[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 128 (Tuesday, September 17, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10650-S10653]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, just a few moments ago the Democratic 
conferees that had intended to meet in conference between the House and 
the Senate to consider the immigration bill were notified that 
conference was indefinitely postponed. No time was established when 
there might be a follow-up conference.
  The issues of illegal immigration are of enormous importance to this 
country. There are a number of States that are directly impacted by 
illegal immigration, but the problems of illegal immigration also 
affect just about every State in this country in one form or another. 
There has been considerable discussion and debate about what policies 
we ought to follow to address the issues of illegal immigration.
  For a number of years, we have had special commissions that were set 
up by the Congress to look at various immigration issues. We had the 
Hesburgh Commission. The commission was bipartisan in nature and made a 
series of recommendations both with regard to legal and illegal 
immigration. The Congress acted on both of the recommendations.
  Subsequently, because of the enormous flow of illegal immigrants 
coming to the United States, the Hesburgh Commission called for the 
United States to respond to the problem. After all, it is a function of 
our National Government to deal with protection of the borders, and 
also to guard the borders themselves. This area of public policy 
presented an extremely important responsibility for national 
policymakers.
  Beginning just about 2 years ago my colleague and friend, the Senator 
from Wyoming became the Chair of the Immigration Subcommittee. I have 
enjoyed working with him on immigration--we have agreed on many, many 
different items; we differ on some issues, and some we have had the 
good opportunity to debate on the floor of the Senate on various 
occasions.
  In fact, we agreed on many of the provisions in the Senate 
immigration bill. I welcomed the opportunity to support the legislation 
which passed overwhelmingly--97 to 3. Although the legislation was not 
perfect, it represented a bipartisan effort to try to

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deal with the problem of illegal immigration. I can remember how 
Chairman Simpson dealt with the issues over a year ago when the Jordan 
Commission was winding up their consideration of illegal immigration 
issues. There were many who felt we ought to rush to judgment. That we 
ought to provide amendments on different pieces of legislation. Senator 
Simpson said, ``No; we are going to follow a process and a procedure.'' 
He spoke as a senior legislator and as someone who has provided 
important leadership on the issues of immigration.
  So we consulted the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and later 
the full Judiciary Committee, and we consulted with the Jordan 
Commission. We had extensive hearings. We moved through the process of 
markup. In the markup itself Senator Simpson took the time to visit the 
members of the committee, Republican and Democrat alike, to find their 
principal areas of concern--to see if we could find common ground. 
Then, in the best traditions of legislating, we had a series of days of 
markups. I daresay the participation of Republican and Democrat alike 
in those markups was enormously impressive. I do not think there is a 
member of that committee on any side of any issue who does not feel 
they were given a full opportunity to make the presentation of their 
concerns and to engage in a dialog, discussion and debate. We had a 
fair hearing of every issue--conducted under the chairmanship of 
Senator Hatch. I believe the entire process took 9 days. They were full 
days. We did it section by section of the legislation, with 
notification so members would have an idea which areas were going to be 
addressed each day. This was really in the best traditions of 
legislating.
  We moved forward, passed the bill out of the Judiciary Committee, and 
had extensive debate here on the floor of the Senate. It took a number 
of days, I believe 7 or 8 days. Sometimes the debate was tied up on the 
issues of minimum wage. By and large, the discussion focused on the 
issues of illegal immigration. Then we had the rollcall vote. As I 
mentioned earlier, rarely do we have a matter of this importance pass 
by a margin of 97 to 3 in the U.S. Senate. Especially involving an 
issue on which Senators have many different opinions.
  Then something happened, Mr. President. We had the appointment of 
conferees in the Senate, Republican and Democrat, but the Democratic 
conferees were never invited to participate in pre-conference 
negotiations with our Republican colleagues. There were only 
negotiations between the Republicans in the House of Representatives 
and the Republicans in the Senate. It has only been in the last few 
days that the House Democrats were actually appointed. It was only in 
the last few days that they were able to obtain the legislation itself. 
And before the Democrats could find out what was in the bill the 
Republicans drafted, the Democrats had to threaten parliamentary 
maneuvers in the House.
  Nonetheless, we were notified we were going to have the conference 
meeting today at noon; that we were going to have a conference, break 
for the leadership meetings and then go back and resume the conference. 
There was a clear anticipation that action would occur on the 
conference report. I had hoped we would be able to revisit some of the 
items. We had tried to work together with members of the conference who 
were interested in some of these issues that were not necessarily 
partisan to see if we would at least have an opportunity for a brief 
debate on some of those. I think we were prepared to have that 
discussion and debate and to raise those issues. The most important of 
all of the issues, of course, is the Gallegly amendment, and whether 
we, as a public policy, are going to dismiss from the public schools of 
this country those children who may be the sons and daughters of 
illegal immigrants. The Gallegly provision is strongly opposed by the 
law enforcement officials and by teachers, who do not become teachers 
only to be turned into a truant officer who turns in names of suspected 
illegal immigrant children to INS. There were a number of other 
important issues in the Republican conference report, which I will 
mention in a few moments.
  Then we were notified just a few moments ago that our Republican 
friends are in disarray about what their position is with regard to the 
Gallegly amendment, and that there is no consensus. Even right now, 
since we have been notified that this conference is postponed, there is 
no effort to try to include Democrats in the conference, or to talk 
about issues of concern to us. There is still no effort, even at this 
late date, to craft legislation that would deal with a central concern 
of the people of this country, and that is the growth of illegal 
immigration. The Republican conferees still have not allowed us to 
address in a bipartisan way what this conference report means in terms 
of job loss for American workers, what it means in terms of crowded 
schools, and what it means for the challenges that we are facing on the 
borders, with all of the complex social and economic criminal elements 
associated with it. These are complex issues that the Democratic 
Members want to address and come to some conclusion on.

  Now we are notified that we still do not have an opportunity to 
resolve these issues in a bipartisan way. The conference is postponed 
again, but the Republicans say they somehow going to get together 
again. I now understand the power of the majority in being able to push 
legislation through. Certainly, they do in the House of 
Representatives. They are able to have the power to jam legislation 
through there. It is more difficult in the Senate. Although a 
conference report is a privileged item, nonetheless, what we find is, 
rather than just sitting down and discussing it in an open kind of 
forum, where the public would be invited to at least observe and to 
understand the public policy issues that are being debated, there are 
negotiations taking place not with the Members of the Congress and 
Senate that have to vote on the legislation, not with the Members of 
the House and Senate who have worked to try to be constructive and who 
have supported the legislation here in the U.S. Senate the last time 
that we came--oh, no, the negotiation is taking place with the Dole 
campaign officials--the Dole campaign officials. They are the ones that 
are negotiating with the Republican leadership on the shape of the 
immigration bill.
  The stories have been out there of the meetings that took place last 
week and the positions of candidate Dole, who wants, evidently, the 
Gallegly amendment included in the final immigration bill, and others 
within the Republican Party do not want to have that. It is tied up, I 
dare suggest. It is always a concern to speculate on what the 
motivations of other people are. But, it is increasingly apparent to 
many of us that the Republicans want to make very difficult for the 
Members to deal in a bipartisan way with the issue of illegal 
immigration. It seems they either want the President to veto the 
legislation, or let it die in the Senate in the final hours of the 
Congress while Republicans and Democrats alike express their dislike of 
the Gallegly provisions.
  So then there might be the opportunity for those to say, look what 
has happened on the important issue of illegal immigration; we were not 
able to get the bill to the President. The Republican side says that if 
they take the Gallegly amendment out, the bill may well go through the 
Senate of the United States and House of Representatives, and the 
President might sign it and get some credit for it. He might get some 
credit for the bill in California in an important election year.
  Now, Mr. President, I don't think I am far off from the facts with 
that kind of a speculation, particularly when we find that about the 
inability of Republican leadership to try and bring forth a conference 
report that reflects agreement among Republicans. The American people 
can say, well, if we can get a good bill, why don't we do it? Do we 
always have to include the Democrats in it? The fact of the matter is, 
we have supported illegal immigration proposals. We are interested in 
this issue of illegal immigration. It is an issue for the Nation to 
deal with, but it is also a matter which has a dramatic impact on the 
lives of workers in this country, because when they find out that 
unscrupulous employers are going to hire illegals and pay them less 
than their American counterparts, it has a dampening affect on wages 
for American workers. That has been debated and discussed, and we have 
various studies in the Record. But it is

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pretty self-evident that one of the principal factors of holding down 
wages in our country is the fact of illegal immigrants taking jobs here 
in the United States.

  Was it so unworthy that we would try, in dealing with the problems of 
illegals. We must recognize that of the million and a half people that 
come into the United States illegally each year, about 350,000 remain 
in the United States. Get this: Of the workers that come here and 
remain here as illegal workers, half of them came to the United States 
legally, and overstayed their visas. No amount of border enforcement 
can deal with them. But they are still taking American jobs, and they 
are continuing to depress the wages of American workers. The only way 
you are going to get to these illegal workers is in the workplace. As 
the Jordan Commission pointed out, the most likely employers that hire 
illegals are also the ones that do not respect the fair standards for 
workers and the working conditions for American workers.
  We find that in regions of the country where you have the 
exploitation of workers, you find, by and large, the greatest numbers 
of those employers that hire the illegals. Now, in the Senate bill we 
added 350 labor inspectors to find employers who violate our labor laws 
by hiring illegal immigrants. That is a 50-percent increase in the 
amount of inspectors the Department of Labor currently has. What 
happened to that provision? It has been eliminated by the Republicans. 
It has been cut out of the conference. It has been absolutely cut out 
of the conference report.
  One of the important provisions that we debated in the Senate was the 
development of various pilot programs to verify the eligibility of 
people to work in the United States. We had Senate provisions crafted 
to test what pilot program would work most effectively, so we can help 
employers make sure they are able to hire without the fear of 
discriminating against American workers. Well, what happened with that 
language? We had good pilot programs. But they were dropped. And a 
different series of programs--and many of us question the effectiveness 
of their results--are authorized. Many would say that the Republican 
conferees eliminated the Senate pilot programs under the weight and 
pressure of the business community and unscrupulous employers, so they 
do not have to face the problems of dealing with hiring illegals.
  And then, of course, there are the provisions in the law that 
undermine, in a very dramatic way, provisions placed in the Senate bill 
by Senator Simpson dealing with breeder documents--the birth 
certificates and drivers licenses. This was controversial issue on the 
Senate floor. But, we debated it in a bipartisan way. Now, they too 
have been changed.
  One of the principal reasons breeder documents are so essential to 
the control of illegal immigration is that the breeder document is the 
fundamental document to establish eligibility to work in the United 
States. We need to cut back on the forgery taking place. What do we 
find out from that? That provision has been emasculated. It says 
tamper-resistant birth certificates will only be required for future 
births, which means that we are going to have this problem for 30 or 40 
years, while the next generation begins to grow up and go into the job 
market. The conference report has made a sham out of true reform on 
this issue.
  It effectively emasculated those very, very important provisions that 
had been included with the leadership of Senator Simpson. And I think 
those were tough, difficult provisions for him to adopt and accept. 
But, nonetheless, it was a very, very key element to controlling 
illegal immigration.
  We also understand from the Republican conference report, that for 
the first time in the history of American immigration law, if you are a 
worker working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks of the year, you have a 
very good chance you will not make enough income to bring in your wife, 
or your husband, or your child. For first time in American immigration, 
they set a standard of what your income is going to have to be in order 
to bring in a spouse, or a small child. The standard is even higher for 
other members of the family.
  So the conference report says, if you have the resources, if you are 
wealthy, you are going to have the open opportunity to bring in your 
wife, your kids, your brothers, or your sisters, or your grandparents, 
but not if you are a member of the working class.
  This conference report is three strikes and you are out in terms of 
protecting American workers. They lose protection in the workplace 
because the Republicans struck the provisions to provide protection for 
American jobs. They lose the protections that would come out of the 
pilot programs to protect American workers--and we are talking about 
American workers--that may trace their ancestry to different parts of 
the world. But because of the color of their skin, or their accent, or 
their appearance, they are the subjects of discrimination. 
Discrimination which we know exists because GAO has documented it in 
the past. We are interested in trying to deal with illegal immigration; 
those who are going to be a burden on the American taxpayer. But we are 
also interested in trying to protect American workers. And these are 
the provisions that would have helped to protect American workers, and 
these are the provisions which have been changed or removed altogether.
  Mr. President, we had an excellent meeting just a short while ago 
with a number of our Democratic colleagues from the House and the 
Senate. We reviewed some of the problems we have with this legislation. 
I will try and include as part of a general statement their comments. 
Congressman Becerra talked about the additional kinds of burdens needy 
legal immigrants are going to face under this legislation. Senator 
Leahy's excellent presentation on summary exclusion pointed out that 
summary exclusion was a good name for his amendment because so many of 
the Members of the House and Senate have been summarily excluded from 
any of the conference considerations. But he has reminded us of what 
would happen to those that have a very legitimate fear of persecution 
and death coming here under the procedures which have been accepted 
into this legislation despite the fact that the Justice Department in 
this administration has doubled the number of deportations. Congressman 
Frank and Senator Simon talked about the changes in the test for 
following proving discrimination in the workplace. Under the conference 
report, you must prove discrimination by an intent test rather than the 
effects test. They talked about how that will complicate enforcement 
and make it exceedingly more difficult to hold any employer liable even 
if they had a pattern or practice of discrimination; Congressman 
Richardson, Howard Berman, Zoe Lofgren of California; and others, 
including Congressman Bryant--the ranking member of the House 
Immigration Subcommittee.
  They talked about the different aspects of this conference. Most, if 
not all, supported the original legislation. We are deeply disappointed 
in the process and the conference report. It has been four months since 
we passed the immigration bill in both the House and the Senate. In the 
Senate we voted in early May, and now it is going into the backside of 
September. We voted on this issue. And we have the cancellation of the 
conference. The Senate conferees were appointed right away in May. Now 
4 months later, nothing.
  Now we hear they are cooking up yet another version of the Gallegly 
amendment.
  Mr. President, this demonstrates that the Republicans really are not 
serious about dealing with illegal immigration. They want a campaign 
issue, not a bill. If they were serious, the conference would be 
meeting now with bipartisan input. And with the challenge to all of the 
Members of the House and the Senate--Republicans and Democrats--can we 
get a bill that is going to deal with the problems of illegal 
immigration?
  Illegal immigration is a problem. We are committed, as the vote in 
the U.S. Senate showed, to trying to do something about it. It is not 
too late to do something about illegal immigration. But as long as our 
Republican friends are going to continue to meet behind the closed 
doors, refusing to let the sunshine in, I fear for what eventually will 
come out of it.
  It is a real, great disservice to the American people and to this 
institution that we are in this situation. But

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we will be resolute. We still are strongly committed to trying to get 
legislation that is responsible and that will be effective. We still 
await any opportunity that might come up to try to offer whatever 
judgments that we might have that can move this process forward in a 
way which would deserve strong bipartisan support for this legislation.
  It is a complex and a difficult issue. But there is no reason in the 
world that we can't do it, and do it before the end of this session. 
But to do so, we have to have the doors and windows opened up for the 
public's involvement.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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