Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006
COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 2006 -- (Senate - May 18, 2006)
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, less than 24 hours after the Senate voted to protect American workers and to put them first when it comes to competition for jobs in this country, the Senator from Massachusetts has now offered an amendment that would literally gut the amendment that was adopted yesterday and put American workers in the back seat and foreign workers who wanted to come here and participate in a guest worker program in the front seat.
President Bush has spoken time and time again about a guest worker program that matches willing workers with willing employers. But Senator Kennedy's amendment would do nothing of the kind. It would allow people to come to the United States and to self-petition without having an employer sponsor their petition, and it would not require proof that an American citizen is unavailable to perform that type of job.
Yesterday, the Senate--wisely, in my view--changed the underlying bill to require that American workers be put first before a guest worker could be provided a job and that, under the provisions of this bill, No. 1, they had to identify a job so they would not be here unemployed; and No. 2, that job first be offered to qualified American workers. Then, in that event no American workers were found available to perform that job, of course the guest worker provisions of the bill would kick in.
To make matters worse, the Kennedy amendment would allow an alien who has worked a total of less than 40 days in the United States--yes, that is about 6 days a year--to obtain a green card. That employment, 1 day out of every 60, could be self-employment. For some, that track record of employment should be sufficient evidence that the worker is invaluable to the American economy. What that means is that up to 200,000 unskilled workers a year would be eligible for a green card, irrespective of economic conditions, irrespective of whether that worker has actually been employed for the preceding 4 years and, most importantly, irrespective of whether there are unemployed U.S. workers available to fill those jobs.
Senator Kennedy had suggested that, by requiring an employer to determine that a qualified worker is not available, that would somehow subject foreign workers to exploitation. But let me be clear: Worker exploitation and abuse will not be tolerated under our laws and should not be tolerated under any circumstances. This amendment has nothing to do with protecting foreign workers against exploitation. What it has everything to do with is whether we are protecting American workers first.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the amendment Senator Kennedy is proposing guts the worker protection amendment agreed to by the Senate yesterday. It would do so by allowing workers to self-petition for legal permanent residency if they produce some documents which might indicate they are currently employed, but they will be necessarily retrospective in nature. In other words, you do not have a document necessarily that shows you are employed today or will be employed tomorrow. You may have a pay stub from the last week or the last month. So there is no way to determine whether the individuals who are self-petitioning, under this proposal by the Senator from Massachusetts, are actually going to be working.
No. 2, if they are working, there is no protection for American workers--first, that the Secretary of Labor certify that there were no sufficient U.S. workers willing, able, and qualified to perform those jobs.
If the proponents of this bill are serious when they say that certain provisions are needed because immigrants will do work that Americans won't do, then they should support the amendment agreed to yesterday and vote against the amendment that has been proposed this morning.
President Bush, again, has said the concept of a temporary worker program is to provide additional legal workforce for jobs that there are not enough Americans to perform. Yet this proposed amendment simply sidesteps that requirement entirely.
It further represents a shell game insofar as it would only require those workers in this country during an initial 4-year period to work about 6 days a year in order to obtain a green card.
This is about truth in advertising. If, in fact, the bill is going to represent something even close to what we have been told the purpose of it is, as represented, we need to make sure the actual language of the bill conforms to that and not pull a fast one on the American people by taking away the very protection for American workers that the proponents of this bill have said are an important part of their legislation.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate the clarification that the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from Arizona have made. This language has been somewhat fluid, and now I have it in front of me. I think I understand it, and I think I understand what the differences are between our two arguments.
Basically, it does retain a certification requirement by the Department of Labor. But the one who decides what the job requirements are and whether the foreign worker actually meets those job requirements is the worker him or herself and not an employer. This is, I believe, insufficient to protect American workers because, essentially, the foreign worker is the judge of his own abilities and also the judge of the job requirement for which the Department of Labor is supposed to certify there are not sufficient Americans available to perform. I think it bears, if not the same, I would say similar defects to the original underlying bill that was amended yesterday to reinsert American worker protections.
Let me speak a minute or two about the nature of what this position is. We are now talking, as Senator Dorgan said, about the so-called future flow, people who are not here yet. This has been described as a guest worker program. Senator Kyl and I will be offering an alternative to this so-called guest worker program which we describe as a temporary worker program because I believe this guest worker program is misnamed, mischaracterized, and is in no sense a guest worker program. That is because when you invite guests into your home, you expect at some point they might actually leave.
Under this guest worker program, as designed, that never happens. It invites as many as 200,000 individuals a year, under the Bingaman amendment, who can then come into the United States and work for a period of 4 years, and then, under the approach by the Senator from Massachusetts, self-petition for legal permanent residency and then get in line for American citizenship without regard to whether the American economy is in a boom or a bust. In times when the economy is very flat or when we are in recession, it is much more likely that American workers are going to be competing with foreign workers admitted under this so-called guest worker program.
I do believe calling this a guest worker program, when in fact it is a path to a legal permanent residency and citizenship, is a misnomer. In addition to damaging the prospects of American workers during times when our economy is not doing well and when there are not a lot of jobs available, it also hurts countries such as Mexico and Central American countries that have seen a massive exodus of their hard-working citizens to the United States, never to return.
What we need to do, for the benefit of America as well as the benefit of countries such as Mexico and those in Central America, is to reinstate this historical notion of circular migration; in other words, create a framework where people can come to the United States, qualify to work for a period of time, and then return home with the savings and skills they have acquired working in the United States.
A person who works at even modest pay in the United States under a temporary worker program can, in many instances, go back home and live like a king in some of these countries, where their money goes a lot further and where their investment in a home or a small business will thereby create opportunity not just for them but also other citizens in those other countries.
I believe if we are ever going to narrow the gap between opportunities available in countries such as Mexico and those in Central America and South America and other countries--which is the basic reason why people leave to come to the United States, to find jobs and work, and we all understand why--we need to find some way of reinstating this pattern of circular migration so people do maintain their contacts and ties with their country and their culture and their family because otherwise we will never be able to satisfactorily address this phenomenon of illegal immigration, no matter what kind of caps we put on it, no matter how many folks we put on the border, no matter whether we build an actual wall or a virtual wall.
Unless we find some way of reducing the development gap between countries that are the net exporters of human labor and a country such as America, which is the importer of human labor from all over the world, we are never going to get to the bottom of this problem.
So that is another reason why I believe this amendment should be defeated. We will have further discussion later on transforming, I hope, the so-called guest worker program to a true temporary worker program and reinstating circular migration in a way that both benefits America and benefits those countries from which those workers come.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, where we have come from since yesterday afternoon is, we had a basic bill that provided no protection for American workers because it allowed foreign workers to self-petition without a job, without any type of certification there were no Americans available to fill the job, and we then adopted an amendment that would install some worker protections by requiring both of those things: that, No. 1, there is a job available; and, No. 2, there are not sufficient Americans to fill that type of job.
Now, under the amendment of the Senator from Massachusetts, we have gone from no worker protection to what I would call illusory worker protection--illusory worker protection--because this puts the decision to define the job requirements in the hands of the foreign worker. It also puts in the hands of the foreign worker--the self-interested individual, by the way, who is going to be staying or leaving depending on whether they meet these requirements--it puts in that foreign worker's hands the total and unilateral determination of what the job requirements are and, No. 2, whether that same foreign worker meets those job requirements; whereas, for everyone else in America, it is the employer who determines whether the prospective employee meets the job requirements.
The last thing I would say is, for every other category of visa, worker visa in America, under our naturalization and immigration system, there has to be some form of employer sponsorship. And this deviates from that pattern which I believe is important, and this represents an unprecedented break with that in a way that I think damages the prospects of American workers.
So I urge my colleagues to vote against the amendment.
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