[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 61 (Wednesday, May 11, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H3119-H3120]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 1030
CORRECTING THE ENROLLMENT OF H.R. 1268
Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and
concur in the Senate Concurrent Resolution (S. Con. Res. 31) to correct
the enrollment of H.R. 1268.
The Clerk read as follows:
S. Con. Res. 31
Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives
concurring), That in the enrollment of H.R. 1268, an Act
making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal
year ending September 30, 2005, and for other purposes, the
Clerk of the House of Representatives is hereby authorized
and directed to correct section 502 of title V of division B
so that clause (ii) of section 106(d)(2)(B) of the American
Competitiveness in the Twenty-first Century Act of 2000
(Public Law 106-313; 8 U.S.C. 1153 note), as amended by such
section 502, reads as follows:
``(ii) Maximum.--The total number of visas made available
under paragraph (1) from unused visas from the fiscal years
2001 through 2004 may not exceed 50,000.''.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). Pursuant to the rule, the
gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) and the gentleman from Wisconsin
(Mr. Obey) each will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis).
Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I
may consume.
Mr. Speaker, the resolution instructs the enrolling clerk to correct
a provision in division B of the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations
conference report that was drafted incorrectly.
The conference agreement included a provision to make available an
additional pool of permanent resident visas only for nurses and
physical therapists.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 7 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, ordinarily, on a piece of legislation like this, there
would be virtually no debate and it would be passed routinely, but I
think, for the good of the House, we ought to review exactly what we
are doing here and why we are here doing it.
As you know, last month, the supplemental appropriations for Iraq and
other purposes was passed by the House and then passed by the Senate.
On the Senate floor, the Senate saw fit to adopt an amendment, the
purpose of which was to increase the number of visas for nurses by
50,000. That is what it supposedly did.
Now, after that was adopted on the Senate floor, the bill was
conferenced. It passed this House some time ago, and the conference
passed the Senate yesterday.
Today, we are here with this concurrent resolution, and what does
this concurrent resolution do? It raises the number of visas for
nursing by 50,000. Why do we have to chew the same cud twice? Why are
we here doing today what we thought had been done much earlier?
I think it is very simple. We are here because the normal processes,
the normal democratic processes of the House and the Senate have not
been followed. We are here because, in an attempt to solve a debate
within the Republican Caucus, extraneous material was added to the
Iraqi supplemental which had no business being on that bill in the
first place.
What essentially happened is that after this amendment was adopted by
the other body, the leadership of the majority party then essentially
took away from the Committee on Appropriations the ability to deal with
all of these immigration-related issues.
Now, who dealt with them? I am, frankly, not sure, but I think it was
Senator Frist's staff, and I think it was the leadership staff in this
House. But we are not sure because it all happened behind some closed
door. I am not sure what room it was in. But it happened somewhere,
some place in River City.
So now, we are here correcting that mistake. Why am I making a
Federal case out of something like this? Well, it is very simple. The
history of Congress has been written for decades, and each decade some
scholar has noted that Congress works principally in committee. Woodrow
Wilson wrote his great piece on the organization of Congress, making
the point that Congress really ran in committees. We are here today
because that committee system has been corrupted.
What has happened is that we have ignored the fact that the reason
for the committee system in the first place has been so that the House
could use the specialized knowledge that people develop on each and
every committee and put that knowledge to work in the consideration of
every bill that goes through this House. Under normal processes, the
Committee on Appropriations would have been dealing with all matters
that were attached in the appropriations bill.
Under normal processes, Senator Hutchison should have been allowed to
have access to the language before it was arbitrarily attached to this
bill. But when people tried to find out what was happening on
immigration and other issues, they were told it is being taken care of.
It is being taken care of.
Well, it certainly was.
Mr. Speaker, I simply take this time to make the point that there is
a purpose for creating committees. There is a purpose for vetting these
issues through the committee of jurisdiction because, through the
years, committees learn their business. But when the normal business is
side-tracked, when everyone except the powers on high are excluded from
the rooms where decisions are being made, then you are going to have
mistakes being made because nobody is smart enough to know everything
about everything, despite what some people in the leadership in
[[Page H3120]]
both the Senate and House seem to feel. Occasionally, the omnipotent
can make a mistake. And if the committee process is followed, our
chances of making those mistakes would be minimized.
So all I want to say, Mr. Speaker, is that I am sure mistakes like
this will occur in the future. And this is no great Earth-shaking
matter, but I felt it appropriate to use this opportunity to point out
that the House is continuing to day-by-day, as far as I am concerned,
corrupt the processes of the House by having the House evolve into a
system in which a few staff people somewhere on Capitol Hill make all
of the decisions, and then the other committees are told, Just do what
you are told. Get rid of it. Move it on. After all, we have got to run
the trains on time. It does not matter what is in them, but we have got
to run the trains on time.
So that is why we are here today, Mr. Speaker. I hope we could all
take a lesson from this.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hostettler).
(Mr. HOSTETTLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks.)
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Committee on
Appropriations for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, today I rise in opposition to S. Con. Res. 31. In the
attempt to correct an error in drafting, this concurrent resolution
would allow for 50,000 new green cards reserved for nurses and physical
therapists. Green card status is permanent resident status.
Accompanying spouses and minors also will be given permanent resident
status and will not be counted against the 50,000 cap.
If this concurrent resolution is passed, it will give 50,000 nursing
and physical therapist jobs away to foreign workers and will be giving
even more jobs away to accompanying spouses, as those with permanent
resident status are granted work permits.
The argument that the current drafting of the supplemental
``recaptures unused employment-based visas'' from the past 2 years is
false, since any employment-based visas that are not used are given up
to meet the family-based visa quota for that year.
A recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies found that
``there is little evidence that immigrants take only jobs Americans
don't want.''
Another recent study conducted by the Center for Labor Market Studies
at Northeastern University says that ``there is little empirical
support for the notion that new immigrants are taking large numbers of
jobs that American workers refuse to accept. There is direct
competition between new immigrants and native-born workers for most of
these jobs.''
At a hearing I held last week as the Chairman of the Subcommittee on
Immigration, Border Security and Claims, the minority witness, Dr.
Holzer, testified that, due to cost containment in certain fields, ``10
to 15 percent jobs in the United States potentially on the high end
could face competition from engineers and computer programmers and
others in India and China and other parts of the world.''
If you have any nursing or physical therapy students in your
district, consider that those students who will be graduating this
spring will have to compete with 50,000 foreign nurses and physical
therapists who will likely work for lower wages. We will have to answer
to our constituent nurses and physical therapists who cannot find a job
due to the influx of foreign workers in this field.
Also, if we pass this concurrent resolution for nurses and physical
therapists, who will be the next workers that we will displace? Will we
add 50,000 more new visas to each supplemental, driving more and more
domestic American-born workers out of a job?
Today, I ask my colleagues to support their constituents, American
workers who are in the fields of nursing and physical therapy, and vote
against this concurrent resolution.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, we now find ourselves in an even more interesting
situation. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hostettler) has just raised
some substantive concerns about the bill, and those ought to be
responded to.
The problem is that, because of the way this has been handled,
because you had a matter that was not under the jurisdiction of the
Committee on Appropriations essentially dumped into an appropriations
bill, this issue is not going to be dealt with on the substantive
level.
The issues raised by the gentleman might be very legitimate, but they
should be debated in the forum in which they are supposed to be
debated, and that is the Committee on the Judiciary. Instead, we have
the Committee on Appropriations which is supposed to focus on budgets
here dealing with a legal issue about which our committee has no
particular expertise. So, once again, the process by which the bill is
being considered today changes the House from being what it is supposed
to be, which is the greatest deliberative body in the world, to a poor
imitation of Daffy Duck.
I again would urge that we give greater consideration to normal order
around here if we do not want to rapidly descend into being the
laughing-stock of the country.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I
may consume.
Mr. Speaker, since this change is merely a technical item in nature,
I urge swift adoption of this resolution so we can expedite enrollment
of the bill and get it to the President for his signature today.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the
gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) that the House suspend the rules
and concur in the Senate Concurrent Resolution, S. Con. Res. 31.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor
thereof) the rules were suspended and the Senate concurrent resolution
was concurred in.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
____________________