Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I rise this afternoon to say a few words about the immigration reform bill that, as I understand it, we will begin discussing next week. As the son of an immigrant, somebody who came to this country at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket and who was able to send his two kids to college, needless to say I support immigration. Our country is unique in the world. Our country is great because we are the sons and daughters of immigrants. I think we should all be very proud of that.

I also commend the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy and Senator Schumer and Senator Durbin--all of those people who have been working very hard on what I consider to be a good and strong immigration reform bill. Here are some of the very strong components of that bill that I hope every Member of the Senate would support:

That is the need for a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. Bringing undocumented workers out of the shadows and giving them legal status will make it more difficult for employers to undercut the wages and benefits of all workers and, in my view, will be good for the entire economy.

I have always--and continue to--strongly support the DREAM Act part of the immigration reform bill, which is to make sure that children of illegal immigrants who are brought into this country by their parents years and years ago are allowed to become citizens.

I strongly support a number of the provisions that deal with agriculture. Some years ago I was in Immokalee, FL, a place that I suspect has some of the most exploited workers in America. They pick the tomatoes which go to the fast-food restaurants throughout this country. I can tell everyone that in the State of Vermont, we have dairy farms that are now dependent on foreign labor, and it is important that we treat those workers with dignity and give them legal status. It is extremely important to have an approach which provides legal status for agricultural workers.

I obviously support making sure our borders are strong and that we stop illegal immigration as best we can, and I applaud the committee for including all of those provisions in the immigration bill that is going to come to the Senate I expect next week.

What I worry about very much, and have deep concerns about in terms of the current legislation, is that while we have made a good step forward in terms of improving our economy as to where it was in the midst of the financial crisis, we still have a long way to go. The real unemployment rate in America is not 7.5 percent. That is the official unemployment rate. The real unemployment rate is closer to 14 percent. If we include those people who have given up looking for work in high-unemployment areas and people who are working part time and want to work full time, the real unemployment rate is closer to 14 percent. In other words, if we include unemployment among minorities as well as the young people in this country, we continue to have a very serious unemployment problem in the United States of America, and it is an issue with which we have to deal. I have a number of ideas on how to deal with it. One thing we sure as heck do not want to do is make a bad situation worse.

It seems to me that in a moment when our middle class continues to disappear, when millions of workers are working longer hours for lower wages, when median-family income has gone down by $5,000 since 1999, it does not make a lot of sense to me that we have an immigration reform bill which includes a massive increase in temporary guest worker programs that will allow large multinational corporations to import hundreds of thousands of temporary blue-collar and white-collar guest workers.

One of my major concerns is that corporate America is sort of using immigration reform as a means to continue their effort to lower wages in the United States of America, and we must not allow that to happen.

We all know we have a serious crisis in terms of the high cost of a college education, which is another issue we are going to be dealing with soon on the floor. One thing I can say--and I suspect I speak for a number of other Members in Congress--is if we didn't come from a family with a lot of money and we needed to get some financial help in order to pay for college, we worked in the summertime. I find it alarming that within this bill we are looking at a situation in which we are importing a lot of young people from Europe and elsewhere to fill jobs which young people in this country need in the summertime to allow them to get going in terms of their careers and allow them to make a few bucks in order to help them with their college education.

I understand that jobs such as a waiter, waitress, or busboy--and I did some of that when I was a kid--are not glamorous jobs. But you know what. They help a little bit as far as paying for college. I know it is not glamorous to work as a lifeguard, at the front desk of a hotel or resort, as a ski instructor, as a cook or chef in a kitchen, as a chambermaid, or as a landscaper. The jobs I just mentioned will not pay huge amounts of money, but for someone who needs to figure out how to pay for college in the fall, those jobs help. For someone who needs some experience in order to get their career off the ground, those jobs help. I am concerned that kids in this country are going to be looking for jobs and employers are going to say: Well, actually we don't have any jobs; the job has been filled by some young person from Eastern Europe. So I want us to take that issue into account.

Theoretically the J-1 Program is supposed to bring young people into this country so they can learn about our culture. It is a program to expose young people from around the world to American culture, and that is a good thing. I believe in that. I believe young people in America should have the opportunity to go abroad, and young people from around the world should have the opportunity to learn about America. It is a good thing.

I fear this J-1 Program is being exploited by corporations such as Hershey's and McDonald's in an effort to simply bring students from abroad to work at low-paying jobs in the United States.

Supporters of the temporary H-2B Guest Worker Program claim there are not enough Americans willing to do these types of jobs; that in essence what they are saying is the young American people are too lazy to work at these jobs. I do not accept that. I truly do not accept it. I think it is a slap in the face not only to our young people but to the many working people who do not have much in the way of an education and want to work so they can earn some money. It is a slap in the face to say to those people: No, we are going to have to bring people in from abroad to do those jobs, such as being a waiter, waitress, chambermaid, or lifeguard. These are not high-tech skilled jobs; these are jobs our young people can do and need to do.

I have a great concern about the transformation of the J-1 Program from being a program dealing with American culture to being one where corporations are exploiting young people from abroad to work in low-paying jobs in the United States.

I also find it interesting that instead of

raising wages in this country to attract workers, what many of these companies are doing is bringing in people from abroad. We know what supply and demand is about. What we learned in economics 101 in college is that if an employer cannot find a certain type of worker, the way to entice that worker is to raise wages. Instead of raising wages, what employers are saying is: We have huge amounts of cheap labor all over the world. Instead of raising wages for American workers, we are going to bring in cheap labor from around the world, and I think that is wrong. I think as we deal with this legislation, this is an issue we have to address front and center.

When we talk about H-2B jobs, what we are talking about is people who may be working as a landscaper, amusement park worker, housekeeper, waiter, or waitress. Further, during the summer, businesses are using guest worker programs to hire young people from other countries to be lifeguards.

Maybe I am mistaken, but I kind of think there are young people in this country who can work as lifeguards and hold other positions in some of the resorts all over this country. We are talking jobs such as being a ski instructor in Vermont. I can tell everyone that in the State of Vermont, we have a whole lot of young people who are very good at skiing and can teach skiing. We don't need people from Europe to take those jobs away from young Americans.

Let me be clear--and I find this to be interesting, if not ironic--the same corporations and businesses that support a massive expansion in guest worker programs coincidentally happen to be the same exact corporations that are opposed to raising the minimum wage. These are the same corporations that support the outsourcing of American jobs, not to mention the same corporations which in some cases have reduced wages and benefits for American workers at a time when corporate America is making record-breaking profits.

In too many cases the H-2B Program for lower skilled guest workers, as well as the H-1B Program for high-skilled guest workers, is being used by employers to drive down the wages and benefits of American workers and to replace American workers with cheap labor from abroad.

Here is what it comes down to: supply and demand. If the employers of this country need labor, let them start raising wages for American workers rather than bringing in cheap labor from all over this world. The immigration reform bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee could increase the number of low-skilled--I hear speeches here that we are going to have these genius high-tech guys who are going to start companies and create all kinds of jobs. Great. That is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about an immigration reform bill from the Judiciary Committee that could increase the number of low-skilled guest workers by as much as 800 percent over the next 5 years and could more than triple the number of temporary white-collar guest workers coming into this country. During the next 5 years, H-1B high-skilled visas could go from 85,000 to as many as 230,000. The number of H-2B low-skilled visas could go from 65,000 to as many as 325,000. The new W visa program for low-skilled workers could go as high as 200,000.

The first question the American people and Members have to ask is, is unemployment throughout America in States such as Arizona, Oklahoma, Vermont, Michigan so low right now that we desperately need more and more foreign workers to fill jobs Americans cannot fill?

The high-tech industry tells us they need the H-1B Program so they can hire the best and the brightest science, technology, engineering, and math workers in the world, and that there are not qualified American workers in these fields. Let me be the first to admit that in some cases I believe that is true. I have spoken to employers in Vermont. I suspect it is true all over this country, that there are areas where companies cannot find the skilled workers they need so they need employees from abroad, and to the degree that is true, let us address that issue. But let's also give some facts which suggest that may not be quite as true as some of the employers and corporations are saying.

In 2010, 54 percent of H-1B guest workers were employed in entry-level jobs. So the argument is: Hey, we need all of these brilliant guys who are going to start companies and create jobs. In 2010, 54 percent of the H-1B guest workers were employed in entry-level jobs and performed ``routine tasks requiring limited judgment'' according to the Government Accountability Office.

In 2010 the official U.S. unemployment rate averaged more than 9.6 percent per month. Why couldn't these types of jobs be performed by Americans?

So, again, the point is--I know some of my friends say: Every one of these guys is some genius who is going to start a company. I wish that were the case. Many of these are lower wage, entry-level jobs that certainly American workers could do.

Further, only 6 percent of H-1B visas were given to workers with highly specialized skills in 2010. That is the issue I keep hearing about, highly specialized skills, but only 6 percent of H-1B visas went to those folks. More than 80 percent of H-1B guest workers are paid wages that are less than American workers in comparable positions, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Over 9 million Americans have degrees in a STEM-related field, but only about 3 million have a job in that area.

Last year the top 10 employers of H-1B guest workers were all offshore outsourcing companies. Let me repeat that. One of the great crises we have faced in the last 30 years is that companies have shut down in America, moved abroad, and gotten cheap labor abroad. The top 10 employers of H-1B guest workers were all offshore outsourcing companies. These firms are responsible for shifting huge numbers of American information technology jobs to India and other countries. Nearly half of all H-1B visas go to offshore outsourcing firms, while less than 3 percent of them apply to become permanent residents.

Further, half of all recent college graduates majoring in computer and information science did not receive jobs in the information technology sector. In other words, we have large numbers of Americans who are graduating with degrees who can handle these jobs. Yet we are bringing in large numbers of people from abroad to do them. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Not only would the Senate immigration bill greatly expand the number of H-1B guest workers, it also would provide an unlimited number of green cards to foreign graduates who receive a master's degree or a Ph.D. in a STEM-related field. If we are going to provide green cards to every foreign student with an advanced STEM degree, what purpose does the H-1B program serve other than to suppress the wages of American workers who are already struggling? At the very least I believe we should prohibit offshore outsourcing firms from hiring temporary guest workers.

Under the Senate immigration bill, the number of college-educated H-1B guest workers and STEM green card holders who are under 30 years of age will exceed the number of jobs that are available for young information technology graduates. What message does that send to young people in our country who are interested in pursuing careers in information technology?

Making matters even worse, I am very concerned that Senator Hatch was able to gut the very modest reforms to the H-1B program designed to prevent companies from replacing American workers with H-1B guest workers. At a minimum it is essential that these proworker reforms be put back into the bill before it is passed by the full Senate.

This country was built by immigrants. I am a son of an immigrant, and many of us are. I believe we are a nation that wants to see comprehensive immigration reform passed. I certainly do.

Again, I wish to congratulate all of those people who have worked on this bill because there are a lot of very important and positive provisions in the bill. But I think we have to improve the bill as it leaves committee and as it comes to the floor of the Senate. What we want to make certain of is that at a time when this country continues to struggle economically, when millions of people are working longer hours for lower wages, when minority unemployment is extraordinarily high, we do not take any action that lowers wages or increases unemployment for American workers.
Again, my congratulations to those who worked on this bill, but we have a whole lot of work to do as the bill reaches the floor, and I intend to be working with my colleagues to make those improvements.

With that, I yield the floor

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source