Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, under the prior unanimous consent agreement, I call up my amendment numbered 1237, as modified.

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I thought I would take a few moments to share the contents of this amendment and why it is an important addition to the bill we are considering currently. This is related to a very critical part of Oregon's economy; that is, timber and forest jobs. Forest jobs have long been a pillar of our rural economy in my State. In fact, my father worked as a millwright when he first came to Oregon. He worked as a mechanic, which was basically to keep the sawmill operating.

When the sawmill shut down, he pursued other jobs as a mechanic. We traveled with the timber economy, as so many families in Oregon did. Many of our rural towns are mill towns--towns closely related to the production of
lumber from our national forests and from private forests.

Over the past several decades, times have been pretty tough in the timber economy, and we have many forest workers who have suffered through these tough times. Their families have gone with the ups and downs of the timber economy. Certainly, the recession added insult to injury, and the unemployment rates in many of our timber counties soared and have been stuck at over 15 percent.

That is why in 2009 I and others fought to get funding in the recovery bill to expand thinning and wildfire prevention. The concept was that we have millions of acres of overgrown second-growth forests which is not ideal for ecosystems, and it is not ideal for producing timber. What it is ideal for is forest fires and disease. So thinning these forests made a lot of sense, and we can put a lot of folks to work.

We did get funding for forest health, but in 2010 we had a little shock. One of our newspapers in Oregon, the Bend Bulletin, started reporting about how the forest service contracts intended to put Americans to work--and for the Oregon forests, Oregonians to work--were instead awarded to contractors who were bringing in foreign workers under the H-2B visa program. These contractors, using cheap labor, were underbidding the local companies that were employing Oregonians from these rural communities--communities deeply steeped in the tradition of forest jobs.

In 2011, we found out from a Department of Labor audit of some of these contracts--more than $7 million worth--that not one Oregonian was hired. In fact, the audit concluded that it was likely Oregonians didn't even know the jobs existed. Now, why is that? Because the contractor--seeking to underbid the contractors who would hire Americans--proceeded to advertise in California for jobs in Oregon. They proceeded to advertise well in advance of the jobs; there was a disconnect in time. They proceeded to imply in the advertisements that a second language was required.

When applications were received by the few Oregonians who found out about those jobs, they round-filed those applications, put them through the shredder, rather than using our tax money to thin our forests to prevent forest fires and disease and didn't hire Americans for those jobs.

The information provided to my office showed that in 2010 and 2011 in Oregon and Washington more than one-third of the contracts being awarded by the Forest Service were going to companies that self-attested that they could not find a single American worker who wanted to do these jobs. Now these companies are operating in rural communities with very high unemployment rates in the middle of a terrible recession. We have thousands of Oregonians who have signed up on a job seeker database saying they want to work in our forests.

In Oregon that list involves more than 5,000 individuals who are on a State list wanting to work in the woods, and the contractors said they could not find anyone who wanted one of these jobs. This is exactly the type of abuse that undermines the entire program. This is the type of abuse that must not be allowed.

As I go from county to county doing townhalls, as I do in each county every year, folks say time and time again: We need more jobs in the woods. Well, those jobs that we do have in the woods, we need to make sure they know about those jobs. When our taxpayer dollars are funding the work, we need to make sure the money goes to create jobs where they are needed.

That is why I am proposing a narrowly tailored amendment to address this problem with three simple changes to the H-2B program for forestry jobs. First, enhanced recruitment. Employers, before submitting a petition to hire H-2B workers, would be required to use appropriate recruitment strategies to find or notify Americans who are interested in these jobs. This could be advertising at job fairs, with local and State workforce agencies and nonprofits, or advertising on reputable Internet job search sites or radio. The key is they must work with the State workforce agency to advertise in the places where local residents are likely to hear about the jobs. That is exactly what did not happen in Oregon in 2009 and 2010.

The second provision of this amendment is that the Secretary of Labor could grant a temporary labor certification to an employer to hire H-2B forest workers. In order to do that, the director of the State workforce agency would have to certify that the employer has complied with the recruitment requirements, and the director of the State workforce agency would have to make a determination that local workers were not qualified or available to fill the jobs. That way we connect the contractor who is responsible to make sure that folks know about these jobs with the workforce agency that has the expertise in finding people who want to know about these jobs. If there is a situation where a contractor simply says, well, we advertised, but we cannot find anyone, the workforce agency would know whether that was a legitimate and valid conclusion.

The third point is that if an employer seeks to be certified for a work itinerary that covers multiple States, and if the work outside the primary State lasts 7 days or longer, then the employer needs to contact the agency in each State. That way they don't simply have someone starting work in California for a day or two and shifting to Oregon, shifting to Washington, or shifting to Idaho--perhaps for a month in each place--but never advertising in the State where the work is being done. These are three simple changes to our H-2B program for forest workers that could make a real difference for individuals struggling to find work in the woods.

Now, we cannot go back and fix the contracts that have already been issued and abused in the past, but we can fix the problems we know about now so that those forest workers do get the jobs in the future--those Oregonians, those Americans who want to work in the woods.

In places like Myrtle Creek, where I was born, or Roseburg, where I went to first grade, when you are born in these timber communities, you are practically born with a chainsaw in your hand. Timber is the heart of the local economy. To have folks--who are unemployed, trying to support their families and desperate for jobs in the woods--find out that our tax money that was supposed to go to put them to work has been put to work hiring people from outside our country is outrageous and unacceptable. This amendment will address it in a responsible manner.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

I thank the Presiding Officer for the time.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. MERKLEY. Let me take you back in time to 2009 and 2010. The housing market had collapsed, sawmills had shut down across our Nation, and thousands of loggers and sawmill workers were out of work. You can imagine how outraged those unemployed loggers were when they found out that government contracts had been let for logging but the contracts were going to go to employees from Mexico. That is the type of bypass that completely disturbs the fabric of our immigration system. It undercut the success of thousands of rural families across this Nation.

This amendment has a simple fix. It says that jobs have to be appropriately advertised so that our loggers will know how to apply. That is it. It will work for rural America. It will work for the forest industry. It will work for our loggers.

Mr. President, I understand that we are able to dispose of this amendment with a voice vote. I ask unanimous consent that the 60-vote affirmative threshold be waived under the Merkley amendment, as modified.

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