take to solve this problem. I believe we have seen some good movement across the aisle on a bipartisan basis to try to come up with solutions. And I have been led to conclude--as a result of all the discussions and debates we have had, the hearings we have had in the Judiciary Committee, listening to the experts who are in a position to know--that this is what they need.
Secretary Chertoff of the Department of Homeland Security told a number of us this is what he needed in order to get the job done. I believe we have an obligation to give our law enforcement officials the tools they actually need to get it done, and to do otherwise would be some sort of cruel joke, to pretend we are actually serious about dealing with this problem but yet failing to provide those same officials the tools they need in order to get the job done.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the bill in the Senate is a massive piece of legislation creating a number of new programs within our immigration system. Obviously, we have talked a lot about border security and ways we can tighten our border to make sure we know who is coming into the country and why they are here.
Second, we also need to make sure we have a successful worksite verification program to make sure people who present themselves for employment in the United States are, indeed, legally authorized to work in the United States.
This is an enormously important comprehensive approach. While I hope it is clear that there are some segments of the approach I differ with and we are trying to improve, from my perspective, I do support the approach of comprehensive immigration reform because we need to deal with the security demands of this problem, and we also need to deal with the economic demands of the problem.
One of the ways the underlying bill purports to do that is by creating what is called a guest worker program. One component of the guest worker program is as follows. For people who are not yet in the United States but who want to come in the future, this plan creates a guest worker program, but what it fails to do is to match up willing workers who want to qualify within this program with an actual job. In other words, what it does is creates a phenomenon whereby individuals who participate in the program can literally self-petition without having an employer sponsor that petition for them to get a green card--in other words, to become a legal permanent resident and be put on a pathway to American citizenship.
This amendment strikes that position of the underlying bill which would allow individuals participating in this guest worker program to self-petition; that is, without an employer being there to sponsor them and acknowledge and attest that no American worker is willing or has indicated a willingness to perform that job.
This is a fundamental worker protection provision which I hope my colleagues will support. If we don't agree to this amendment, it means individuals can come to the United States as a guest worker and then self-petition without having an employer there to sponsor their application for legal permanent residency and can thereby be on a path to become an American citizen and end up competing with American workers for those jobs.
We all understand America is a compassionate country. We want to make sure we do this immigration reform plan correctly. One of the things we do not want to do is actually hurt American workers. Unless we strike the self-petition provision, we will be doing exactly that. We need to make sure before someone can come in and get a job that, No. 1, they have a job and have not just self-petitioned and then become self-employed and perhaps even become a burden on the American taxpayer through various welfare benefits they might receive. We need to make sure before someone gets a job that the employer acknowledges and attests that they put it up, they advertised it, and they sought American workers to fill that job, but, in fact, no American worker has come forward. Only under those circumstances do I believe a guest worker ought to be able to fill that job. This underlying bill does not provide for that.
This amendment would say that after 4 years of cumulative employed status as an H-2C worker, before someone can apply for and receive a green card, they must do two things: No. 1, they have to find an employer willing to sponsor them; and No. 2, they have to attest that no American worker has stepped forward when that job has been offered to the public at large; otherwise, we will find this guest worker program in direct conflict with the needs of native, American-born workers and otherwise legal immigrants. That would be a terrible direction for us to head down.
This is one of those provisions of the bill with which, since it is 600 pages long, many Members may not be intimately familiar. I hope by filing this amendment and by having this debate they can inform themselves and hopefully agree to support this amendment which is designed to protect American workers and to put the interests of American workers first. Then and only then can a participant in this guest worker program get the job that an American had an opportunity to get but decided not to apply.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to make sure our colleagues understand exactly what this amendment does. It is very short. Let me read from it. What it says is one can qualify for a guest worker program if ``the alien has been employed in H-2C status'' and maintained that ``for a cumulative period of not less than 4 years. .....''
Let me make clear, that was part of a negotiation that Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others and I entered into before we offered the modification because they felt it would be fairer. I agreed that was a reasonable request on their part. I would hope that others would feel the same way.
But the second and third parts are the guts of this amendment. It also requires that:
An employer attests that the employer will employ the alien in the offered job position; and--
And this is the most important part. This is the American worker protection--
the Secretary of Labor determines and certifies that there are not sufficient United States workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to fill the job position.
Now, this underlying bill provides a lot of protection for guest workers who qualify under this program. And I agree that they should be protected from exploitation. That is one of the reasons this law has been created. But it does not create exploitation at the hands of an employer any more than any other employee in America is subjected to exploitation by their employer. In other words, this does not bind the guest worker to a particular employer. Indeed, they can get this certification from any employer who has a job they want to fill subject to the requirement that the Secretary of Labor provide this attestation that there are not sufficient U.S. workers ``able, willing, qualified, and available to fill the job position.''
This amendment does not say these individuals cannot eventually get a green card if they otherwise qualify, having been sponsored by an employer, and for a job that no American has stepped forward to fill. So it does not tie a worker to a particular employer. It does not limit that. It does not say these guest workers cannot ultimately get a green card.
Ultimately, this is not so much about protections for the guest worker as it is protections for the American worker. Indeed, one of the attributes of sovereignty is that the United States has to regain some control not only of our borders but of our broken employment system which, right now, employs millions of people who cannot legally work in the United States. We are trying to fix that. But it does not fix the problem to say that individuals can continue to come into the United States and compete with American workers.
We ought to be all about trying to work out a system that protects American workers and yet allows guest workers who qualify to fill the gaps that American workers cannot fill. I suggest to my colleagues if you believe the rights of this guest worker are paramount and the rights of the American worker are subservient--if you really believe that, then you ought to vote against the amendment. But if you believe we ought to protect the rights of American workers first, and then, in the event the Secretary of Labor certifies there are not sufficient American workers, allow guest workers to work--if you think that is a better system, then you should vote for this amendment.
In no sense does this subject any guest worker to exploitation. They are protected under this bill by the labor laws that protect all American workers. All it does is protect American workers from having to compete against guest workers for jobs that would be rightfully theirs and available except for the fact that someone has self-petitioned and taken a job that an American would otherwise want and would be able to do.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts whether there is a requirement that an employer sponsor a guest worker when they first enter the country under the H-2C program?
Mr. KENNEDY. The answer to that is affirmative, yes.
Mr. CORNYN. I would ask, if I may, Mr. President, if the Senator will yield for one more question, whether it is true that, for example, high-skilled workers, H-1B workers--people with math, science, engineering degrees, and the like--whether there is a requirement that there be an employer who actually sponsors those workers before they can receive one of those types of visas?
Mr. KENNEDY. The answer is affirmative, yes.
Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Senator very much.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it is a very fundamental reason why. You are talking about the H-1B. You are talking about the most highly skilled, highly educated, and highly competent individuals in the world--H-1B--going on to universities, going into the high-tech areas, individuals for which the world is their oyster. They do not suffer the kind of exploitation, the kind of humiliation that other workers suffer. These workers are taking jobs that American workers will not take.
There is a big difference between that and going to the top companies of America and working for the CEO, when you have all the education, the professional degrees. Those individuals are not the ones being exploited. They never have been, and they are not today. It is an entirely different situation.
We are talking about the tough, difficult work that no American will take. We are talking about the history of these kinds of jobs. We have seen it. We have read about it. We have experienced it. I did, certainly, in the early 1960s, going across the Southwest in the Bracero Program. Exploitation is one of the sad aspects of American employment history. We do not want to go there.
The H-2Bs in my State are doing very well at universities and colleges and enormously successful businesses. The idea behind the H-2Bs was getting the very able and gifted people. As history has shown, that results in the hiring of additional people because of their abilities. They end up, as a result of these programs, adding key elements of success to various businesses and employment expands. Generally, those are good jobs with good benefits and good retirement. That is an entirely different situation. I am glad we were able to clear that up.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Massachusetts candidly responding to the questions I asked. What his answers established was that in order for guest workers under his proposal to come into the country in the first place, they have to have an employer, someone who has indicated that there is a job available for them. Under the amendment, they could work in that job for a cumulative period of up to 4 years. But for some reason, under the current bill, after 4 years, you would no longer have to have an employer who would certify that they had a job available for that guest worker to do and that no American was available to do it.
I also appreciate the Senator's candor in answering the question about highly skilled workers. As his answer indicated, highly skilled workers cannot come into the country unless there is an employer who is willing to sponsor them. My point is that we ought to make our immigration law uniform across the employment spectrum, whether you are a high-skilled worker or whether you are a low-skilled worker.
The Senator mentioned the Bracero Program and reports of exploitation of workers in America's past. I won't debate that with him. I have read of reports of problems with the Bracero Program. While the program as a whole was pretty good, I won't debate whether there were some problems associated with it. But America, in 2006, is not America in the 1950s. The legal protection that is available for guest workers under this program, the vigilance of the media and advocacy groups, will make it virtually impossible for the kind of exploitation the Senator talks about to occur. What happens is, in spite of the protections offered to the guest workers under our labor laws and despite the vigilance of the media and advocacy groups that would likely disclose any problems with a relationship between a guest worker and that employer, what we are finding out is that the one who ultimately has to pay the price for this concern, that I believe will not be realized and is not real, is the American worker who can't find a job because we have offered that job to a guest worker who has come into the United States.
At bottom, we ought to be as sure as we possibly can that whatever we do doesn't create more problems for American workers. The answer is, let's give American workers every opportunity to find jobs and then, if we can't find a sufficient workforce, let's give guest workers an opportunity to fill in those gaps. That is a worthy objective. But we should not be blind to the potential dangers to American workers losing jobs to guest workers under this program, unless the protections in this amendment are adopted--that an employer attest that the employer will employ the alien in the offered job position and the Secretary of Labor determines and certifies that there are not sufficient U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to fill the job position.
I don't know whether there are others who want to speak either for or against the amendment. I know we agreed to an hour between us. Depending on whether the distinguished manager of the bill on the minority side would be interested in yielding time back, I think we have had a chance to cover the merits of this particular amendment. I am prepared to yield the remainder of our time back, if he is likewise prepared to yield the remainder of his time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
http://thomas.loc.gov