Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007--Continued

COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 2007--Continued -- (Senate - May 22, 2007)

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act we are debating right now is a long and complicated bill that touches on a number of important issues. It addresses the concerns I believe all of us have about securing our borders, something I strongly support, and that is long overdue. It addresses the need to hold employers accountable when they knowingly hire illegal immigrants, something which certainly under the Bush administration has not been the case.

This bill addresses the very contentious and difficult issue of how we respond to the reality that there are some 12 million illegal immigrants in this country today, and how we can carve out a path which eventually leads to citizenship, which is something I support.

But today I want to concentrate on one major aspect in this comprehensive bill, and that deals with the Dorgan amendment and the whole issue of guest laborers. That point centers around the state of the economy for working people in the United States and, in my view, my strong view, the negative impact this overall legislation will have for millions of Americans.

Let me begin by pointing to this quote, this quote right here, from Mr. Randel K. Johnson, the vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which was reported in the New York Times on May 21, the other day. This is what Mr. Johnson said:

We do not have enough workers to support a growing economy. We have members who pay good wages but face worker shortages every day.

Mr. President, let me suggest that Mr. Johnson and many of the other big business organizations and multinational corporations that have helped craft this legislation are not being quite accurate when they make statements such as this. The major economic problem facing our country today is not that we do not have enough workers to fill good-paying jobs. Rather, the problem is we do not have enough good-paying, livable wage jobs for the American people, and that situation is getting worse. Over the last 6 years, 5.4 million more Americans have slipped into poverty, with the national minimum wage remaining at a disgraceful $5.15 an hour.

By the way, Mr. Johnson's organization, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, opposes raising the minimum wage.

With over 5 million more Americans slipping into poverty, where are all those good-paying jobs these workers can't seem to find? Over the last 6 years, nearly 7 million more Americans have lost their health insurance. Where are all those good jobs that provide benefits such as a strong health insurance package? Where are all those good jobs Mr. Johnson talks about when millions of Americans are losing their health insurance completely or are asked to pay substantially more for inferior coverage?

In the last 6 years since President Bush has been in office, some 3 million American workers have lost their pensions. If all of these good jobs are out there, why are more and more Americans slipping into poverty, more and more Americans losing their health insurance, and more and more Americans losing their pensions?

From the year 2000 to 2005, median household income declined by $1,273. For 5 consecutive years, median household income for working age families has gone down. In other words, despite Mr. Johnson's assertion about all of the good-wage, good-paying jobs that are out there waiting for the American worker, the reality is, all over our country people are desperately looking for jobs that pay a livable wage. The real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers has declined steadily from $27,060 in 1979 to $25,646 in 2005. While women have done somewhat better in recent years, real median weekly earnings for males has actually gone down since 1979. Despite Mr. Johnson's assertion, the economic reality facing our country is that the middle class is shrinking, poverty is increasing, and the gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider and wider.

I am assuming most Members of the Senate took economics 101 in college. One of the major tenets of free market economics is the law of supply and demand. Under that basic economic proposition, if an employer is having a difficult time finding a worker--and Mr. Randel Johnson tells us that is the case--then the solution to that problem on the part of the employer is to provide higher wages and better benefits. That is what the free market economy is supposed to be about. That is what supply and demand is all about. If you are having a difficult time attracting workers, you pay them higher wages and better benefits, and they will come. I wonder how it could be that with a supposed scarcity of workers out there, wages and benefits are going down. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If Mr. Johnson were right, you would expect that wages would be going up, benefits would be going up. In fact, the opposite is true.

What this legislation is not about is addressing the real needs of American workers. It is not about raising wages or improving benefits. What it is about is bringing into this country over a period of years millions of low-wage temporary workers with the result that wages and benefits in this country, which are already going down, will go down even further.

Let's talk about what really is going on in our economy today. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a document entitled ``May 2005 Occupational Wages and Estimates'' which comes from the State of Vermont Department of Labor. That is the latest such report available.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

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Mr. SANDERS. Let me discuss the 10 largest categories of employment in my State of Vermont and the wages workers earn who do that work. We will talk on some of them, not all 10. The occupation in Vermont with the most employment is that of being a cashier. Those are people who obviously work at retail stores and who take in money, make change. The average wage for this category of worker 2 years ago--these are the latest figures we have seen--was $8.71 an hour. Many of those workers have inadequate or no health care at all. That is $8.71 for that category of work in which more Vermonters perform than any other. Are these the good wages to which the Chamber of Commerce is referring?

In that same survey, the second largest job category in Vermont is that of retail salespersons. That mean hourly wage was, as of 2 years ago, $11.88 an hour. That is better than cashiers earn but less than $26,000 a year.

On and on it goes: bookkeepers in Vermont, $14.14 an hour; waiters and waitresses, $8.97; secretaries, $12.91; office clerks, $11.17 an hour; janitors and cleaners, $10.51 an hour.

I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a list of jobs available today in northern Vermont and in the Littleton, NH, area as posted by the Vermont Department of Labor.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

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Mr. SANDERS. These are the jobs which are available today. If any Member of the Senate wanted to retire today and they wanted to run up to northern Vermont or to the Littleton, NH, area, these are the jobs which are available today, posted by the Vermont Department of Labor: If you wanted to be a flagger, you can make $10 an hour; if you want to be a dispatcher, $11 an hour; home care attendants, thousands of home care attendants taking care of the elderly and the frail make all of $7.53; store clerk, $8 an hour; construction laborer, $11 an hour; receptionist, $8 to $10 an hour; shipping, $11 an hour; machine operator, $8 to $10 an hour. On and on it goes. Those are the jobs available today in northern Vermont, what we call the Northeast Kingdom, and the Littleton, NH, area.

Over the years in Vermont and throughout this country, people have been trying to understand a very important concept: How much money does an individual and a family need in order to survive economically with dignity? That means having an adequate home, having a car that works, paying your electric bill on time, having some health insurance, having childcare for a child if that is what you need. That whole concept is called a livable wage--the means by which an American citizen can live in dignity.

For a single person living alone in the State of Vermont, that wage is $14.26 an hour. That is substantially more than the wage being paid in Vermont for a cashier, which is what more people do than anything else. If you are a single parent with one child, that livable wage is $21.40 an hour; single parent with two children, $20.59 an hour; two parents, two children, and one wage-earner, $24.89.

What is my point? My point is a simple one: Despite the Chamber of Commerce assertion that there are all these great-paying jobs out there and the major problem facing our economy is that we just can't find the workers to do them, I can tell you, in the Vermont-New Hampshire area, there are thousands and thousands of decent, hard-working people making 10 bucks an hour, 11 bucks an hour, 12 bucks an hour, less than that, and many of those workers have no health insurance. Many of those workers are having a hard time making ends meet.

Here is my concern about this legislation. At a time when millions of Americans are working longer hours for low wages and have seen real cuts in their wages and benefits, this legislation would, over a period of years, bring millions of low-wage workers from other countries into the United States. If wages are already this low in Vermont and throughout the country, what happens when more and more people are forced to compete for these jobs? Sadly, in our country today--and this is a real tragedy--over 25 percent of our children drop out of high school. In some minority neighborhoods, that number is even higher. What kind of jobs will be available for those young people?

This is not legislation designed to create jobs, raise wages, and strengthen our economy. Quite the contrary. This immigration bill is legislation which will lower wages and is designed to increase corporate profits. That is wrong, and that is not an approach we should accept.

Today, corporate leaders are telling us why they want more and more foreign workers to come into this country to compete with American workers. I find it interesting that just a few years ago, during the debate over our trade policy, this is what these same people had to say. Let me quote. According to an Associated Press article of July 1, 2004, Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was quoted as saying that he ``urged American companies to send jobs overseas'' and that ``Americans affected by off shoring should stop whining.'' Then he told the Commonwealth Club of California that ``one job sent overseas, if it happens to be my job, is one too many. But the benefits of [outsourcing] jobs outweigh the cost.'' That was from an AP story, July 1, 2004.

Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, said in January of 2004: ``There's no job that is America's God-given right anymore,'' as her company Hewlett-Packard has shipped over 5,000 jobs to India, outsourced almost all of their notebook PC designs, production, and logistics to Taiwan, and manufactures much of their product in China. Ms. Fiorina may have had a point. A few years ago, she lost her job as CEO due to poor performance. But unlike the thousands of jobs she was responsible for shipping overseas, Ms. Fiorina walked away with a $21 million golden parachute.

I should add that Hewlett-Packard, among many other corporate leaders in outsourcing, just coincidentally happens to be one of those corporations most active in the immigration debate. In other words, if these large corporations are not shutting down plants in the United States, throwing American workers out on the streets, moving to China, where they pay people 50 cents an hour, what they are doing is developing and pushing legislation which displaces American workers and lowers wages in this country by bringing low-wage workers from abroad into America.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from Vermont will yield for a question.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, on that point, I was thinking of something our colleague from Arizona said a few minutes ago. He talked about the fact they are going to provide substantial border security, No. 1. Then later he said the reason we have to allow guest or temporary workers--400,000 of them--to come into this country is if we do not let them come in, there will be more tension for illegal immigration. Well, where is the illegal immigration going to come from if you have secured the border? If you have not secured the border, isn't it the case that what you have simply done is said we are going to have 400,000 people come across the border or come into this country and assume jobs? Do you know what we will do? Let's just call them legal. Isn't there an inherit contradiction in what we just heard--and we will hear again, I am sure--the proposition that we have to have temporary workers because if we do not, people will come in illegally? How will they come in illegally if you have secured the border? And shouldn't you first secure the border in a way that is credible?

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I agree with my friend from North Dakota. But he will remember something else. Doesn't this argument about passing legislation that will stop illegal immigration ring a bell in terms of the debate we had over NAFTA? Does my friend from North Dakota remember that one of the reasons we had to pass NAFTA was to improve the economy in Mexico so workers there would not be coming into this country?

It sounds to me as if it is the same old tired argument. It certainly has not worked with regard to NAFTA. Since NAFTA has passed, among many other things, there has been a huge increase in illegal immigration. The point the Senator makes is quite right.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield further, this is another piece of evidence that in this kind of discussion in the Congress, you never have to be right; all you have to have is a new idea--and you just keep coming up with new ideas that are wrong.

The Senator is perfectly correct with respect to NAFTA. In fact, the same economists who were giving all this advice about NAFTA, who were fundamentally wrong, are now giving us advice on this issue and telling us how they are going to create new jobs and all of these related issues.

The fact is, at its roots, isn't it the case that what this kind of temporary worker provision does is put downward pressure on the income for American workers and bring in low-wage workers to assume American jobs? Isn't that the case?

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, that is exactly right.

I know the Senator from North Dakota has been very strong on this issue. We are looking at two sides of the same coin, with the result that the middle class gets squeezed and workers are forced to work for lower wages. That is, on one hand, a trade policy which corporate America pushed through the House and the Senate that says we can shut down plants in America, run to China, pay people there pennies an hour, and bring those products back into America. They have laid off millions of American workers. On the other side of the economy, we still have service jobs in this country, some of which may pay a living wage. Many of them do not. American corporations and companies say: We need to be able to make more profits, so if we cannot shut down restaurants and McDonald's in America and take them to China, well then, I guess what we have to do is bring those workers back into the United States. But as the Senator from North Dakota just indicated, the end result is the same: more and more workers experiencing cuts in their wages, poverty in America increasing, and the middle class shrinking.

Let's not forget--I think a lot of people do not know this, and the media does not necessarily make this point--behind a lot of this immigration legislation stands the largest corporations in America, one of them being Microsoft, having played a very active role in this debate. Here is what the vice president of Microsoft said, as quoted in BusinessWeek in 2003:

It's definitely a cultural change to use foreign workers, but if I can save a dollar, hallelujah.

Four years ago, Brian Valentine, Microsoft's senior vice president, urged his managers to ``pick something to move offshore today.''

The CEO of Microsoft has said--this is Steve Ballmer; this is relevant to this debate--``Lower the pay of U.S. professionals to $50,000 and it won't make sense for employers to put up with the hassle of doing business in developing countries.

Lower the pay of professionals in America.

What I find interesting about corporate America's support for this type of legislation is their arguments now distinctly contradict the arguments they made when they told us how good outsourcing is for this country and how good our trade policies such as NAFTA and permanent normal trade relations with China would be. What hypocrisy. One day they shut down plants with high-skilled, well-paid American workers and move to China. That is one day. On the next day, after having shut down a plant with highly skilled workers, they have the nerve to come to the Congress and tell us they cannot find skilled workers to do the jobs they have. Give me a break.

I think we all know what is going on here. Greed rather than love of country has become the driving force behind corporate decisions. While corporate profits are at their highest share of gross domestic product since 1960--up more than 90 percent since President Bush took office--median earnings are at their lowest share since 1947. In other words, as a result of all of these policies, people on top--corporate America--are doing very well. The middle class is struggling. While millions of workers are working longer hours for lower wages, the CEOs of major corporations are now earning 400 times what their employees make.

Today, in America, the top 300,000 Americans earn nearly as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans combined. Today, in America, the richest 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, and we now have the most uneven distribution of wealth and income of any major nation on Earth. That is the reality, and these immigration policies, these trade policies, are directly causing this disparity of wealth and income.

We hear over and over again from large multinational corporations that there are jobs Americans just will not do and that we need foreign workers to fill those jobs. Well, that is really not quite accurate. If you pay an American or any person good wages and good benefits, they will do the work.

In June 2005, Toyota, in San Antonio, TX, announced the opening of a plant. That plant received, in a 2-week period, 63,000 applications for 2,000 jobs. That story has been repeated all over this country. If you are going to pay decent wages, they will come and they will do the work. Yes, it will be difficult to attract an American worker to work in, say, a meatpacking house if the pay is 24 percent lower today than it was in 1983--24 percent lower. But guess what. In 1980, when the wages of meatpacking workers were 17 percent higher than the average manufacturing sector wage--because they had a strong union--American workers were prepared to do that difficult and dirty job. They did it because they were paid well. They had a union. They had dignity.

I have talked about the crisis in terms of low-wage jobs. Now let me say a few words about the problems facing our country in terms of higher wage jobs.

While our corporate friends bemoan the lack of skilled professionals and want to bring hundreds of thousands of more employees into this country with a bachelor's degree, an M.A., or a Ph.D., earnings--while this process goes on--of college graduates were 5 percent lower in 2004 than they were in 2000, according to White House economists. In other words, for college graduates, their earnings are also in decline. But what this legislation does is expand the opportunity for people with M.A.s and Ph.D.s and B.A.s and B.S.s to come into this country. When it comes to the H-1B visa, our corporate friends tell us Americans cannot do it. We cannot do that work. We are either too dumb or just not willing to do the following jobs.

Let me for a moment mention some of the eligible occupations for H-1B visas that Americans are, apparently, too dumb to be able to do: information technology/computer professionals, university professors, engineers, health care workers, accountants, financial analysts, management consultants, lawyers--my God, if there is one thing in this country, one area where we have too many, it is lawyers; I am not sure there is a pressing need to bring more lawyers into this country--architects, nurses, physicians, surgeons, dentists, scientists, journalists and editors, foreign law advisers, psychologists, technical publication writers, market research analysts, fashion models--fashion models--and teachers in elementary or secondary schools. I just did not know we were incapable of providing teachers in our elementary or secondary schools.

Having said that, I do recognize we do have a serious problem in terms of labor shortages in some areas. That is true. But, in my view, our major strategy must be to educate our own students in these areas so they can benefit from these good-paying jobs. These are the jobs which are paying people good wages. Rather than bringing people from all over the world to fill them, I would rather our kids and grandchildren were able to do these kinds of jobs.

Let me give you one example. Right now, it is absolutely true that we have a major shortage of nurses in this country. That is true. But at the same time as we have a major shortage of nurses, some 50,000 Americans last year applied to nursing schools, and they could not get into those schools because we do not have the faculty to educate Americans to become nurses. How absurd is that? So it seems to me, before we deplete the Philippines and other countries of their stock of nurses--doing very serious harm to their health care systems--maybe, just maybe we might want to provide educators in this country for our nurses. The same thing is true of dentists. It is a very serious problem with regard to shortages of dentists. Yet in dental schools all over this country we lack faculty to educate people to become dentists. While there is a dispute as to whether we do have a shortage in information technology jobs, there is no doubt we should make sure that enough Americans--far more Americans--are better educated in math and computer science than we are currently doing.

The bottom line is we need to take a very hard look at our educational system and, among other things, make college education affordable to every American while we increase our focus on math and science. How absurd it is that hundreds of thousands of low-income kids no longer are able to go to college because they cannot afford it, and then we say: Well, we don't have the professionals we need in this country; we have to bring them in from abroad. So the long-term solution is making sure college is affordable and improving our public schools so our people can fill these jobs.

As this debate on this bill continues, I am going to do everything I can to make sure any immigration reform legislation passed by this body has the result of lifting wages up and expanding the middle class, rather than doing the contrary.

Mr. President, thank you very much.

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