[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 122 (Wednesday, October 4, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H8781-H8782]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             H-1B VISA LEGISLATION PASSES IN DARK OF NIGHT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Isakson). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, obviously we are having the 
opportunity to have vigorous discussions on the floor of the House. 
But, Mr. Speaker, I want to draw my colleagues' attention to the time. 
It is 3:15 Eastern Standard Time, and we are now engaged in what we 
call special orders, an opportunity to speak to our colleagues and 
others on very important issues.
  I raise this point of time because yesterday in the dark of evening, 
with barely a 10-minute to 15-minute notice, it was found necessary to 
bring to the floor of the House a major piece of legislation 
disallowing any debate by the procedure of suspension which disallows 
debate and amendments to improve on the status of the legislation, and 
it passed in the dark of night with no official rollcall vote. That 
legislation is H-1B nonimmigrant visas.
  Let me say, Mr. Speaker, I realize that there is a great need to deal 
with the necessity of employment in our high-tech industry. In fact, as 
I look at the cap, the number of H-1B visas that would have been 
allowed, 195,000, I am sure if we would have been allowed to debate 
this legislation, we might have seen a consensus of increasing the 
number.
  But yesterday, our Republican majority saw fit in the dark of night 
to bring it up when many Members were not noticed about it. What we 
find that has occurred, Mr. Speaker, is that American workers go 
longing.
  American workers are not protected by ensuring that those who come 
into this country have the minimum salary being paid to them so that 
they do not come in and be underpaid what American workers can have. 
There is nothing in the bill that requires employers to recruit or hire 
or train American workers.

                              {time}  1515

  It is known that African American workers are only 11 percent of the 
high-tech industry, and they continue to be underemployed. There is 
nothing in the bill that requires the high-tech industry to file their 
EEO-1 forms just to ensure us that they are hiring Hispanics, African 
Americans and women and other minorities. There is nothing in the bill 
that requires employers to take constructive steps to recruit qualified 
American workers and to cross-train and to work with Hispanic-serving 
institutions and historically black colleges. There is nothing in the 
bill which requires the employers to comply with the Department of 
Labor regulations, and there is nothing in the bill that provides 
fairness and amnesty for certain of those who are requiring such.
  But my point, Mr. Speaker, is this. This bill was worthy of a 
vigorous discussion. There is nothing in the bill that deals with how 
do we help rural Americans. Even though the economy is booming, there 
are certain pockets of our Nation where there is double-digit 
unemployment. I believe the high-tech industry has a lot to offer, so 
it would have been prudent for us to be on the floor of the House to 
tell the American worker we are not forgetting them; that as we bring 
in necessary immigrant workers on nonimmigrant visas from other 
countries that we value their contributions.
  This is not an effort to start a bashing of those who serve well in 
this industry, but it is a disappointment to me that those of us who 
had other viewpoints, among the many pieces of legislation that could 
have been offered in amendments, we were not given the opportunity. 
Therefore, our constituents are left in the dark, holding the bag of 
unemployment because this Congress refused to discuss major legislation 
impacting Americans in the broadness of light.
  Interestingly enough, there was a legislative, a particular 
initiative, that included in that the employer would undertake an 
obligation not to displace United States workers, obligation of 
petitioning employers. So there was language in another bill that did 
not get discussed that would require those high-tech industries to at 
least document that they were not displacing an American worker. Can we 
do any less?
  And then, Mr. Speaker, I would like to cite Mr. John William 
Templeton, a co-convener of the Coalition for Fair Employment in 
Silicon Valley: ``It is asserted that the digital divide has become a 
convenient excuse for some firms to avoid training and hiring hispanic 
and black workers. Instead, these companies prefer to hire foreign 
workers, such as those brought in under the H-1B program, who often 
command lower salaries.'' That is unfair to them as well.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I offer my enormous disappointment and my commitment 
to continue working until the last day of this session to make sure 
that Americans as well as those who are needed by the industry are 
treated fairly; that our institutions of higher learning, who 
voluntarily want to participate in the high-tech industry, can get 
involved and that we can close the digital divide and ensure that those 
who are here, who want to be trained, our children in schools in both 
urban and rural areas, Mr. Speaker, can be the kind of skilled workers 
that will provide the employment base for the high-tech industry.
  Good Evening, Mr. Speaker. I approach the debate on the H1-B visa 
program with a very heavy heart. Why? Because I have spent a 
considerable amount of time this year in my capacity as Ranking Member 
of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims in trying to come up with 
a reasonable H-1B bill that would protect American workers and meet the 
needs of the business community.
  I have said on numerous occasions, that I support the Hi-tech 
industry but I also support our American workforce. I worked very hard 
in the House Judiciary Committee to come up with a bill that would 
protect American workers, and I am saddened that the bill that passed 
yesterday evening falls short of that requirement. The bill that passed 
out of the Judiciary Committee contained provisions that compelled 
employers to take certain steps that would protect American workers. 
However, what is most glaring for me are the lack of any provisions 
that protect minority American workers who are grossly under 
represented in the High-tech industry. Nothing in the bill establishes 
an opportunity for the hi-tech industry to work with HBCU's and 
Hispanic-Serving institutions and recruit minority workers.
  African Americans are especially impacted by discriminatory hiring 
practices in the information technology field. Data from the Bureau of 
Labor Statistics show that the hiring of African Americans in high 
technology has improved only slightly during the past decade. According 
to a 1999 report, Silicon Ceiling:

[[Page H8782]]

Solutions for Closing the Digital Divide, approximately 80% of the high 
technology companies in Silicon Valley do not file EEO-1 forms or 
affirmative action reports with the Joint Reporting Committee 
representing federal civil rights enforcement agencies. Clearly there's 
work to be done to ensure that African Americans have fair access to 
the lucrative high tech labor market. There is nothing in the current 
bill that ensures that. Democrats or Republicans did not get a chance 
to offer any amendments; we were not afforded an opportunity to go to 
the Rules Committee; and we were not allowed to effect the process, to 
change the legislation. Democracy was absent in the consideration of 
this bill.
  I would have surely offered an amendment that would require the H-1B 
employers to report to the Department of Labor how they are recruiting 
and hiring American workers, particularly those who are members of 
under represented minority groups. I do not see anything wrong with 
holding the High-tech community accountable for not only who they hire, 
but who they do not.
  I am very concerned about raising the cap of these H-1B visas. 
Although it is true that in recent years the high tech industry has 
fueled enormous growth in the United States and has benefited the 
corporate information technology, and raising the cap on these types of 
specialty workers should include an increased commitment to training of 
U.S. workers. The growing workforce of our country and the strength and 
growth of the high tech industry in particular can be met effectively 
by fully developing the skills of our own workers as a first priority, 
before hiring highly specialized foreign workers. We can have the best 
of both worlds--expert foreign workers (which create more jobs in 
America) and trained professional American workers prepared to work in 
the most sophisticated sectors of the Hi-tech industry.
  There has been a lot of discussion in recent months about including 
immigration provisions with the H-1B legislation. On the Senate side, 
they call it L.I.F.A., the Latino Immigration Fairness Act. The work 
``fairness'' is in the title because how can we possibly lift the cap, 
and bring in 585,000 foreign hi-tech workers, and ignore the people who 
are already here? Where is our sense of justice, of equality, of 
fairness? This H-1B legislation should have: provided relief to late 
amnesty applicants who have significantly contributed to the American 
economy; providing parity through the 1997 NACARA law by offering 
amnesty to Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Haitians.

  Our immigration law contains a provision-called ``registry''--that 
gives immigrants who have been here without proper documents an 
opportunity to adjust to permanent status if they have been here for a 
long enough time and have nothing in their background that would 
disqualify them from immigrant status. This year, a bill that I have 
sponsored, H.R. 4172, the ``Legal Amnesty Restoration Act of 2000'', is 
before the Congress. This legislation updates the cutoff date for the 
``statute of limitations,'' which is now set at 1972. In fact, the 
majority of immigrants who would benefit from updating the registry 
date are those who qualified to apply for legalization in the mid-
1980s, but the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) 
misinterpreted the law. If their applications had been accepted and 
processed properly when they should have been, many, if not most of 
these immigrants would already be citizens. It is unfair and incorrect 
to refer to these people as ``illegal aliens.''
  Instead, they have been fighting the immigration bureaucracy for more 
than a decade and are now threatened with deportation. The provisions 
in my bill which should have been included with the H-1B legislation, 
or considered for independent House floor action would ensure that the 
registry provision is continuously updated by moving the registry 
cutoff date to 1986. If these people are not given relief, hundreds of 
thousands of people will be forced to abandon their homes, will have to 
separate from their families, move out of their communities, be removed 
from their jobs, and return to countries where they no longer have 
ties.
  The Congress also needs to address Central American and Haitian 
parity. It is long past time to offer Salvadorans, Guatemalans, 
Hondurans, and Haitians the same opportunity to apply for permanent 
residence as was extended to the Nicaraguans and Cubans in 1997. 
Because immigrants from these countries have experienced similar 
violence and hardship, it is unjust to continue providing unequal 
treatment. Additionally, while these immigrants have been waiting for 
their cases to be resolved, they have been contributing to our economy 
and are needed to support the workforce needs of this country.
  I believe that the current high demand market for certain technical 
specialities is that it should encourage us to retrain displaced 
workers, attract under represented women and minorities, better educate 
our young people, and retrain willing and able older workers who have 
been forced into unemployment.
  I am very pleased that Section 12 of this bill provides much needed 
funding to help close the Digital Divide by putting computer learning 
centers in Boys and Girls clubs across the country. I sponsored and 
introduced with Congressman Lamar Smith H.R. 4178, the ``Kids 2000 
Act'', that would authorize $20 million from the Violent Crime 
Reduction Trust Fund each year for the next five years to operate the 
PowerUP program in Boys and Girls Clubs across the country. I am 
pleased that the exact language from both my bill and the Senate 
companion version is in this bill.
  This bill does not have language to ensure proper training of our 
incumbent workers. I believe we need more workers and we need to train 
more American workers as I come from a city that has over 1000 
companies that specialize in information technology. This should be a 
non-partisan issue.
  In conclusion Mr. Speaker, we need to approach the H1-B visa 
specialty program with two eyes wide open. One eye focused on looking 
out for our American workers to ensure proper training, and the other 
eye focused on the under representation of minorities and women in the 
high tech industry who currently comprise our American workforce.
  I support H-1B visas, to improve our hi-tech industry but I also 
support our American workers. Thank-you Mr. Speaker.

                          ____________________