[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 60 (Tuesday, May 16, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4585-S4610]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 2006--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, it is 2:15. We are reconvening. We are 
about ready to proceed with the bill. We have quite a number of 
Senators who have stated an interest in filing amendments. We urge them 
to come to the floor so we can get a queue and proceed to consider the 
amendments and dispose of the bill.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, is the Senator asking an inquiry at this 
point? I did not hear the inquiry.
  Mr. SPECTER. We are ready for your amendment, Senator Dorgan, if you 
are prepared to offer it.
  Mr. DORGAN. I will be laying the amendment down in just about a 
minute. I am reviewing one piece of it. I will be laying the amendment 
down in about a minute.
  Mr. SPECTER. While you are undertaking those last-minute 
preparations, would you give some consideration to a time agreement, an 
hour equally divided?
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will do that, but I will not do it at 
the moment. I want to perfect the amendment and begin discussions, see 
how many on my side and perhaps your side wish to speak on it before we 
would make an agreement with respect to the time.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from 
North Dakota.


                           Amendment No. 4017

  Mr. DORGAN. I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate 
consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan] proposes 
     amendment numbered 4017.

  Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

   (Purpose: To prohibit aliens who are currently outside the United 
    States from participating in the H-2C guestworker visa program)

         On page 250, between lines 13 and 14, insert the 
     following:
         ``(1) Eligibility for deferred mandatory departure 
     status.--The alien shall establish that the alien is eligible 
     for Deferred Mandatory Departure status under section 245C.

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have offered an amendment. I will 
describe very briefly what it does. It essentially strikes the guest 
worker provision, as it is now known. Guest worker is described in 
other ways--future flow, guest worker. It strikes that provision, but 
it does it in a way that would not interrupt the underlying bill's 
decision to have those who are here for 2 to 5 years to step outside 
this country and step back in. It would not affect those folks, but it 
would prevent the guest worker provision from being operative in a way 
that would allow those who are now living outside of our country, who 
are not in this country, living outside of the country, to come in in 
future years under this guest worker provision.
  The guest worker, future flow--all these titles that are used by the 
President and by people in the Senate, it is kind of like Mr. Roger's 
Neighborhood. These are wonderful-sounding terms--future flow. I didn't 
know what that was until I learned or heard some of the descriptions of 
future flow. What that means is we are going to provide a circumstance 
where we try to get control of immigration but at the same time allow 
others who are now outside of our country to come into our country 
under a guest worker provision.
  Let me describe the circumstances, especially on the southern border, 
for the moment. Last year, we believe there were 1.1 to 1.2 million 
people who tried to come into this country but were apprehended and 
stopped and prevented from coming in illegally. We also believe that in 
addition to the 1.1 million or so who were stopped and not allowed to 
come into this country illegally, there were another probably three-
quarters of a million people who came illegally across the southern 
border.
  In addition to that, about 175,000 people came in legally across the 
southern border--those who had children here under the quotas or other 
circumstances and came into our country legally. So 1.1 million were 
apprehended and stopped, about three-quarters of a million came 
illegally, and about another 175,000 came legally into this country.
  We are at a time where, if you read the paper every single day, what 
you see is the new corporate economic strategy. In fact, Tom Friedman 
wrote a book, ``The World Is Flat.'' Of course, the world isn't flat. 
That sells a lot of books, but the world isn't flat. The proposition of 
``The World Is Flat'' is that there are now 1 billion to 1.5 billion 
people around the rest of the world

[[Page S4586]]

willing to work for a very small amount of money, so those who want to 
produce products can move those jobs now to China, India, Bangladesh, 
Sri Lanka, and produce for a very small amount of income. So they pay 
pennies: 20 cents an hour, 30 cents an hour, 40 cents an hour to 
produce the product. They ship the product into the United States to 
sell. Then they run the income through the Cayman Islands so they don't 
have to pay taxes.
  Even while this strategy of shipping good American jobs overseas is 
underway by some of the largest corporate interests, those interests 
also want not only to ship those jobs overseas, they want to import 
cheap labor at home. That is the strategy: export good American jobs 
and import cheap labor. That is probably a good strategy for profits, I 
am guessing, but it is an awful strategy for this country. That is not 
the way we built this country. The broad middle class that burgeoned in 
this country in the last century happened because of the good jobs that 
paid good wages and had health care benefits and retirement and so on. 
That is what helped create a middle class in this country. And the 
presence of that middle class in this country, the middle-income 
workers in this country, has made this country something very unusual 
on the face of the Earth.
  Now we see a new strategy. The world is flat, we are told. That flat 
world means you can get rid of American jobs, move them to China. I 
have told the stories forever, so I will not again, but Fruit of the 
Loom underwear, you know, the underwear with the dancing grapes telling 
us how wonderful Fruit of the Loom is, they are gone; Levis, they are 
gone; Huffy bicycles, gone; the Little Red Wagon is gone; Fig Newton 
cookies is now Mexican. I could tell stories forever about exporting 
American jobs, but the corollary to that is that is not enough. 
Exporting good American jobs is not enough. Now it is importing cheap 
labor.
  Alan Blinder--no radical economist, former Vice Chairman of the 
Federal Reserve Board--Alan Blinder just wrote a piece. He said there 
are somewhere between 42 million and 54 million American jobs that have 
the potential to be outsourced. He said not all of them will be moved 
abroad in search of cheap wages. But, he said, even those that stay 
here are going to have to compete with cheaper wages, with lower wages 
abroad. So that is the future. That is the strategy. That is the new 
corporate approach--aided and abetted, I might say, by the Congress 
with these trade deals.
  In addition to that which is threatening American workers, we have 
the back side coming in: illegal workers. Yes, they are illegal. When 
they come into this country, they are illegal if they don't come 
through a legal process. They come in and compete with subpar wages 
with American workers.
  Let me just ask the question for a moment: What would happen in this 
country if tomorrow we had no immigration laws at all? If we said: 
Look, we are the United States of America. We are a great country. We 
say to the rest of the world: Welcome. Come here, stay here, live here, 
work here. Just come on, come to America. You are welcome. There are no 
longer any immigration laws at all.
  What would be the result of that in a world in which one-half of the 
population lives on less than $2 a day, in a world in which one-half of 
the population hasn't even made a telephone call? What would be the 
result of our saying we no longer have any immigration laws; we invite 
the rest of the world to come to this country?
  It is interesting. There have been polls done in other countries: How 
many of you would like to immigrate to the United States? It is massive 
numbers of people. We would be awash in people. So it is not selfish 
for our country to be somewhat protective of our standard of living, 
somewhat protective of our jobs and our interest in retaining a middle 
class that lives well, that has a job in order to work at a decent 
wage, has health care, has retirement. It is not selfish for us to do 
that.
  There are many voices speaking for immigrants. I don't want in any 
way to diminish the dignity or the worth of immigrants. I come from 
immigrants. I assume most of the people serving in this Chamber come 
from immigrant parents, grandparents or great-grandparents.
  I don't want in any way for this debate to inflame or in any way 
diminish the worth or dignity of immigrants. I don't want us to inflame 
passions against those who have tried to escape poverty in their own 
countries to come to the United States to escape misery and poverty. 
But we in America have a responsibility as well to our citizens, and 
there is precious little talk about them in this Chamber these days. We 
have built the strongest economy in the world. Now we talk about 
immigration. I don't think that we can talk about immigration without 
talking about American jobs, about salaries, workers' benefits, and 
opportunities for those who are here legally. Yes, I am talking about 
all the American workers. That includes Hispanic workers, African-
American, Asian, Caucasian, all American workers.
  I will show some charts in a few moments to discuss what is happening 
to them.
  We have gotten a lot of people speaking up for those who are 
immigrants, many who have come here illegally.
  Let me speak for a moment on behalf of American workers, and let me 
talk for a little bit about what has happened to the American workers.
  We are told by the President and by others, including debate in this 
Chamber, that Americans don't want these jobs, so we need the illegal 
immigration to occur. And now we would make it legal, and now we would 
have additional guest workers to occur because Americans will not take 
these jobs.
  Seven percent of the transportation workers are illegal, but 93 
percent are legal.
  Americans will not take those jobs?
  Ninety-one percent of the jobs in manufacturing are U.S. citizens, 
legal workers, and 9 percent are illegal workers.
  Construction: 86 percent of the people who work construction in this 
country are American workers, legal workers, American citizens here 
legally. And we are told that Americans will not take these 
construction jobs? I don't think so. Of course, they will.
  The evidence is pretty substantial. The question is: What has been 
the impact on American workers of illegal immigration?
  We talk about this, as I said, as if it is kind of ``Mister Rogers' 
Neighborhood''--it is all feel-good, easy sound bites, soft words, 
future flow, guest workers.
  Let me talk about a study by Professor Borjas of the John F. Kennedy 
School of Government at Harvard University in 2004. He said the impact 
of immigration from 1980 to 2000--and principally we are talking about 
legal immigration, the impact by ethnicity of U.S. workers--has cost 
the average American worker $1,700 in lost wages per year.
  Whom does it hurt the most? It hurts the Hispanic workers in this 
country, those who are here legally. It hurts the African-American 
workers. It hurts Asian workers. It hurts all American workers.
  This is not a painless or pain-free exercise to have millions and 
millions of people come through the back door into this country 
illegally to assume jobs. It is not painless. The American people are 
paying the cost of that. The American workers are experiencing the 
problems as a result of it. The problems are lower wages.
  Let me describe what has happened to income in this country. As we 
can see the changes in after-tax earnings by income bracket, the top 1 
percent are doing well. It is the case of the top fifth. The people at 
bottom are hurting, with very little income increase at all.
  What is happening is we have now the development of the ``haves'' and 
the ``have nots.'' At least a portion of that, in my judgment, a 
significant portion of that imbalance comes as a result of public 
policy in this Chamber from people who believe that as the economy 
works when we put something in at the top--and it is called classic 
trickle-down economics--put something in at the top, it filters down, 
trickles down, and pretty soon everybody gets a little damp. It is not 
true. It doesn't work.
  I would like to show some additional charts about what we are dealing 
with.
  When we talk about guest workers and future flows, let me describe it 
specifically with respect to the bill that is

[[Page S4587]]

on the floor. The bill on the floor says we have 11 million to 12 
million people who have come here illegally. We are not sure how many, 
we need to find a status for them. And it develops three different 
categories for them. But it also says, in addition to all of that, 
there are other people living outside of our country whom we want to 
invite in, in the future, 325,000 a year, and over 6 years with a 20-
percent escalator each year that is in this bill you are talking about 
the potential of 3.8 million additional people.
  This piece of legislation says: By the way, let us invite another 10 
million people here in 10 years.
  That is the way it grows, with 325,000 and the 20-percent escalator.
  Is that what we should be doing in our country? Is that the strategy 
that makes sense?
  This country is unusual on this planet. We live here with about 6.3 
billion neighbors. We circle the Sun, and in this spot on the globe 
there is illumination of having developed something extraordinary in 
the world. I have described the time when I was on a helicopter that 
ran out of fuel in the mountains and jungle area between Honduras and 
Nicaragua. We landed under power, but the red lights were on and the 
bells were ringing and we were not going to fly anymore. We were stuck 
there for some many hours until we were found. The campesinos from the 
mountains came to see who had landed. We had an interpreter with us. I 
was asking them, through this interpreter, a little bit about their 
lives, what they would aspire for their lives. A young woman was there 
with three or four children. I said: What is it you aspire for your 
life?
  I want to come to America. I want to move to the United States.
  I asked: Why?
  Because that is the area of opportunity. The United States is an area 
of opportunity. It is jobs. It is for me and my children to have jobs 
in the future.
  We find that virtually in every part of the world. So as a result of 
that, we have had to have immigration laws. Twenty years ago, we had 
this same problem; that is, illegal immigration overrunning this 
country.
  It has a direct impact, as I have shown, on American workers, 
something not much discussed in this Chamber today. But it has a direct 
and a detrimental impact on American workers. That includes Hispanic 
workers who are here legally and have been here a long time. It 
diminishes their wages. But 20 years ago we had this debate.

  The debate when I was serving in the House at the time was: How do 
you deal with immigration? The answer was simple. Senator Simpson was 
on the floor of the Senate, Congressman Mazzoli was in the House, and a 
piece of legislation passed and was signed into law called the Simpson-
Mazzoli bill. There was great celebration because this was going to 
solve the immigration problem.
  How would it solve the immigration problem and employer sanctions? 
The proposition was that the lure for people to come to this country is 
to find a job. If you shut off the jobs and you say to the employers: 
Don't you dare hire illegal workers, don't you dare bring people 
through the back door and pay them subpar wages because they are 
illegal. If you do that, you are going to be hit with sanctions. This 
Government is going to penalize you.
  Guess what. Last year, I am told there was one enforcement action in 
all of the United States against a company that was hiring illegal 
workers. The year before, there were three actions in all of the United 
States against employers who hired illegal workers.
  This Government did nothing to deal with it, nothing.
  The other day in North Dakota--they are building an energy plant--I 
believe it was the highway patrol who picked up seven people, illegal 
workers. I think six were from Guatemala and one from Mexico. They 
drove them about an hour north to Minot, ND, to the immigration office. 
They processed them through the immigration office. They then drove 
them back to the motel near, I believe, Washburn, ND, dropped them off 
and said: You are now required to come to Minneapolis within the next 
month--they gave them a specific date--to a hearing on your case. Of 
course, they will never be in Minneapolis. We will never see them 
again. They will never show up again.
  It is the process. As some call it, catch and release. You catch 
them, you let them go, and say: Show up later. Oh, by the way, next 
time they show up, they will probably be on another job site because 
this Government does nothing to enforce the law. Now we are told this 
is a three-legged stool, as if this is a furniture store. All morning I 
hear three-legged stool. I do not know where the stool came from. I 
don't know about the three legs. All I know is that you must, it seems 
to me--if you are going to be dealing with immigration issues--find a 
way to effectively reduce illegal immigration. You have to do that. You 
don't do that by turning a blind eye to the issue of employer 
sanctions.
  Say you are an employer and want to bring in a string of illegal 
agricultural workers and pay them subpar wages, you are going to get in 
trouble. If you do that, you are not going to solve this problem.
  In the President's address last night to the country, I didn't hear a 
word about that. He is going to deploy the National Guard, an 
overstretched National Guard. They have been on multiple deployments, 
in some cases, to Iraq, but no discussion about shutting off the jobs 
that represent the lure for illegal workers to come into this country--
not a word.
  It is true that the first step to deal with the immigration issue is 
to enforce the prohibition on hiring illegal workers.
  This issue we are discussing is a big, broad issue. It has legal 
immigrants coming in who are not citizens but entitled to work under 
the H-2A program and the H-2B program. We have workers who come in on a 
temporary basis dealing in agriculture. We already have processes by 
which people come into this country legally to work. What is being 
discussed is on top of all of that.
  You have a bill that comes to the floor of the Senate that says: All 
right. Let us take the 11 million or 12 million--whatever it is--who 
are here illegally and separate them into three groups. One is the 
group that has been here less than 2 years. They have to go back. The 
second is the group that has been here 2 to 5 years. They have to go 
back, and then they can come right back in.
  Third is the group that has been here longer than 5 years, and they 
have the capability of earned citizenship, as will the 2 to 5 million 
people under certain circumstances.
  So that is what is in front of us.
  On top of that, as if they put a big old discolored patch on an inner 
tube, this legislation--and by the way, in addition to dealing with 
that and trying to get tough on employer sanctions, something I have 
heard before as all of my colleagues have as well, and responding to 
those needs--in addition to all of that, we have decided there are not 
enough people coming into our country, so we want to allow more, up to 
3.8 million more in the coming 6 years. These are people who do not now 
live here whom we want to come in to take American jobs. We are told 
the reason for that is there will be people attempting to get across 
the border anyway.
  Let us at least recognize they are going to be what are called future 
flows.
  That seems to be giving up on the issue of whether you have good 
border enforcement. You either have decent enforcement on the border or 
you don't. If you have good enforcement, why on Earth would you decide 
that in addition to allowing 11 million or 12 million people who are 
here illegally to deal with their status internally in this country and 
decide in addition to that we have decided that, yes, we have quotas 
for our country. We have immigration opportunities in H-2A and H-2B and 
many other areas. But on top of that, we have decided we want up to 3.8 
million more to come through our doors. Why is that provision in this 
bill?
  I am told it is in this bill because that is the price the Chamber of 
Commerce extracted for supporting this bill. No one has disabused my 
plea of that. I am told that is the basis on which the U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce would support this piece of legislation. Why would they want 
up to another 3.8 million in 6 years, or far more in 10 years? Why 
would they want additional guest workers or future flows to come in 
legally on top of what is already allowed in this legislation? The 
answer is

[[Page S4588]]

simple. It goes back to the first chart I showed. It is the economic 
strategy and the new national world, exporting good jobs and importing 
cheap labor. The guest worker provisions and the future flow provisions 
are about importing cheap labor.
  Yesterday I mentioned a man named Jim Fyler. Jim Fyler died because 
he was shot 54 times. He was shot 54 times because Jim Fyler believed 
strongly that people should have the right to collectively bargain and 
to organize. Jim Fyler cared deeply about coal miners and the 
conditions under which coal miners were working: underground, long 
hours, child labor, bad wages, no benefits. Jim Fyler was one of those 
folks who, on behalf of collective bargaining, on behalf of forming a 
union of coal miners, was shot 54 times.
  We have gone through all of that in a century--people losing their 
lives fighting, battling for the right to organize, people battling for 
the right to work in a safe workplace. We have had the political fights 
for minimum wages, the fight to prevent polluting the air and water by 
companies producing products and dumping their chemicals into the water 
and the air. We have been through all of these fights.
  Now the American worker is told: By the way, those fights are over. 
In fact, you won them for a while, but now you have lost because anyone 
who wants to produce can pole-vault over that and move their production 
to China and hire someone for 33 cents an hour, work them 7 days a 
week, 12 to 14 hours a day, and if American workers do not like it, 
tough luck: The reason we did it is because you cannot compete.
  By the way, for those who still have your jobs and they are not 
outsourced, look behind you. In the back door, we are bringing in low 
wage workers. Those low wage workers will work for substantially less 
money than you are willing to work.
  This is about low wage replacement workers, as I call them. It is not 
guest workers. It is not future flow. It is low wage replacement 
workers, 3.8 million in the coming 6 years in this bill.
  My amendment does two things. One, it gets rid of this future flow 
guest worker. That does not mean we won't have immigration. We will. We 
have many other provisions in the law allowing for legal immigration, 
temporary workers, agricultural workers. That already exists. I 
eliminate the provision that is above that.
  My amendment also accommodates the underlying bill, if, in fact, it 
passes, and will not interrupt that with respect to the 2- to 5-year 
people who must step out of the country before they come back into the 
country and then seek legal status. I have written this amendment so I 
don't interrupt that, either. Someone mentioned earlier that they 
thought this would affect that. It does not. This simply affects the 
piece of legislation that will allow those who never lived in this 
country, who now live outside of our country, and who, in this piece of 
legislation, will be told, in addition to all the legal ways you can 
come to this country, we are going to have a future flow, a guest 
worker provision that allows you to take American jobs. Why? Because I 
guess American workers are not available for those jobs or maybe it is 
because this same body has not increased the minimum wage for nearly 9 
years. For 9 years, this body has not seen fit to increase the minimum 
wage. Maybe there are jobs they have trouble getting the American 
workers to take. Maybe it is because they have not increased the 
minimum wage at the bottom of the economic ladder, the bottom rung. The 
solution to that? Well, we will not increase wages for American 
workers. Let's not shore up benefits for American workers. Let's 
instead decide we will bring in additional guest workers from outside 
of our country.
  I will show a chart that describes what these folks are earning. In 
Russia, it is 51 cents an hour in wages; 37 cents an hour in Nicaragua; 
33 cents an hour in China; 33 cents an hour in Bangladesh; 30 cents an 
hour in Haiti; and 11 cents an hour in India. This is what we want 
American workers to compete with?
  It is one thing to see American jobs moved to those overseas wages. I 
have spoken at great length and I have almost resisted the attempt to 
speak at greater length about these companies which have decided to 
avail themselves of 20-cents-an-hour labor so they can ship their 
product to the store shelves in Pittsburgh, Fargo, Los Angeles, and 
Chicago. I have almost resisted that, but I am thinking maybe I 
shouldn't. Maybe I should discuss at some length the circumstances of 
moving those jobs overseas. Then, by the way, for those whose jobs have 
not moved, we have a surprise for you in the back end.
  We now have, additionally, guest workers coming in who will work at 
the bottom of the economic ladder and, as the professor from Harvard 
has said, put downward pressure on wages in this country.
  All I am asking the Senate is this: Maybe we could have some 
discussion, even as we talk about immigration, about the impact and the 
effect of this subject on American workers, on workers who are here 
legally. Yes, those are Hispanics, African Americans, Asians, 
Caucasians, everyone. Many are struggling. They lose their job and get 
another job at lower pay. The burgeoning middle class is slimming down 
because the world is flat. We are, too.
  That is total rubbish, of course. The so-called flat world is a rose-
colored evaluation of how corporations can simply make more money by 
having American jobs leave our shores and then sell their products back 
into our country. I am saying that in the long term, I don't think that 
works. I don't think that supports or creates the foundation for the 
sustaining of a strong, robust economy in this country that grows for 
everyone.
  We have dangerous inequalities in this country of ours with respect 
to income. I have shown a couple of charts about that. We need to have 
some discussion about the impact on American workers with respect to 
these policies. That is why I have offered this amendment.
  I believe the Senator from Pennsylvania wishes to speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Chafee). The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I inquire of the Senator from North 
Dakota whether he is prepared now to enter into a time agreement. There 
have been no Senators on this side of the aisle who have expressed an 
interest in debating the issue. My reply will be relatively brief. My 
suggestion would be that we ought to seek to close off debate--it is 
now 8 minutes to 3 o'clock--close off debate by 3:15 and move on to 
another amendment.
  I alert colleagues on this side: we are in a position to move forward 
with the Kyl-Cornyn amendment, which is next on the list. I do not know 
what amendments will be offered by the Democrats, but I have made an 
inquiry, and they are making an effort to identify the Senators who 
will offer amendments and bring them to the Senate. If the Kyl-Cornyn 
amendment can be worked out, which is a distinct prospect, we would 
then move to the Sessions amendment. I have alerted Senator Sessions. 
If he can come to the Senate in the next few minutes, that will be 
helpful. Then we have Senator Vitter's two amendments. Senator Vitter 
talked to me shortly before noontime. If he can come to the Senate and 
be available, we are in a position to move ahead.
  I inquire of the Senator from North Dakota whether he is in a 
position to agree to conclude debate, say, in 20 more minutes, equally 
divided.
  Mr. DORGAN. I am not in a position to do that. Forty minutes a side 
is satisfactory. I have a number of Members who have asked for time to 
speak on amendments. We are trying to reach them.
  I understand the Senator from Pennsylvania has an interest in 
efficiency and moving forward, but there are a good many jobs that 
depend on getting these things right. This is an important amendment. I 
am happy to agree to 40 minutes a side.
  Mr. SPECTER. I understand the position of the Senator from North 
Dakota.
  I ask unanimous consent that 80 minutes be divided equally between 
the Senator from North Dakota and myself as manager of the bill and 
that the debate be concluded in 80 minutes, unless time is yielded 
back.
  I now have the handiwork of the expert staff. In their form, I ask 
unanimous consent that there be 80 minutes for debate in relation to 
the Dorgan

[[Page S4589]]

amendment, provided that no second degrees be in order prior to the 
vote, and after the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to 
a vote in relation to the Dorgan amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Chair.
  By way of reply, I can understand the concerns of the Senator from 
North Dakota about the loss of American jobs. I compliment him for 
speaking about this subject with some frequency with some effect in the 
Senate.
  I agree totally with the Senator from North Dakota that we ought not 
to export American jobs. I also agree with the Senator from North 
Dakota that we ought to retain American jobs in America to the maximum 
extent that we are able to do so.
  The Judiciary Committee had a hearing and had four witnesses testify. 
Without going into their testimony in great detail--it is all a matter 
of record--the net conclusions were that there would not be a 
significant impact in the loss of American jobs.
  It is frequently said that the immigrants handle jobs that Americans 
do not want. As a generalization, that is true, but not universally 
true.
  We have had considerable suggestions and contentions by Senators from 
agricultural States about the indispensable nature of immigrant 
workers. Anecdotally, I have many from my home State come to me and 
tell me about the need for agricultural workers.
  Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. SPECTER. I would on his time.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me say quickly, and I appreciate the 
Senator's courtesy for yielding, my amendment does nothing with respect 
to agricultural workers. We still have the provisions in underlying law 
allowing for temporary workers to come in and support the agricultural 
needs of this country.
  Mr. SPECTER. I am not unaware of that, but it goes to the overall 
point of the experts who testify as to whether we would be taking away 
jobs American workers would want. The experts further testify that 
although there was some impact on the wages, there would not be a 
significant loss in wages.
  When the Senator from North Dakota talks about the costs of bringing 
in 10 million people, that simply is not what title IV does. The title 
he wishes to eliminate as to any immigrants coming into the country in 
the future is only open to those now in the country. Title IV provides 
that there be an annual cap of 325,000, with each guest worker employed 
for up to 3 years, renewable for an additional 3 years. Then the 
approach is that those individuals will return to their home country 
unless they can otherwise qualify to stay here.
  The guest workers will enjoy travel privileges in and out of the 
United States and portability between jobs. We allow workers to obtain 
green cards by self-petitioning, if they qualify, and allow students 
with advanced degrees in science and math to stay in the United States. 
Title IV exempts workers with advanced degrees in science and math from 
green card caps, and it increases the annual allotment of H-1B 
professional worker visas from 65,000 to 115,000, with a fluctuating 
cap.
  Title IV is important as part of a balanced program. If we do not 
provide for guest workers who can fill the needs of the American 
economy, then we are going to create a vacuum and a situation where 
illegal immigrants will come in to fill those needs. But if we 
calibrate the number of guest workers which can be accommodated by our 
economy, which are needed by our economy, then we will discourage 
illegal immigrants from coming in and taking jobs, finding jobs, which 
would otherwise be filled by the guest workers who come to this country 
legally.
  This title has been crafted very carefully by the Judiciary 
Committee. There is substantial support for it, as I understand it, on 
the other side of the aisle, even as there is some opposition on this 
side of the aisle. But if there are other Senators who wish to come and 
debate on this side of the aisle, I invite colleagues to debate and 
move ahead, and perhaps yield back time if that time is not to be used.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield up to 15 minutes to the Senator 
from California, Mrs. Boxer.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, thank you very much. I thank my colleague, 
Senator Dorgan, for being such a leader on this particular part of the 
bill which I have found extremely troubling from day one.
  I note that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee said we better 
not take the guest worker program out because, oh, my goodness, if we 
do take it out, there will be more illegal immigration. Well, maybe I 
am wrong on this--I do not think I am--but isn't a basic part of this 
bill to strengthen the border, the protections at the border? And isn't 
that part of what we are trying to do so we can stop the flow of 
illegal immigration--and having done that, allow the 11 to 12 million 
who are already here, who have clean records, who are willing to step 
forward, who are willing pay a fine, the chance at earned legalization?
  And then there is another piece that deals with specific sectors of 
our economy, such as agriculture, where we know there are problems with 
the workforce. With respect to the agriculture industry, we set up a 
program called AgJOBS, which I credit Senator Feinstein for putting it 
in the bill. Senators Craig and Kennedy, in a bipartisan effort, have 
supported this for many years, along with myself and others.
  So we had, I thought, a very well balanced bill until we added a 
guest worker program. In other words, the bill strengthened the border 
in one section, created a pathway for the undocumented immigrants 
currently in the country, and then--addressed one area, agriculture, 
where we know we need these workers and set up a very carefully 
tailored program. The bill also made adjustments for highly skilled 
workers such as engineers, and fixed some of the visa programs.
  So I thought that was a fairly balanced bill. Then what happened is, 
another piece was added, which is this really open-ended guest worker 
program which, in my opinion, will result in a permanent underclass of 
workers coming into our country.
  What disturbs me is what the provision does to the American 
workforce. You hear: Oh, these are people who will do work that 
Americans won't do. Now, I would say that is a good argument when it 
comes to agriculture. But we have taken care of agriculture in the 
bill. We have the AgJOBS provision. And we have taken care of the 11 to 
12 million undocumented workers currently in the U.S. and given them a 
path for continued employment.
  So now, on top of it, we are looking at a program for 325,000 guest 
workers, each and every year, with an escalator of up to 20 percent 
added on to that. And what do you create now? A huge underclass of 
workers who will take jobs away from Americans.
  Now, the American people are compassionate. They are understanding. I 
think most of them want us to do a comprehensive bill. Most of them do 
not like what is in the House bill, where if you lean over to help 
someone who may be having a heart attack on the ground in front of you 
and that person is undocumented, according to the House, you could go 
to jail. The American people do not like that.
  But the American people also know we have not raised the minimum wage 
in almost 10 long years--which, by the way, I think we ought to darn 
well do on this bill--and that if you create another, virtually open-
ended guest worker program, you are going to hurt the American people 
at the end of the day.
  So you hear the colleagues on the other side saying: Oh, No. 1, if 
you don't have this additional guest worker program, then people will 
sneak across the border. No. We are strengthening the border. That is 
one of the underlying principles of the bill. So that is not accurate.
  Now they say: Oh, if you don't do this, we will have jobs that are 
not filled. Now, what kind of jobs would guest workers do? Remember, we 
have already taken care of agriculture, so these guest workers are not 
for agricultural jobs. There are also separate provisions for the most 
highly educated immigrants, the various visa programs. So what would 
the guest workers do?
  Here are some examples: construction, food preparation, 
manufacturing, and transportation jobs. Now, these are

[[Page S4590]]

fields where the vast majority of jobs are held by U.S. citizens and by 
legal workers. So it is incorrect to claim that the guest worker 
program, which has been kind of added on to what I think is a good 
bill, is targeted at jobs Americans will not do. These jobs are good 
jobs in good industries.
  Now, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2004, there were 
6.3 million workers employed in the U.S. construction sector, at an 
average wage of $18.21 an hour or $37,890 a year. Now, when I meet with 
my working people in California, they are fighting hard for these jobs. 
They want more of these jobs, not fewer of these jobs. The last thing 
they want is a guest worker program that is going to provide a big pool 
of workers who may make far less than this amount and take jobs away 
from my people.
  I support the underlying bill except for this provision. I think this 
guest worker provision throws the whole thing out of whack.
  For the bottom quarter of Americans, who are making an average wage 
of about $7 an hour, construction work is a dream job. They pray for 
those jobs. They stand in line hours for those jobs. But what are we 
doing if the Dorgan amendment does not succeed? We are going to take 
those jobs away because an employer is going to say: Gee, should I hire 
an $18-an-hour American worker or, let's see, a foreign worker in a 
guest worker program who I could pay less? You know what is going to 
happen.
  Now, I think the real reason for a guest worker program is not what 
we hear about, oh, well, otherwise there will be more people sneaking 
across the border, or we are short all these workers and we don't have 
workers for construction jobs, transportation jobs, food preparation 
jobs, manufacturing jobs, and the like; but it is really to set up, in 
my view, a permanent number of workers who are prepared to work at very 
cheap wages. That would be bad for the American workforce.

  If we take this guest worker program out of this bill, we will have, 
my colleagues, a far better bill, a bill that we can all feel good 
about, a bill that does, in fact, reach out and say to undocumented 
workers who have worked here 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 3 years--and 
they have clean records and they have paid their taxes and they are 
willing to come forward and pay their fines, and the rest--we will have 
a good bill for them, we will have a good bill that strengthens the 
border, which I strongly support and have supported for years, we will 
have a balanced bill, that includes the AgJOBS piece. But if we do not 
take this out, we have a bill that I believe is going to hurt many 
American workers.
  So I think the real reason this was put in was to have cheap labor, a 
cheap labor workforce.
  Now, the median wage in Mexico is $1.83 an hour. The typical hourly 
wage in China is 33 cents. So I ask my colleagues, what does a minimum 
wage--even if it is not raised, and shame on us that it has not been 
raised in 9 long years, going on 10 years--what does a $5-an-hour wage 
look like? Heaven to those people. And we are going to sanction this 
fairly open-ended program that escalates up to 20 percent a year for 
what reason other than to provide a permanent cheap labor force? It is 
very worrisome to me.
  There are some businesses that are wonderful, exemplary. There are 
others that would rather not look at their business as a family but 
just want to get the cheapest labor they can possibly get. So I cannot 
support the undermining of U.S. working conditions, and I cannot 
support a guest worker program that will decrease wages for low-income 
Americans.
  For goodness' sake, I have stood on this floor 1 year--2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 
7, 8, 9--going on 10 years, fighting to increase the minimum wage. How 
could I possibly vote to keep in this bill a guest worker program when 
we have such an opportunity to strengthen this bill by stripping this 
out. It would leave us with a bill with tighter enforcement at the 
border, a humane, legal path for people who are living in the shadows--
it will make us safer to get them out of the shadows, that is for 
sure--an AgJOBS program that is tailored to agriculture in a way that 
makes sense, and all those visa programs that address high skilled 
jobs? All that makes sense.
  I commend the committee for giving us a chance craft such a bill. I 
would be proud to have as my legacy such a bill. But if we can remove 
this, what I call this guest worker add-on, if we can remove this, I 
think we will have a far stronger bill.
  I commend my friend, Senator Dorgan. He is--I wanted to say he is 
dogged, and he is. He is dogged on behalf of working people. And I 
think he got this just right. I am very glad he has offered us this 
chance to improve this bill by pulling out the guest worker program.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield back the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like a brief few minutes.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, how much time is remaining on both sides?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania has 35 minutes. 
The Senator from North Dakota has 27\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would just ask for 5 minutes in 
support of Senator Dorgan's amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SPECTER. I ask the Senator, are you for or against the amendment?
  Mr. SESSIONS. I am for it. I know Senator Dorgan's time is limited. I 
would ask for maybe 3 minutes.
  Mr. DORGAN. I will yield the Senator 5 minutes.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I will try to wrap up briefly.
  Mr. President, I believe this section of the bill as drafted is 
flawed. It goes further than the drafters and the American people or 
the President would want it to go. I am not sure how we can fix it at 
this point. I think the way to concentrate everybody's mind and get it 
fixed would be for the Dorgan amendment to pass.
  Let's start over and talk about how we are going to handle this. My 
staff has looked at these numbers and tried to be as objective as they 
possibly can to see just what this would allow to occur in America if 
it were to pass, and I am confident that it includes more than people 
would think.
  First of all, it is absolutely not true that this is a temporary 
worker program. It is called guest worker, which sounds like 
``temporary worker,'' but it is not. A person will come into our 
country under this program--325,000 the first year. Their employer can 
apply, the day they get here, the first year, for a green card. A green 
card gives them permanent residence in the United States, unless they 
get convicted of a felony or something. They get permanent residence. 
Within 5 years, they can apply for citizenship. So there is nothing 
temporary about this so-called guest worker program.
  The President mentioned this morning a couple times, I understand--I 
heard it a bit, one clip on TV--that he favored a temporary worker 
program. This is not a temporary worker program.

  Second, the numbers are extraordinary. Some of you who have been 
listening to me today are pretty good mathematicians. It is 325,000 the 
first year. But if that number is reached, automatically it kicks up 20 
percent. The next year, if that number is reached, it is 20 percent; 
the next year, 20 percent; the next year, 20 percent. Those are pretty 
big numbers. In fact, if it were to stay at that 60 percent level, the 
numbers would be extraordinary. If you took the congressional resource 
number, that when a person comes in under this provision as a guest 
worker and they get a green card and are able to bring in their family, 
they have calculated 1.2 family members they would bring in for each 
guest worker. And if you add up those numbers of what we can reasonably 
expect over a 20-year period, it would be 133 million people. I don't 
think we will be at 20 percent every year. There are some factors that 
would show that is not the case. But that is what the bill authorizes, 
20 percent automatically, if the caps are reached each year. If it went 
up at about 10 percent a year, you would still have a very significant 
increase in just this one program.
  When you talk about 100 million people, you are talking about one-
third of the current population of the United States being admitted 
under a low-skill worker program, called a guest worker program, that 
does not require high-skill abilities.

[[Page S4591]]

  We need to completely redo it. I believe that; I really do. I urge my 
colleagues to think seriously about this, what we are voting for. I 
know the motive and I know the desire to do the right thing. We are a 
nation of immigrants. We are going to allow immigration in the future 
to continue. When we do, we will increase legal immigration into this 
country, and I will support that. But the rate of increase provided for 
in this provision is unjustifiable and, therefore, I support the Dorgan 
amendment.
  I yield back the remainder of my time to the Senator from North 
Dakota.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the distinguished 
Senator from Arizona.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I begin by thanking the Senator from 
Pennsylvania for his continued leadership and incredible effort on this 
issue. He has invested thousands of hours, and I continue to appreciate 
the great job he is doing.
  I also congratulate the President of the United States for his 
remarks last night. It is pretty obvious that his remarks were well 
received. He gave an outstanding depiction not only of the situation in 
the United States but the need for us to act. As he said near the end 
of his remarks:

       Tonight I want to speak directly to Members of the House 
     and Senate. An immigration reform bill needs to be 
     comprehensive because all elements of this problem must be 
     addressed together or none of them will be solved at all.

  The President's comments are exactly right:

       All elements of this problem must be addressed together or 
     none of them will be solved at all.

  He went on to say:

       The House has passed an immigration bill. The Senate should 
     act by the end of the month so we can work out the 
     differences. . . .

  The Senator from North Dakota, my friend, keeps talking about how the 
1986 amnesty didn't work. It obviously didn't work. The reason it 
didn't work is because there wasn't a guest worker program, which is 
exactly what the Senator from North Dakota is trying to remove from the 
bill which then would give us 1986 all over again. More importantly, 
there are certain realities in America today that we are trying to 
address. Among them, that the American population is growing older. The 
baby boomers are retiring and leaving in their wake a number of jobs 
that need to be filled. Restaurants are locking their doors because 
there is no one to serve the food or clear dishes. Today, fruit is 
rotting on the vine and lettuce is dying in the fields because farmers 
can't find workers to harvest the crops.
  Why do we need a viable guest worker program? So that we can stop the 
flood of illegals from coming across our borders, so we can make the 
present incentive that brings people to cross our borders illegally 
come to a halt. How do we do that? Our proposal says if an employer 
advertises a job for 60 days over the Internet, in a broad variety of 
ways, and no American comes forward to take that job, then a willing 
worker and a willing employer can join together in a contract that that 
person can come and work and fill that job that it has already been 
proven an American won't take. If that person continues to work in the 
United States, he is allowed to remain in the United States under our 
proposal.
  An equally important aspect is that those who are now south of our 
border or anywhere else in the world will recognize that even if they 
cross our border illegally and are able to do so, there will be no job 
for them because the person who has entered into that contract has a 
tamper-proof biometric visa, and that is the only document that will be 
recognized as a valid document in order for someone to obtain 
employment.
  So if someone does cross our border illegally, gets a job--one, he 
shouldn't get it because he doesn't have that contract but, two, if an 
employer hires that individual, then, of course, that employer should 
be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
  It is not an exact parallel, but let me remind colleagues, about 15 
years ago we declared a war on drugs. All of us, we were going to stop 
the flow of drugs from coming across our border and destroying America. 
Any objective observer will tell you that our progress has been 
limited, if at all successful. Why? Because there is still a demand for 
drugs, and they are coming across our borders. People are using them, 
and there is still a demand.

  There is a demand for workers in this country. And these people are 
coming across our borders, both northern and southern--we seem to 
concentrate so much of our attention on the southern border, but they 
are coming across both borders--to feed themselves and their families 
which they can't do where they are. I would be glad to discuss the 
failure of the Mexican Government to enforce their border, including 
their southern border, the need for us to work more cooperatively, the 
corruption problems, all of the issues that are associated with the 
issue of people coming across our border. But I predict, even if we had 
the best cooperation from the Mexican Government, people who can't feed 
themselves and their families where they are would still try to come to 
this country to get jobs. And if you can prove that there are jobs that 
no American will take, why not have a process, a system where someone 
can come and take it and work?
  There are very few of my colleagues who would deny that the 
overwhelming majority of people who come to this country are honest, 
God-fearing, hard-working people, some of whom, by the way, have died 
in the desert in an effort to come, a larger number every year in the 
Arizona desert. Their only desire is to better themselves and provide 
better lives for themselves and their families. There are all kinds of 
other benefits associated with this, as well. One of the reasons why 
workers come to this country today and stay is because it is so 
difficult to move back and forth to the families and the homes they 
came from. If they have a tamper-proof visa, then, of course, on their 
vacations or even at the completion of their work, they would feel 
comfortable in returning to the place where they came from. But now, 
with the difficulty of crossing back and forth over the border, more 
and more of them remain here, and sometimes there is a criminal 
element.
  Let me make another point. With illegal immigration, with 
transportation of people across the border who are coming across 
illegally, terrible things are happening. We have the coyotes who 
mistreat them, the coyotes who sometimes hold them captive and demand 
more and more money. There are shootouts on our freeways in Arizona. No 
State in America understands how terrible this issue is more than the 
citizens of my State because over half of the people crossing the 
border illegally are coming across the Arizona Sonora Desert. It is 
terrible what is going on. The exploitation and the mistreatment of 
these people who are honest, who are God's children, is terrible. If we 
could have a viable guest worker program, one that we could enforce, 
then you would lose this incredible attraction that draws people 
illegally into our country and, of course, all of the associated bad 
aspects of it that the citizens of my State of Arizona are so 
intimately familiar with.
  Of course, it frustrates citizens. Of course, it frustrates the 
citizens of my State to have so many hundreds of millions of dollars in 
uncompensated health care costs, to have law enforcement requirements 
and expenses go up, to have all of the problems associated with illegal 
immigration. But to say somehow that we are not going to satisfy what 
is clearly, primarily economic immigration--by the way, the Border 
Patrol statistics say 99 percent of those attempting to cross our 
Nation's border illegally are ``economic immigrants''--then we are 
going to be faced with a problem. No wall, no barrier, no sensor, no 
barbed wire will ever stop people from trying to do what is a basic 
yearning of human beings all over the world, and that is to have better 
lives for themselves and their families.
  I hope and believe we will reject the Dorgan amendment. As the 
Senator from Alabama said, he wants to go back and start over. There 
are a number of us who have invested years in this issue.
  I thank my colleague from Massachusetts for his continued leadership.

[[Page S4592]]

  By the way, all of us are very grateful that he survived a very 
serious aircraft emergency recently. We are glad that he is well and 
with us.
  I hope we will reject the amendment. I hope we will then move on to 
other amendments and within a relatively short period of time resolve 
most of the controversial aspects of this legislation.
  Finally, I thank the President of the United States for what was 
greeted, as we know from the overnight polls, very favorably by the 
American people, his support of a comprehensive resolution of this 
terrible issue that afflicts our Nation, that of illegal immigration.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Would the Senator be willing to yield 10 minutes?
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I am delighted to yield 10 minutes to the 
Senator from Massachusetts. But before doing so, I urge other Senators 
to come to the floor to offer amendments. It is thought that if we 
focus on the guest worker provisions, we can finish them up this 
afternoon. Senator Kyl and Senator Cornyn actually have precedence, but 
if they would be willing to yield to the other Senators on guest 
worker, I think we would finish this entire category. And perhaps we 
can find a way to work out Kyl-Cornyn in the interim. We will be 
looking for an amendment from Senator Bingaman who wants to reduce the 
number of guest workers. We have an amendment by Senator Obama which is 
on a related issue, I am told, on labor protections. And we have an 
amendment by Senator Feinstein on having some sunset provisions. Then 
it is hoped we can get agreement on Senator Kerry's amendment and be 
able to accept that. If we could finish this grouping, we would be well 
on our way.
  So if those Senators can come to the floor, we can work out time 
agreements and proceed in an expeditious manner. Meanwhile, Senator 
Kennedy has requested 10 minutes.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania. I 
want to thank my friend and colleague and the principal sponsor of the 
major comprehensive legislation.
  In addition, I ask the Senator from Arizona, is it not true that you 
have the advertising for a worker in the United States where there is 
not an American worker and a willing worker who comes from outside of 
the country, that they have some important labor protections--
protections with regard to the minimum wage, with regard to Davis-
Bacon, with regard to service contracts, protections against 
exploitation of contractors, which were the source of great abuses at 
the time we had the Bracero issue and question. Is it not true that we 
have some protections for those individuals and, therefore, the idea 
that there is going to be a continuation of the exploitation of these 
workers working in a substandard way is fundamentally addressed? And is 
it also not true we have some 2,000 inspectors that are included in the 
underlying legislation that are going to be charged with the 
enforcement of this provision, which we have never had?
  I listened to so many people talk about 1986 and the amnesty. Part of 
that provision was to have employer enforcement, and it didn't take 
place--not under Republicans or Democrats. But we have addressed that 
issue in the McCain-Kennedy proposal. We have 2,000 individuals whose 
sole responsibility is going to be in terms of the adequate enforcement 
of the labor protections. Is it also not true--it is true--that we have 
had important economists who have been before our Judiciary Committee 
who say that this will have an important, positive impact in terms of 
wages, working conditions, and treatment of American workers?
  I know there are several items that are included in this question, 
but I want to make sure that we include and add on to what was the 
excellent presentation of the Senator from Arizona. We have talked 
about having a comprehensive approach. We hoped to have a comprehensive 
approach earlier this morning, and we have a comprehensive approach by 
recognizing what the Senator from Arizona has said and is so obvious--
that is, if you are going to have the demand in this country and 
desperate people in the others, it makes a good deal more sense to try 
to develop a legal process by which that can be controlled, rather than 
think that we are going to be able to build fences high enough, long 
enough, along the 1,800-mile border and prohibit tunnels deep enough to 
keep people out.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, in response to my friend from 
Massachusetts, the Kennedy-McCain bill was a subject of long 
negotiations. And for more than a year, many of these issues were 
discussed with us and others. We felt that one of the most important 
aspects of this legislation was the protection of workers. One of the 
reasons why illegal immigration is so evil--one aspect you don't hear 
so much about is the terrible treatment and exploitation by cruel 
people of innocent people. A year ago last August, I believe, a 
policeman in Phoenix opened the door of a horse trailer and 73 people 
were packed inside, and one was a 4-month-old child.
  Often, the Senator from Massachusetts and I have discussed what it is 
like to die in the desert. Every year, every summer more people die. 
They are not coming--99 percent of them, according to the Border 
Patrol--to do evil things but to work. Why are there jobs? Because 
there are jobs that Americans will not fill.
  My response to the Senator from Massachusetts is that no one should 
be under the misunderstanding that this is another Bracero Program. The 
Bracero Program died because of the abuses associated with it. This 
gives them a status not of citizenship but of equal protection under 
the law. Any human being who resides in the United States should not be 
subject to exploitation and cruelty. That is the nature of America. We 
don't say in America that only citizens have the protections of our 
laws. We say anyone who comes to our country does, too.
  So, finally, I want to say to my friend from Massachusetts that this 
is a fundamental part of this legislation, as he knows. If you take 
this out, you will then be face with the exact same economic pressures 
that we have been experiencing in the past. And as much as I believe in 
technology and as much as I think walls are important and UAVs and all 
that, there has never been a case in history where you have been able 
to stop people from doing something that has to do with their very 
existence. That is the way many people feel who come here.
  Mr. KENNEDY. One final question. The Senator is addressing the issue 
of real security, national security. But we are committed to trying to 
have a secure border. We have gone through the measures which we have 
included in our legislation, many of which were enhanced during the 
course of the markup and have been expanded in the supplemental. But a 
key aspect of that security and in controlling the border is to stop 
the flow of people climbing fences, going into tunnels, and 
circumventing the border. A key aspect of this is to develop an orderly 
process by which people in the limited numbers that we have outlined in 
the bill would be able to come.

  Would the Senator not agree that this is a security issue, border 
security issue, as well as a worker issue?
  Mr. McCAIN. I agree with the Senator. Interestingly enough, if I can 
mention again, the President of the United States, having served as 
Governor of the State of Texas, understands this issue very well. He 
made a very important point last night because all elements of this 
problem must be addressed together or none of them will be solved at 
all. The President is exactly right. None of these problems can be 
solved unless we have a comprehensive approach to this legislation.
  Again, Mr. President, I say to my friend from Massachusetts, briefly, 
that we still have a terrible problem of drugs flowing across our 
border. If we had the guest worker program that we have talked about in 
this legislation, then there would be people who are coming for jobs, 
and we could focus our effort and attention on the drug dealers who are 
now corrupting America's youth. I thank the Senator and, again, I hope 
my colleagues realize the implication of this vote because if we did 
take it out, then obviously--at least in the view of most experts that 
I know--the rest of the reforms would not be either applicable or 
enforceable.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania is recognized.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I am going to make a few comments briefly

[[Page S4593]]

in rebuttal. Then I understand Senator Dorgan is prepared to yield back 
time and so will I. The other Senators whom we had talked about, when 
they come to the floor, will be ready for their amendments 
momentarily--Senators Bingaman, Obama, and Feinstein. If they are not 
here, Senator Vitter can be recognized or Senator Kyl and Senator 
Cornyn.
  Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield, I intend to use my remaining 
time at the conclusion of the comments of the Senator from 
Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Fair enough. My information was incorrect then. By way 
of brief rebuttal on the question of impact of guest workers on the 
American workers, I ask unanimous consent that the testimony of Dan 
Siciliano, from the Stanford Law School, be printed in the Record at 
the conclusion of my comments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See Exhibit 1.)
  Mr. SPECTER. The key statement of Mr. Siciliano is:

       Some claim that immigration reduces employment levels and 
     wages among native-born workers. This is generally not true.

  The text of his statement amplifies on that. I ask unanimous consent 
that the statement of Professor Harry Holzer from Georgetown University 
be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my comments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See Exhibit 2.)
  Mr. SPECTER. The essence is a statement that:

       There seems little doubt, then, that any negative effects 
     of immigration on earnings are modest in magnitude and mostly 
     short-term in nature.

  I ask unanimous consent that the statement of Professor Richard 
Freeman, Harvard University, be printed in the Record at the conclusion 
of my statement.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See Exhibit 3.)
  Mr. SPECTER. His conclusion was:

       The gains to native complements exceed the losses to native 
     substitutes, so that immigration--like trade and capital 
     flows--are a net boon for the economy.

  The Senator from California had made the argument that American 
employees are disadvantaged by cheaper costs from immigrant employees, 
and that is not so under the express terms of the statute.
  The bill, S. 2611, does protect U.S. workers and eliminates 
incentives for employers to hire foreign workers, unless no U.S. worker 
is available. The bill provides that employers must at least pay the 
higher of the actual wage paid to other employees with the same skill 
so that immigrant workers are paid the same or, the prevailing wage for 
that job. Employers must provide the same working conditions and 
benefits that are normal to similar jobs, and employers must provide 
insurance if State workers' compensation doesn't cover all the workers. 
So that under the pending legislation, an employer has the same cost to 
hire a foreign worker as a U.S. worker.
  How much time remains on my side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Eleven minutes.
  Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1

       Senator Kennedy. Let me get to this point that the Chairman 
     has made, Dan, with your analysis. You gave us some 
     projections. You talked about the limitations in terms of 
     productivity, the numbers in the labor force, retirement 
     issues, and then the job growth. And you talked about GDP, 14 
     percent and 11 percent. You talked about legal and the 
     illegal. Maybe you could just flesh those figures out a 
     little bit. What you appear to be saying is that if you 
     consider the numbers of both legal and illegal, you get a 
     certain rate of growth, and without them you get another 
     different rate of growth. And that is what I would be 
     interested in.
       Maybe we cannot parse between the legal numbers the 
     Chairman talked about, whether that is 500,000 or we are 
     looking at just the general range of numbers now. Could you 
     expand on that?
       Mr. Siciliano. Sure. Thank you, Senator Kennedy. I think 
     this also answers Chairman Specter's question in part, which 
     is: What is the true net economic contribution and where does 
     it come from and why? And so from my viewpoint, and in light 
     of the demographic numbers, it appears that our economy is on 
     the trend growth rate, we hope, at 3 percent or better. Now, 
     that growth rate of GDP is reliant on many factors. One of 
     the key factors is available workers to fill the jobs that 
     are created. So even while at the high-skill level you have 
     Nobel Prize winners and other people inventing companies, 
     somebody needs to build the buildings, clean the buildings, 
     you know, service the lavatories in which these people are 
     operating. And this is a part of the capacity for GDP to 
     grow.
       So to put a finer point on it, if you look at the fiscal 
     economic impact, which is the Government coffers impact, it 
     might be true that lower-skilled workers, just like all of us 
     on average, actually, at the moment because of deficit 
     spending, have a negative impact on the fiscal bottom line. 
     But that should not be confused--and this would be a mistake 
     to confuse this. That should not be confused with the 
     economic impact. It is a little like my younger sister who 
     recently said, ``I am earning more, but look at all the taxes 
     I am paying. I am paying more taxes.'' I said, ``Yes, but you 
     are earning more.''
       And so we may have a modest net negative fiscal impact for 
     all low-wage workers in the United States, not just 
     immigrants. That is not unique to immigrants, documented or 
     undocumented, but what we do know is it helps us achieve a 
     higher rate of growth and national income goes up, which 
     benefits everybody. It becomes your challenge, I think to 
     talk about how to, you know, work that out at who shares and 
     how at the pie level. But it is clear that this divide 
     between available workers and the demand for workers will 
     slow down economic growth if we do not manage it 
     appropriately.
       Senator KENNEDY. Let me just get to the high skilled/low-
     skilled. I think most of us would like to believe that we are 
     going to train our own people to be able to take these high-
     skilled jobs. And we have under our current programs training 
     resources that are paid into the fund to try to continue to 
     upgrade skills for Americans. But we are not able to get 
     quite there at the present time.
       Other countries, industrial countries, have required 
     training programs. They pay--what is it?--in European 
     countries a percent and a half, other countries, so that they 
     have required training programs, which we do not have, 
     continuing training programs which we do not have.
       So how are we going to adjust? What is your sense about how 
     we are going to--we have seen a significant--actually, we are 
     getting the skills, but where people that are going to into 
     these high-skilled programs, but how are we going to get 
     Americans up to speed so that those Nobel laureates are going 
     to be the sons of native workers rather than foreign workers? 
     What can you comment on that?
       Mr. Siciliano. I think there are two issues. One, you know, 
     the expanded H-1B program with the continued diversion of 
     monies into special training programs is a good start, so we 
     need the talent in the first place. We need that high-skilled 
     talent to maintain our competitive edge, which gives us some 
     runway into which to develop and train native talent. It 
     cannot happen overnight. So the first question is: What do we 
     do to make sure over the next 20 years we still get the 
     world's absolute bet and brightest, lure them to our best 
     universities, have them pay for that education, make them 
     enamored of the United States, and then they stay here and 
     then have children.
       Now, you divert that money and you direct it into targeted 
     training, and that is a bigger issue, I think, to entice 
     U.S.-born workers into the difficult and long-term training 
     that will prepare them for a modern, very knowledge-based 
     economy. But the start is to make sure we keep the industries 
     here because we lure the right talent here, and then we do 
     something over the next 20 years so that the 5-year-olds 
     right now do end up getting the double Ph.D., electrical 
     engineering and applied physics, and go on to win the Nobel 
     Prize. But you are talking about the 5-years-olds, not the 
     25-year-olds. We need the 25-year-old to get an H-1B, have 
     their own Government pay to go to Stanford University, get 
     that Ph.D. there, and then work at Google, stay here. Good 
     deal for us.
       Senator Feinstein. Let me mention another point. I happen 
     to believe that the weakest part of the bills that I have 
     supported is the guest worker program. From a California 
     perspective, it is impossible to say to somebody you can come 
     here for at least six years by renewing your guest worker 
     permit, but at the end of six years you have to go home. The 
     experience we have had is quite simply people do not go home. 
     Therefore, it seems to me that the H-2A program, where you 
     bring someone for a limited period of time, has a much better 
     opportunity to work because then they do go back and forth 
     across the border
       What do you believe is the optimum amount of time that an 
     individual will come as a guest worker and then actually 
     go home at the end of that period of time?
       Mr. Siciliano. Senator Feinstein, I think one thing to 
     consider is that by limiting the amount of time that an 
     employer may utilize a guest worker, it alters their behavior 
     in terms of their incentives to invest even in a low-skilled 
     guest worker. So even a low-skilled worker will require a 
     certain amount of training and investment, and the shorter 
     the duration of that opportunity for employment, the less 
     investment there is, which is bad for everyone.
       I think one of the possible alternative views here is to 
     recognize some of the limitations that occur if you create a 
     temporary guest worker program and then instead try to 
     identify those lesser-skilled individuals who, in the long 
     run--if you created boundaries of wage and hour rules, 
     allowable behavior on the part of businesses, and then

[[Page S4594]]

     screened up front for who you would allow to enter on that 
     basis and create some path, assuming continuing employment, 
     and a very high bar for behavior and civic behavior, then 
     perhaps you can solve both problems, because I believe the 
     evidence demonstrates and I think a lot of the arguments 
     assume that the economy will work it out. If there are no 
     opportunities, people will go back.
       Senator Feinstein. But that is difficult to do. Therefore, 
     if you take the 10 to 12 million people that are here already 
     that work in agriculture, construction, landscaping, 
     housekeeping, et cetera, and provide a steady stream of 
     employment and enable them to have a pathway to legalization, 
     are you not really doing the best thing possible economically 
     to see that there is economic upward mobility?
       Mr. Siciliano. I see. With that subset, yes, I would argue 
     that that is the right path, and then on the other question I 
     would defer. I am sorry that I don't have a solution. . . .
       Chairman Specter. Thank you, Senator Feinstein.
       Senator Kyl.
       Senator Kyl. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, panel. One 
     of the arguments for not being as tough in enforcing the law 
     especially at the border is that in the years past there was 
     a lot of circular migration especially from Mexico and 
     Central America, people who came here, worked for a while and 
     then went back home. It wasn't hard for them to continue that 
     process, but once we began strong border enforcement, then 
     they were stuck and stayed.
       I don't know that there is any evidence to support that or 
     refute it, but it has been the basis for a lot of people 
     talking about this concept of circularity, and I want to get 
     back to that concept and also ask you this question in view 
     of the fact that at least a couple of you are very skeptical 
     that a temporary worker program really ends up being 
     temporary because people don't want to go home. I mean, what 
     I just said may to some extent refute that, but clearly there 
     are people that probably fall into both categories.
       What we haven't talked about here is the differentiation 
     between a time like today when we are at very high employment 
     and a time when in the future we will have a recession and we 
     will have high unemployment. And let me stipulate for a 
     moment, even though there is a little bit of argument about 
     mechanization, and so on, that in the lettuce fields of Yuma 
     County, it has always been hard to get Americans to do that 
     work. It has been traditionally work done, by the way, by 
     people who live in Mexico and come across everyday and go 
     back home by and large, although there are some that stay 
     longer.
       In Arizona, we can't find enough people to build houses 
     today. Under the bill that Senator Cornyn and I have, we 
     would be issuing lots of temporary visas right now. But we 
     have also seen many economic downturns when you can't get a 
     job in construction, no matter how skilled an American 
     citizen you are. In that case, under our bill we wouldn't be 
     issuing temporary visas. We would let the ones that are here 
     expire; we wouldn't issue any more.
       I am troubled by the fact that all of you seem to be so 
     skeptical that people would return. One concept was that, 
     well, when there is not work, they will return. But isn't it 
     just as likely that what they will do is under-bid Americans 
     for those same jobs?
       I have gone through enough political times when we were in 
     that high employment situation where Americans were looking 
     for work. It is not a pleasant thing. So I am concerned about 
     a program that lets people come in under today's 
     circumstances, but who may not have a job, or at least 
     there won't be enough jobs for everybody in tomorrow's 
     circumstances.
       Given that fact, doesn't it make sense to consider the 
     economic realities in how many permits you issue, and 
     especially if you are saying folks won't go home, to be very 
     careful about the number of visas that you issue for these 
     low-skilled workers because you have to consider tomorrow's 
     lack of employment opportunity as well as today's full 
     employment opportunity?
       I have sort of posited several different thoughts and 
     questions inferred there. If you could just each give me your 
     general take on what I have said.
       Mr. Siciliano. let me throw in one item, as well, to 
     clarify. For all we know about business cycles, we still 
     don't know a lot. One of the things, I think, to observe is 
     that as we go into a down business cycle, we make macro 
     adjustments to the cost of capital as a way of spurring the 
     economy potentially and creating jobs and creating businesses 
     through capital formation.
       It is worth thinking about--and I don't think it is a 
     conclusive answer for you, but it is worth thinking about the 
     fact that available labor supplies during a downturn is its 
     own form of self-corrective mechanism. And I would fear 
     second-guessing at a micro level the small and medium-size 
     businesses who might be reformulating strategies to alter 
     their response to global competition and need the liquidity 
     that is provided by available workforce. And we do suffer 
     through a terrible time which is short and hence has changed, 
     but it might be akin to cost of capital.
       Labor is one of the critical inputs to all of economic 
     development and we tinker with it at a micro level, we might 
     inadvertently prevent ourselves from emerging as quickly as 
     we might otherwise have from a recession.
       Senator Kyl. I appreciate that. In view of the fact that 
     there is only one more to question, might I just offer a 
     comment? All of that there is fine in economic theory. As I 
     said, I have had to stand in town hall meetings with 3 or 400 
     Americans that don't have jobs.
       Senator Sessions. I am not sure wno to ask this question 
     to, but if anybody would speak up and give me a thought on 
     it, I would appreciate it. Is there a difference economically 
     in the effect of a temporary or a permanent worker? Does 
     anybody have any thought about that?
       Mr. Siciliano. Senator Sessions, I will address one small 
     part so that others can comment, and that is I think we know 
     intuitively that renters and owners treat their properties 
     differently. Renting to own may be a compromise, but I would 
     say that we have recent evidence citing Giovanni Peri's paper 
     out of UC-Davis in November that we know that the 
     entrepreneurial behavior of those immigrants who feel that 
     they have some possibility of being here in the long term is 
     increased because they are more likely to invest their 
     capital here in the United States to engage in skill-building 
     that resonates better in the United States and they get 
     better returns on.
       So my one comment would be we know we sometimes get very 
     efficient and good behaviors for our national interest from 
     immigrants of all skill levels if the think they may have a 
     long-term role to play here both about themselves and their 
     children.
       Senator Sessions. Would it be in our interest, therefore, 
     to attempt to identify the people that bring the most skill 
     sets and the most ability to the country when we allow 
     whatever limited number we have to come here legally?
       Mr. Siciliano. Mr. Chairman, I am familiar with the the 
     [Center for Immigration] study. I can answer the specific 
     question, if I may.
       Chairman Specter. Go ahead, Professor Siciliano.
       Mr. Siciliano. Thank you. That particular study has two 
     types of expenditures--direct payments to immigrants and 
     immigrant households, so it includes sometimes U.S. citizen 
     children, and indirect attributive costs which are the 
     general expenses by the government divided by the number of 
     households in the United States.
       The study is actually dominated by the general government 
     expenditures component of those costs. So, in other words, 
     you take the government expenditures, you divide it by the 
     number of households, and then you take that number. And that 
     number is a large number right now because we have high 
     levels of expenditures relative to tax collections.
       That is why it is driven by our fiscal state as a Federal 
     Government, as opposed to simply the behavior of the 
     immigrants. The direct payments are an important component, 
     but they are actually dominated by and outweighed by the 
     general expenditures share, which is interesting, but I think 
     it overstates the interest of that particular number that you 
     have cited. It is not irrelevant.
       Chairman Specter. The President of the Dominican Republic 
     was very interested in the money coming back to the Dominican 
     Republic. The estimates are the immigrants in the United 
     States send home about $39 billion a year in remittances. So 
     on one hand, there is a concern about what that does to our 
     economy. That purchasing power is not being used in the 
     United States.
       The other aspect is that our foreign relations are very 
     complicated. We heard a great deal about the difficulties 
     with Venezuela and President Chavez. A vote of the Andean 
     countries on protecting property rights was three-to-two, 
     with the United States winning. We have trade there to try to 
     strengthen our foreign relations. We heard a lot of talk 
     about their recognizing the leaders of the foreign 
     governments, recognizing our rights to control our borders, 
     but also looking for a humanitarian approach that we have.
       How big an impact is it, Professor Siciliano, if $39 
     billion is remitted from the United States to the home 
     countries?
       Mr. Siciliano. Well, as a component of the overall economy, 
     I actually think it is a fairly small number, but it 
     obviously has tremendous impact for the countries who receive 
     the remittances.
       Two points. One, the transmission of that money actually 
     generates substantial revenue and profits for U.S.-based 
     business, primarily financial institutions who serve as the 
     intermediaries to make that happen. I don't think we want to 
     forget that.
       The second issue is that the money lands in the hands of 
     individuals who are nationals of obviously that country and 
     some of it recycles as demand for our goods and services, 
     hence jump-starting, we hope, the ongoing trade relations 
     which may mitigate some of the foreign national risks you 
     have identified. So I think it is a small piece in a big 
     global economy and one that shouldn't dominate the thinking 
     about how we decide 
     to move forward on the immigration de-
     bate . . .
       Chairman Specter. Professor Siciliano, do you have a brief 
     comment?
       Mr. Siciliano. Yes, two key points. I think anecdote in the 
     hands of the economist is a dangerous weapon, so let me just 
     give two kinds of actual points of data. First, in the 1960s 
     we know that roughly half of the U.S. workforce lacked a high 
     school diploma, and now about 12 percent of the native-born 
     workforce lacks a high school diploma.
       This skill set difference is driving the comment that I 
     think is true, which is it is not

[[Page S4595]]

     the case that immigrant labor is displacing by and large U.S. 
     labor or depressing wages, and there are two key points to 
     highlight that. Nevada and Kentucky, arguably similar in cost 
     of living in many ways--7.5 percent of the population of 
     Nevada right now is estimated to be undocumented. The average 
     high school drop-out wage is $10 per hour. In Kentucky, less 
     than 1 percent of the population is estimated to be 
     undocumented, and yet the high school drop-out wage is $8.73 
     per hour.
       It can't be simplified into simply saying immigrant labor 
     shows up and it hurts U.S.-born labor. It is much more 
     complex than that. I think, net, it clearly benefits U.S. 
     labor . . .
                                  ____


                               Exhibit 2

         Does Immigration Help or Hurt Less-Educated Americans?


 Testimony of Harry J. Holzer, Judiciary Committee, U.S. Senate, April 
                                25, 2006

       The vast majority of economists in the U.S. believe that, 
     on average, immigration is good for the U.S. economy. By 
     helping reduce the costs of producing certain goods and 
     services, it adds to our national output, and makes consumers 
     better off. Business owners also profit very clearly from 
     immigration.
       At the same time, it is possible that some native-born 
     Americans--especially the less-educated Americans who might 
     have to compete with immigrants for jobs--might be made worse 
     off. Certain costs--especially for public education and 
     services to the poor--might rise. And there are various 
     noneconomic considerations, both positive and negative.
       On these various issues, what does the evidence show? And 
     what does the evidence imply for immigration policy?


              Effects on Earnings of Native-Born Americans

       For many years, most studies of the U.S. labor market have 
     shown little or no negative effects of immigration on the 
     wages or employment of native-born workers--including 
     minorities and those with little education. More recently, 
     another few studies that use different statistical methods 
     from the earlier ones find somewhat stronger negative 
     effects. According to these more recent studies, immigration 
     during the period 1980-2000 might have reduced the earnings 
     of native-born high school dropouts by as much as 8 percent, 
     and those of other workers by 2-4 percent.
       However, some strong statistical assumptions are required 
     to achieve these results. And, even in these latter studies, 
     the long run negative effects of immigration (i.e., after 
     capital flows have adjusted across sectors to the presence of 
     immigrants) are reduced to only 4-5% for dropouts and 
     virtually disappear for labor overall.
       There seems little doubt, then, that any negative effects 
     of immigration on earnings are modest in magnitude and mostly 
     short-term in nature. To the extent that high school 
     graduates as well as dropouts in the U.S. have fared poorly 
     in the labor market in recent years--especially among men--
     other factors are much more likely responsible (such as new 
     technologies in the workplace, international trade, and 
     disappearing unionization).
       Native-born minority and especially African-American men 
     face many labor market problems besides immigration--such as 
     poor education, discrimination, and the disappearance of jobs 
     from central-cities. In recent years, their high rates of 
     crime and incarceration, as well as child support obligations 
     for non-custodial fathers, have worsened their situation.
       Does immigration also worsen their plight? There are 
     certain sectors--like construction, for example--where direct 
     competition from immigrants might reduce employment 
     opportunities for black men.\2\ But in many other 
     occupational categories (e.g., agriculture, gardening, 
     janitorial work) such competition is more limited or 
     nonexistent, as the native-born men show little interest in 
     such employment at current wage levels. In the absence of 
     immigration, it is possible that wages would rise and maybe 
     entice some native-born men to seek these jobs that they 
     consider dirty and menial; but the wage increases needed 
     would likely never materialize in many cases, as employers 
     would either replace these jobs with capital equipment or 
     enter other kinds of business as wages rose.
       Two additional points are important here. First, the 
     potential competition to less-educated American workers from 
     immigrants depends in part on the overall health of the 
     economy. Immigration rates have been fairly constant to the 
     U.S. over the past few decades. In the very strong labor 
     markets of the late 1990's, these rates of immigration did 
     not prevent us from achieving extremely low unemployment 
     rates and real earnings growth, even among the least-educated 
     Americans. In the more sluggish labor markets since 2001, the 
     same rate of immigration generates more concern about job 
     competition. But, even in this latter period, the very weak 
     earnings growth of most American workers cannot possibly be 
     attributed to the arrival of a million or so new immigrants 
     annually.
       Second, the illegal status of perhaps one-third of 
     immigrants might well magnify any competitive pressures they 
     generate for less-educated native-born workers. The reduced 
     wages and benefits associated with their illegal status offer 
     employers one more incentive for hiring them instead of 
     native-born workers, who might be interested in some of these 
     jobs and might be more appealing to employers at equal wages.


                         Other Economic Effects

       There is virtually no doubt that immigration reduces the 
     prices paid by consumers on many goods and services. There 
     remains much uncertainty about the magnitudes of these 
     effects, and on exactly who benefits the most. For instance, 
     higher-income Americans might benefit the most from child 
     care and other private household services, gardening, and 
     food preparation services in restaurants. But lower-income 
     Americans likely * * * disproportionately from lower 
     prices on food, housing and even some medical services 
     that are associated with immigrant labor in agriculture, 
     construction and health support occupations respectively.
       Over the next few decades the contributions of immigrant 
     labor to certain key sectors will likely grow more important. 
     For example, the scientists and engineers needed to keep our 
     nation competitive in scientific innovation and new product 
     development will depend to a growing extent on foreign 
     graduate students who choose to remain here after finishing 
     their schooling, even though their presence might reduce the 
     incentives of some native-born students from entering these 
     fields. In other sectors, the retirements of ``Baby Boomers'' 
     may also generate stronger labor demand. A variety of labor 
     market adjustments (such as delayed retirements, new 
     technologies, greater foreign ``offshoring'' of work, etc.) 
     will likely mitigate the impacts of these retirements in the 
     aggregate. But in certain key sectors--especially health care 
     and elder care--these adjustments are less likely to meet the 
     necessary demand, and the need for immigrant (and other) 
     labor may remain quite strong.
       Perhaps the most serious economic costs imposed by 
     immigrants on native-born Americans--at least in those few 
     states that serve as the primary ``ports of entry'' to 
     immigrants--are those associated with public education, 
     health care and other income transfers to the poor. While 
     these costs are no doubt significant in those states, they 
     have been reduced by legal changes in the welfare system that 
     reduced immigrant eligibility for such transfers. Over time, 
     immigration might modestly improve the fiscal status of 
     Social Security and Medicare, as it helps replenish the 
     falling ratios of workers to retirees.
       By far the greatest benefits of immigration to the U.S. 
     accrue to the immigrants themselves, whose earnings here are 
     often vastly higher than they would be in their home 
     countries. Both foreign policy and humanitarian 
     considerations might lead us to approve of this, even though 
     the direct economic benefits to native-born Americans are 
     more limited.


                          policy implications

       If immigration is largely good for the overall U.S. 
     economy, should we simply ``open the floodgates'' and remove 
     all legal restrictions on it? Most Americans would be 
     reluctant to do so, especially since there are some 
     significant costs to immigration, and at least some workers 
     who are made worse off. The noneconomic implications of such 
     a move (e.g., for the national character and makeup of our 
     communities) might also be troubling to many people.
       But, if our ability to restrict immigration legally is 
     imperfect, what shall we do? Efforts to improve the 
     enforcement of existing laws in humane ways (e.g., without 
     creating felonies for illegal immigrants and those who hire 
     or assist them, or building costly fences along the Mexican 
     border) may be worth trying, though their effectiveness may 
     be limited. On the other hand, generating pathways by which 
     illegal immigrants in the U.S. can achieve full citizenship 
     (by paying fines, back taxes etc.) makes a lot of sense, 
     given that their illegal status imposes hardships on them and 
     their children while likely exacerbating the competition they 
     pose to native-born Americans. It seems unlikely that any 
     such move would dramatically raise the incentives that 
     illegal immigrants currently have to enter the country given 
     the gains in their standards of living that occur even when 
     they enter illegally.
       Guest worker programs have some major limitations, 
     particularly in terms of enforcing legal rights for these 
     workers and ensuring that they maintain some bargaining power 
     relative to their employers. Since most guest workers stay 
     permanently, the benefits of such an approach seem dubious. 
     But some legal changes that encourage greater immigration of 
     highly educated workers over time would likely generate 
     greater benefits to the U.S. economy.
       Finally, if we really want to improve opportunities for 
     less-educated Americans in the labor market, there are a 
     variety of approaches (such as improvements in education and 
     training, expansion of public supports like health insurance 
     and child care, and supporting protective institutions such 
     as minimum wage laws and unions) that would likely be more 
     effective than restricting immigration.
                                  ____


                               Exhibit 3

              The New Immigration and the New U.S. Economy

   (Richard B. Freeman, Harvard University and NBER, April 25, 2006)


            Statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee

       I have organized my comments around eight points.

[[Page S4596]]

       (1) Immigration is part of globalization. It is intimately 
     connected to increased trade, free mobility of capital, and 
     transmission of knowledge across national lines. Ideally, 
     immigration and these other flows allow the U.S. and the 
     world to make better use of available resources and to raise 
     national and world output. A worker who comes to the U.S. 
     increases the American labor supply, which means the country 
     can produce more. If that worker does not immigrate, he or 
     she may make the same or similar good in their native country 
     and export that good to the U.S. Or a U.S. or other 
     multinational may invest in that worker's country to produce 
     the good. In other situations, the immigrant may bring 
     capital, particularly human capital, with them, so that both 
     capital and labor move together. The message for thinking 
     about immigration in the global economy is: view immigration 
     as related to trade and capital flows; policies that affect 
     trade and capital will alter immigration and conversely.
       (2) Immigration is the least developed part of 
     globalization. Immigrants make up about 3 percent of the 
     global workforce; whereas international trade's share of 
     world output is around 13 percent; and foreign equities in 
     investors' equity portfolio are on the order of 15 percent, 
     as of the early 2000s. Consistent with this, the range of pay 
     for workers with nominally similar skills is far greater than 
     the range of prices for goods around the world or the returns 
     to capital: The ratios of wages in the same occupation in 
     high paying countries relative to low paying countries are on 
     the order of ten to one measured in exchange rates and are on 
     the order of four to five to one measured in purchasing power 
     parity prices. The comparable ratio for prices of Big Macs is 
     less than 2 to 1 and the comparable ratio for the cost of 
     capital is 1.4 to 1. Thus, there is a huge incentive for 
     workers to immigrate from developing countries to developing 
     countries. Given this gap in incomes, the incentive to 
     immigrate will remain huge for the next 40-50 years at least.
       (3) In the simplest economic model of globalization, the 
     flow of people, goods, and capital are substitute ways to 
     raise production and economic well-being. During the NAFT A 
     debate, the Clinton Administration argued that the treaty 
     would reduce illegal Mexican immigration to the U.S. on the 
     notion that increased trade with Mexico would create more 
     jobs there and lower the incentive to migrate to the U.S. 
     This turned out to be incorrect. The U.S. attracts capital 
     flows and unskilled immigrants and skilled immigrants while 
     running a huge trade deficit. One reason is that the U.S. has 
     a technological edge and a business climate edge over most 
     other countries, particularly poor countries.
       ( 4) Economic analysis predicts that immigrants reduce 
     earnings of substitute factors and raise the earnings of 
     complementary factors, where complements include capital and 
     other types of native-born labor. The gains to native 
     complements exceed the losses to native substitutes, so that 
     immigration--like trade and capital flows--are a net boon for 
     the economy. Most immigration studies estimate the adverse 
     effect of immigrants on native earnings or employment, but 
     the logic of the analysis establishes a direct link between 
     the losses to native substitutes and the larger gains to 
     native complements. Studies that compare wages/employment in 
     cities with lots of immigrants with wages/employment in 
     cities with few immigrants find little adverse effect of 
     immigration on native workers. But this also means that there 
     is little native gain from immigration (save when immigrants 
     do things that no native can or will do at any reasonable 
     wage). Studies that compare wages/employment among groups 
     over time find that immigrants depress the wages/
     employment of natives, with a larger impact among more 
     highly educated workers. Even so, the gains and losses to 
     natives from immigration are dwarfed by the gains that 
     immigrants themselves make. An unskilled Mexican can earn 
     6 to 8 times as much in the U.S. as in rural Mexico. The 
     main beneficiaries from immigration to the U.S. are 
     immigrants; this is why so many are willing to enter 
     illegally when they can--from Mexico or Central America or 
     the Caribbean.
       (5) The huge difference in the earnings of low skilled 
     immigrants, in particular, in their native land and in the 
     U.S. creates a powerful economic force for continued 
     immigrant flows and makes it very difficult to control the 
     U.S. borders. At the same time, however, it suggests that 
     many current illegal immigrants or potential immigrants would 
     be willing to pay for legal status in the country. To change 
     immigration flows from illegal to legal and to control the 
     flows requires redistributing some of the huge gains to 
     immigrants to natives.
       (6) At the other end of the skill distribution, the U.S. 
     relies extensively on highly skilled immigrants to maintain 
     our comparative advantage in science and technology. The 
     United States imports science and engineering specialists, 
     who help the country maintain its position at the 
     technological frontier. During the 1990s boom, the United 
     States greatly increased the proportion of foreign-born 
     workers among scientists and engineers. In 2000 over half of 
     the country's Ph.D. scientists and engineers were born 
     overseas! Sixty percent of the growth of S&E workers over 
     this decade came from the foreign born. Without this flow of 
     immigrants, U.S. labs, including government labs such as 
     those of NIH, would have to cut their workload in half. 
     Highly skilled immigrants add to the ability of our economy 
     to maintain predominance in high-tech industries with good 
     jobs and growth potential. The desire of highly educated 
     immigrants to come to the U.S. is a major competitive 
     advantage to the U.S.
       (7) But having a huge flow of highly skilled immigrants 
     invariably reduces the incentives for American students to go 
     on in science and engineering. The 1990s increase in science 
     and engineering employment occurred without great increases 
     in pay for these workers, in part because of the large supply 
     of foreign born specialists desirous of coming to the U.S. 
     Without gains in earnings and quality of work life, many 
     outstanding American students, particularly men, shunned 
     science and engineering in favor of business, law, and other 
     disciplines. This does not however mean that the U.S. must 
     limit foreign flows to attract more Americans into these 
     fields. It can attract more Americans with more and increased 
     graduate fellowships and undergraduate scholarships. To 
     maintain the U.S. as the lead scientific and technological 
     country, the U.S. should develop policies to attract more 
     able students from our native born population without seeking 
     to reduce immigrant flows.
       (8) Multinational firms today source highly skilled labor 
     globally. They seek the best workers they can get regardless 
     of country of origin. As the number of university graduates 
     is increasing throughout the world, the competition facing 
     educated American workers has risen. Is it better for native 
     born and resident Americans to compete with educated 
     foreigners from developing countries who come as immigrants 
     in the U.S., where wages and working conditions are 
     reasonably high, or to compete with them when they are 
     working overseas, where wages and working conditions are 
     generally lower? Is it better to have U.S. firms offshore 
     jobs or bring in more immigrants? While there is no 
     definitive analysis of these questions, my guess is that it 
     is better to have the top foreign talent in the U.S.; and to 
     do what we can to get them to become citizens and remain here 
     than to have them compete with U.S. workers from lower wage 
     settings overseas. Because trade and capital and immigration 
     flows are intimately connected, however, there are some 
     economic factors operating in the other direction.
       In sum, we should think about the economics of immigration 
     in two parts. Taking unskilled and often illegal immigration 
     first, the main beneficiaries of low skill immigration are 
     the immigrants, who have a huge economic incentive to come to 
     the U.S. when they can. The vast improvement they can make in 
     their lives and the lives of their children by coming to our 
     country speaks well for our society, even if few of those 
     benefits accrue to current citizens and residents. With 
     respect to the highly educated immigrants, they add to the 
     country's strength in the sectors that we need to prosper in 
     the global economy. We should compete actively in the global 
     market for the top students and workers in science and 
     engineering and other technical fields, but also provide 
     incentives for more Americans to enter these fields.

  Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield me 3 minutes?
  Mr. SPECTER. Yes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire is recognized 
for 3 minutes.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to this amendment and 
support Senator Specter and Senator Kennedy's and Senator McCain's 
position. I think, relative to the effort in this Congress and in the 
Senate, nobody has put more time into the issue of how we secure our 
borders relative to the actual physical activity on our borders than I 
have because I find myself in the jurisdiction of the Appropriations 
Committee that covers the border security issues.
  I have come to this conclusion: We can secure our borders. But you 
cannot do it with just people and money on the border. There has to be 
a policy in place that creates an atmosphere that lessens the pressure 
for people to come across the border illegally. The essence of doing 
that is this guest worker concept. Yes, you have to do everything we 
can to tighten up the borders in the area of boots on the ground, 
technology being used, and making sure we have a strong Coast Guard, a 
strong immigration force, and strong border security force. That type 
of commitment has been a primary effort of the Senate and myself. We 
put $1.9 billion into the supplemental that went through here to try to 
upgrade the capital for the aircraft and cars and unmanned vehicles and 
the necessary facilities for the Coast Guard, recognizing that border 
security has to be significantly beefed up.
  The President made this point last night very well. But that cannot 
stop the issue--that doesn't resolve the issue of how you secure the 
border because as long as you have human nature guiding people's 
actions, and as long as you have the role of supply and demand in play, 
you are going to have

[[Page S4597]]

people who are willing to take the risks to come across the border 
illegally, no matter how many people you have there. If you are paying 
$5 a day in Mexico and $50 a day in the United States for a job, and 
you have a family and you are trying to better yourself, you are going 
to want to seek that job in America.
  The question is, Isn't there a way to set this process up so that a 
job seeker can come here, do the job, which the employer also needs 
them to do because they can't otherwise fill that position--and this 
bill protects to make sure that is the case, that it is not taking jobs 
from Americans--isn't there some way to set this up so that a person 
can come into this country, work a reasonable amount of time, and then 
return to their country, or be here as a guest worker in a guest worker 
status?
  That is what this bill attempts to address. It is one of the three 
elements of the formula for getting control over our borders. The first 
element is, of course, strong physical capability on the borders to 
control the borders.
  The second element is to make sure we have in place a program where 
when people come into this country to work, they can come in legally.
  The third element, of course, is enforcement at the workplace to make 
sure people who are working have that legal status of a guest worker.
  That is the essence of this bill, in part, along with the border 
security elements. I strongly support it and hope we will reject the 
amendment as proposed.
  I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of the time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senator from Pennsylvania is not on 
the floor of the Senate. My understanding was when his side was 
finished, he was going to yield back his time. I will proceed on the 
assumption that his time is done, and I have the right to close. How 
much time remains?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 23 minutes.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is an interesting discussion and 
interesting debate. A couple of points have come to mind.
  I have heard now three or four people come to the floor of the Senate 
and say: We have worked a long time and we put together a comprehensive 
proposal--in fact, they credited the President for saying the proposal 
needs to be comprehensive--and you can't take any part of this and 
change it. It is like pulling a loose string on a cheap suit: pull the 
string, the arm falls off. You destroy the bill if you do anything that 
alters it.
  Then they come to the floor and say this is a three-legged stool, and 
if you cut off one of the legs, the stool falls over. Maybe they ought 
to bring a four-legged stool to the floor of the Senate. If you have a 
bad leg, you better have another leg to balance on.
  The fact is, this is not a three-legged stool or a cheap suit. It is 
bad policy, just bad policy.
  I want to answer some of the offers made by the other side. First, 
this issue of guests, temporary workers. We have a guest bedroom in our 
home. We call it the guest bedroom because it is not used much. But 
when someone uses the guest bedroom, you expect they are going to be 
there for a short period and leave. They are friends who come and stay. 
If somebody were to come and stay forever in that room, I guess I 
wouldn't call them a guest. Yet this so-called guest provision they 
have stuck in this bill by saying we are going to declare illegal 
immigration legal for up to 3.8 million people in the next 6 years--
that is the way we will deal with illegal immigration. We will just 
call it legal. The so-called guest provision is people who come here, 
then apply for a green card, and then stay. There is nothing temporary 
about that. Don't call them guests. Guests, future flow--what soft-
sounding words. Maybe tourists, guest tourists, future flow. But we 
know why they are coming. My colleagues described why they are coming. 
They want to work in this country.
  The problem is, in all this discussion, I don't hear anybody talking 
about the American worker. What is the impact on the American worker?
  I didn't know all of the economists just cited by my friend from 
Pennsylvania. They are probably very distinguished economists, probably 
extraordinarily well-educated economists, probably economists whose 
names I should know and, if so, I apologize.
  Let me read this name, Paul Samuelson. I studied his textbook on 
economics. I actually taught his textbook in college. Professor Paul 
Samuelson. If you didn't learn this in Economics 101, then you should 
have failed. He says:

       Let us underline this basic principle: An increase in the 
     labor supply will, other things being equal, tend to depress 
     wage rates.

  That is exactly what has happened in this country. Now we say there 
are 11 to 12 million people who have come to this country illegally. I 
said earlier that I don't want to diminish the worth or dignity of 
anyone who is in this country legally or illegally. I am not interested 
in trying to diminish their worth or dignity. Somebody has been here 25 
years, didn't come legally 25 years ago, has a child here, or two, 
perhaps a grandchild, they worked here, paid taxes here, I am not 
interested in rounding them up and moving them out of this country.
  I understand some of the urges of people who have written some of 
this legislation. What I don't understand is this: There is no 
discussion about its impact on the American worker when they say: Oh, 
by the way, let's solve all these issues and let's, on top of all of 
this, add one more big arm that sticks out, and that is the so-called 
guest workers where we allow 3.8 million people in the next 6 years who 
are not here now, not working in America now, living outside of our 
country now, to come in and take American jobs.
  What on Earth are we thinking? Can't there be some modicum of 
discussion about the effect on American workers?
  I put this chart up earlier, and I will put it up again because this 
discussion relates exactly to a string of failures. I am told we are 
all complimenting the President for his speech last night. I don't 
compliment the President for his trade strategy. We have the highest 
trade deficit in the history of this country: every single day, 7 days 
a week, $2 billion in trade deficit--every single day. That means 
Americans jobs are going overseas. We are choking on debt.

  What is the status of this trade? It is a green light for big 
companies to export jobs, and they are going wholesale, 3 to 4 million 
jobs just in the last few years. They are leaving.
  By the way, Alan Blinder, a mainstream economist, former Vice 
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said in his recent piece: I 
believe in ``Foreign Affairs,'' that there are now 42 to 54 million 
American jobs that are potentially subject to being exported to other 
parts of the world because now we have 1 billion to 1.5 billion people 
in the rest of the world willing to work for pennies. So 42 to 54 
million American jobs are subject to that kind of influence.
  He says they won't all be exported, but even those who remain here 
will see lower wages and downward pressure on wages and benefits, 
health care, and retirement. That is the future on that side. Exporting 
good jobs.
  The world is flat, we are told. The book shines from the bookstores, 
``The World is Flat.'' We look with rose-colored glasses at all the 
American jobs now in Bangalore, now in Xinsheng, China. We say: Isn't 
that something?
  I will tell you what is something. Those jobs used to be here 
supporting families. There is no social program this Senate works on 
that is more important than a good job that pays benefits and allows 
people to take care of their family. There is no social program as good 
as that.
  We are talking about exporting good jobs, and exactly the same 
influence that resulted in this provision being put in this bill wants 
there to be imported cheap labor through the back door. That is what 
this guest worker provision is all about: importing cheap labor.
  We are told the reason the 1986 law that was trumpeted 20 years ago, 
immigration reform, sanctions against employers who hire illegal 
immigrants didn't work is because there was no guest worker program. 
That is unbelievable to me. That is not the case at all.
  This proposition is to say: You know how we will stop illegal 
immigration? We will just define them all as legal.

[[Page S4598]]

At least 325,000 plus 20 percent, that is 3.8 million in 6 years. We 
will define them as legal. We won't have a problem, we will just change 
the definition.
  Let me show a couple of charts. These are people living in 
extraordinarily primitive conditions. They are undocumented workers. We 
can see where they are bunking. They were brought in, by the way, by a 
company to help repair in the aftermath of Katrina, a Government 
contract, mind you, with undocumented workers.
  Let me tell you whose jobs they took. That contractor hired these 
folks, and all the electricians, including one Sam Smith whose house 
was completely destroyed in the Ninth Ward after Katrina slammed into 
that coast. He returned to the city because of the promise of $22-an-
hour wages for qualified, experienced, long-term electricians. He and 
75 people were guaranteed work for a year at that naval institution.
  He was quickly disappointed. He lost his job within 3 weeks because 
the other contracting company brought in undocumented workers who were 
unqualified and were willing to work for pennies.
  I am the one who exposed this situation, and not long after I exposed 
it, there were inspectors who went on that base. I don't know the 
result of it all. All I am telling you is this is going on all across 
this country. This is a guy who lost his home and had a job and was 
displaced by someone coming through the back door willing to work for 
pennies. It wasn't just that person, it was the employer who decided 
they wanted to fatten their profits by hiring, in this case, illegals.
  The way to solve that is not to say: Let's make them legal. The way 
to solve that is to say that job ought to go to Sam who lost his home, 
who is a qualified electrician. He is the person who needed that job. 
Yet contractors bring in these undocumented workers or, in this case, 
they perhaps bring in workers under the so-called guest worker 
provisions. Actually, they are not really guest workers, they are low-
wage replacement workers. We should call them what they are.
  We were told in the discussion earlier that we should accept this 
because we can't stop it. It is going to happen whether we like it or 
not, so let's just declare them legal. I don't understand that at all.
  I mentioned earlier that this planet we live on, to the extent we 
know it, is the only place in the universe where we know life exists 
and we move around the Sun. On this planet of ours, we were blessed to 
be born in this country, live in this country, or come to this country 
and be a part of this great place called the United States. We built a 
standard of living unparalleled in the world. We did that through great 
sacrifice and through great debates. Now we are told none of that 
matters very much because it is a flat world, it is a global economy; 
by the way, we can move jobs overseas, and we can bring cheap labor 
through the back door.
  Just once--and I guess it won't happen this afternoon--just once I 
would like to hear a real debate about jobs in this country, about 
American workers and, yes, that includes Hispanic, African-American, 
Asian-American workers--our entire workforce. Just once I want to hear 
a discussion about what this means to American workers. Yet almost none 
of that has been heard on the floor of the Senate any time during this 
discussion.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. DORGAN. I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I have the opportunity to serve on the Senate Judiciary 
Committee. We had one hearing that dealt with these issues and dealt 
with some of the issues the Senator has been talking about 
specifically. Professor Richard Freeman--and these were pretty pro-
immigration panels, but I think they all agree with Senator Dorgan--
Richard Freeman holds the Herbert Asherman Chair, professor of 
economics at Harvard University. This was his quote just a few weeks 
ago at a hearing:

       One of the concerns when immigrants come in that way, they 
     may take some jobs from some Americans and drive down the 
     wages of some Americans and, obviously, if there is a large 
     number of immigrants coming in and if they are coming in at a 
     bad economic time, that's likely to happen.

  Is that consistent with the Senator's views and that of Professor 
Samuelson?
  Mr. DORGAN. That is exactly the case, although this is Professor 
Freeman. I have never known an economist to lose his or her job to a 
bad trade agreement. They sit around thumbing their suspenders. They 
occasionally smoke a pipe, wear their little corduroy coat with their 
leather arm pads. They pontificate about these issues. The fact is, 
half of them can't remember their telephone numbers, and they are 
telling us what is going to happen 5 years in the future.
  I understand, and I think most people understand, what is happening 
in this country today. What is happening today is the export of good 
jobs and the import of cheap labor and depressing the conditions of 
employment in America. That is what is happening, and nobody seems to 
care very much.
  The inequality grows. The wealthy get wealthier, the people at the 
bottom are stuck--they haven't had an increase in the minimum wage in 9 
years, mind you, so they are stuck and they are losing ground.
  The question is, Who is going to stand for them and speak for them?
  Mr. President, how much time remains?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Martinez). The Senator has 10 minutes 15 
seconds remaining.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I mentioned earlier--and I think it fits 
exactly with the debate--the export of jobs and import of cheap labor. 
I mentioned about the dancing grapes. All of us have seen when Fruit of 
the Loom advertises their underwear, they do it with people called 
dancing grapes. Somebody is dressed in red grapes and somebody else is 
dressed in green grapes. We have all seen them. What kind of adult 
would wear a grape suit and sing? Nonetheless, we are all entertained 
by dancing grapes.
  The dancing grapes represent Fruit of the Loom underwear, T-shirts, 
shorts, so on. They were made in this country, just as Levis and other 
products were made in this country. The dancing grapes danced right out 
of our country. All those jobs to make those underwear, gone. This 
country doesn't make one pair of Levis anymore. Not one pair of Levis 
is made in the United States.
  Anyway, the dancing grapes leave our country, and those jobs are 
elsewhere. Why are they gone from this country? Because they went in 
search of cheap labor.
  So to the extent that companies can move these jobs out of this 
country to find cheap labor, they will. They still want to sell back 
into this country. They still need the American consumer, the American 
consumer who has just lost his or her job. One question is, then, where 
is the income going to come from?
  In any event, even as they move these jobs out of this country, there 
are some that will remain in this country. In this new global economy, 
there are some jobs you can't move. And some of the same economic 
interests that want to move the jobs they can want to displace the jobs 
they can't with cheap labor.
  How do they do that with cheap labor? What they do is they attract 
people to come into this country from areas around the world--and one-
half of the people in this world live on less than $2 a day--they 
attract people to come in the back door. At the moment, it is illegal, 
so we gather on the floor of the Senate to talk about illegal 
immigration. What is one of the approaches to solve this? Let's just 
get a stamp and stamp it legal. That way we can say we don't have 
illegal immigration. So it appears to me what we are going to have is 
up to 3.8 million people in the next 6 years, who will come into this 
country and take American jobs, who otherwise would be declared 
illegal. By the way, that is on top of the 11 million or 12 million 
people the underlying bill will describe as legal. They say we are 
going to allow them to come in, take American jobs, but they will not 
be illegal because we have decided in the Senate we are going to put a 
different stamp there. It is going to be fine.
  So nobody on the Senate floor is standing up and saying: What about 
the tradeoff here of an American family? We hear a lot about other 
families. One of my colleagues just described

[[Page S4599]]

economic immigrants. Man, the world is full of them. If the world has 
one-half of its population making less than $2 a day, are there 
economic immigrants willing to come from many corners of this globe to 
this country? The answer is, of course. But we have immigration laws 
and quotas because if we were flooded with tens and tens of millions of 
people searching for opportunities in our country, we would diminish 
opportunities for Americans who live here and work here and built this 
country. So that is why we have immigration quotas.
  One final point, if I might, on this issue of employer sanctions. 
That is a matter of will. You know there are no employer sanctions. The 
law says there are employer sanctions. Last year, I am told--I need to 
check this for sure, but I am told that there was one enforcement 
effort against one employer that hired illegal immigrants. The year 
before, there were three in the entire United States--three. That is a 
matter of lack of will. That is a matter of looking the other way when 
businesses want to hire cheap labor through the back door. Only when 
they are pressed will authorities finally go down and take a look at 
the folks living in these conditions who have taken jobs of people who 
lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina. Only when they are forced will 
someone show up, knock on the door, and say: You know something, this 
isn't legal.
  This is a very important debate. In some ways, I regret that we have 
as short a time as we do. I probably should not have agreed to a time 
agreement, there is so much to say about it. Yet we will have a vote 
this afternoon.
  My colleagues have spoken here with great authority. We all come here 
and wear white shirts and dark suits and all sound authoritative. Some 
are right, and some are wrong. It is hard to tell the difference. So we 
will have a vote on this. At the end of this vote, I suppose this will 
move right ahead because we are told, if this vote prevails, if my 
amendment prevails, as I said earlier, it is like pulling a loose 
thread on a cheap suit--the whole arm falls off and the whole suit is 
worthless. I don't understand why they construct legislation that way, 
but every time somebody brings a proposal to the floor of the Senate 
which is the result of negotiations, they say you can't interrupt 
anything because, after all, when we shut the door and negotiated this, 
we all did that in good faith, so don't be messing with our product. If 
you pull one piece of it out, you ruin what we have done. I have heard 
that a million times on the floor of the Senate.
  I think the Senate ought to just mess with this piece and say to 
those folks who constructed it, with respect: You are wrong about this. 
This piece is the price for the Chamber of Commerce to support this 
legislation. This piece is the price for the Chamber of Commerce to 
say: Allow us to bring 3.8 million people through the back door, cheap 
labor, and we will support the legislation, the substantial immigration 
reform.
  I just happen to disagree with that. I happen to stand here in 
support of and concerned about--immigrant families, yes, but in support 
especially of American workers, in support of workers who do not seem 
to have much of a voice on the floor of this Senate.

  The next trade bill that comes up, once again we will see their jobs 
further traded overseas. It is bizarre. There is no minimum wage 
increase for 9 years. Every trade agreement that comes along is pulling 
the rug out from under American workers, God bless them. See you, so 
long.
  That is the way it goes around here. Maybe we ought to call this what 
it is. Maybe we ought to stop at this. Maybe the stop sign on behalf of 
American workers ought to be to say it is time for this Senate to stand 
up for American jobs. After all, this country's middle class, which we 
built over the last couple of centuries, especially the last century, 
that middle class is what supported the highest standard of living in 
the world. But that standard of living will not long exist if we export 
good jobs to low wage countries and then import cheap labor to perform 
those subpar-wage duties here in this country. That is not, in my 
judgment, what works for our country's best economic future.
  Mr. President, how much time remains?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 3 minutes 25 seconds.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senator, I believe, wanted to ask if I 
would yield for a question. I am happy to do that.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I would, briefly. I think it sort of confirms what you 
are saying. We had a subcommittee hearing on this, and the second 
professor, Dr. Barry Chiswick, the head and research professor at the 
Department of Economics at the University of Illinois in Chicago, said:

       [T]here is a competition in the labor market. And the large 
     increase in low-skilled immigration that we've seen over the 
     last 20 years has had a substantial negative effect on the 
     employment and earning opportunities of low-skilled 
     Americans. . . . [The] large increase in low-skilled 
     immigration has had the effect of decreasing the wages and 
     employment opportunities of low-skilled workers who are 
     currently resident in the United States.

  Does that comport with the theme of the remarks of the Senator?
  Mr. DORGAN. The Senator is absolutely correct. It seems to me this is 
not at issue, the question of what this means to American workers. It 
just is not.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Here is Professor Harry Holzer at the same committee 
hearing, three out of five witnesses, most of them pro-immigration 
witnesses. He is an associate dean and professor of public policy at 
Georgetown. He says:

       Now, absent the immigrants, employers might need to raise 
     those wages and improve those conditions of work to entice 
     native born workers into those [construction, agriculture, 
     janitorial, food preparation . . . ] jobs.
       I believe when immigrants are illegal they do more to 
     undercut the level of wages of native born workers.

  So I think he also would agree with the Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me say that this economic strategy 
isn't working. This doesn't work. Fig Newton cookies moved to Mexico, 
and the Chinese just bought WHAM-O, Hula Hoop, Slip `N Slide, and 
Frisbee. To the extent this bill will make illegal workers come in 
stamped as legal, we know they are not going to make Fig Newtons and 
Frisbees because those jobs are gone, but we know there is a reason for 
a guest worker provision, and the reason is there are interests that 
support this bill only on the condition that they continue to allow low 
wage workers to come in the back door even as major American 
corporations are exporting good American jobs out the front door. I 
think that is a construct that 5, 10, and 20 years from now is 
dangerous to this country and restricts opportunity rather than expands 
it for the American people.
  I do not support this provision. I hope my colleagues will support my 
amendment and strike this guest worker, future flow, or low wage 
replacement worker provision, as I call it, in the underlying piece of 
legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I will yield back. Is all time consumed 
by Senator Dorgan?
  Mr. DORGAN. I yield back my time.
  Mr. SPECTER. I yield my time. I move to table the Dorgan amendment 
and ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The question is on Agreeing to the motion. The clerk will call the 
roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  McCONNELL. The following Senators were necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran) and the Senator from Mississippi 
(Mr. Lott).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. 
Rockefeller) is necessarily absent.
  The result was announced--yeas 69, nays 28, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 123 Leg.]

                                YEAS--69

     Akaka
     Alexander
     Allard
     Allen
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Burns
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Carper
     Chafee
     Chambliss
     Coleman
     Collins
     Cornyn
     Craig
     Crapo
     DeMint
     DeWine
     Domenici
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Feingold
     Frist
     Graham
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Hatch
     Hutchison
     Isakson
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerry

[[Page S4600]]


     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Lugar
     Martinez
     McCain
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Pryor
     Reid
     Salazar
     Santorum
     Shelby
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Sununu
     Thomas
     Thune
     Voinovich
     Warner

                                NAYS--28

     Baucus
     Bayh
     Boxer
     Byrd
     Clinton
     Coburn
     Conrad
     Dayton
     Dodd
     Dole
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Harkin
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Levin
     Nelson (NE)
     Obama
     Reed
     Roberts
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Stabenow
     Talent
     Vitter
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Cochran
     Lott
     Rockefeller
  The motion was agreed to.
  Mr. REID. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, we have the amendment from Senator Kyl 
and Senator Cornyn next in sequence. They have a right to go next. If 
they are willing to wait until the morning, we will proceed with 
another amendment.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, Chairman Specter, it is my understanding that 
if I defer to the Senator from New Mexico, we can actually get an 
amendment of the Senator from New Mexico voted on and perhaps another 
amendment considered by Senator Kerry, so they would be disposed of, 
whereas it may take a bit longer if our amendment is put down.
  Mr. SPECTER. The Senator from Arizona is correct.
  Mr. KYL. If we start tomorrow morning with our amendment, the Kyl-
Cornyn et al. amendment, perhaps we could conclude more business if we 
follow in that process.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I appreciate the gracious comment by 
Senator Kyl. We will proceed with Kyl-Cornyn first thing tomorrow 
morning.
  Now we will proceed with the Bingaman amendment under a unanimous 
consent agreement of 1 hour equally divided, with no second-degree 
amendments in order, with the time evenly divided.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SPECTER. I yield to the Senator from New Mexico.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.


                           Amendment No. 3981

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Pennsylvania, 
the chairman, for yielding to me.
  I ask consent to bring up Senate amendment 3981.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Bingaman], for himself and 
     Mrs. Feinstein, proposes an amendment numbered 3981.

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading 
of the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To reduce the number of H-2C nonimmigrants to 200,000 during 
                            any fiscal year)

       Beginning on page 292, strike line 18 and all that follows 
     through page 295, line 4, and insert the following:
       (g) Numerical Limitations.--Section 214(g)(1) (8 U.S.C. 
     1184(g)(1)) is amended--
       (1) in subparagraph (B), by striking the period at the end 
     and inserting ``; and''; and
       (2) by adding at the end the following:
       ``(C) under section 101(a)(15)(H)(ii)(c) may not exceed 
     200,000.''.

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, as we all know, the immigration bill 
creates a new temporary guest worker program aimed at providing an 
equal and orderly process for individuals to come to this country and 
to work in sectors of our economy where there is a shortage of 
available workers.
  We had good debate in connection with the Dorgan amendment with 
regard to that guest worker program. Everyone who listened to that 
debate understands this is a new program which is being added to our 
immigration laws, one which is not available today for anyone to use.
  Specifically, the bill pending before the Senate allocates 325,000 
temporary visas for the first fiscal year, and in each subsequent year 
the numerical limit is flexible.
  If the cap is reached--that is, the full 325,000--the number of 
available visas would increase. It could increase by 10 percent, it 
could increase by 15 percent, it could increase by 20 percent in the 
next fiscal year, depending upon how quickly those visas were used or 
taken.
  In essence, what the bill provides--the bill pending before us--is 
for an open-ended automatic-increase mechanism that has the potential 
to significantly increase the number of visas we are making available. 
When I say an automatic-increase mechanism, we have all heard about 
compound interest. Everyone who has a checking account knows the power 
of compounding interest. What we have here is not compounding interest, 
it is compounding immigration, because the 20-percent increase over the 
previous year's level continues indefinitely into the future. You start 
with 325,000, plus 20 percent; then you take the new figure, plus 20 
percent; then you take the new figure, plus 20 percent; and it goes on 
and on.
  My amendment, which Senator Feinstein is cosponsoring, would simply 
put in place, instead of that, a hard cap of 200,000 on the number of 
visas available each year under this program. Of course, in addition to 
this program, we all understand there are many other programs that 
people can use to gain legal access into our country.
  Let me show a chart. This chart: guest worker visas issued under S. 
2611. Now, the olive-colored wedge down at the bottom represents the 
number of visas that would be issued over the next 6 years under my 
amendment. That is 200,000 per year, each year, for 6 years, or a total 
of 1.2 million visas under the guest worker program.
  If the Senate were to defeat the amendment I am offering and just go 
with the bill as it currently pends before the Senate, then it could 
take any of a number of courses. If there is a 10-percent increase, 
because of the speed with which people apply for these visas, it would 
go up to 2.725 million visas by the end of 6 years. If it is a 15-
percent increase, it gets you to 3.222 million visas by the end of 6 
years. And if, in fact, there are enough applicants for these visas to 
get you a full 20-percent increase, then you get to 3.8 million 
immigrant visas issued over this 6 years.
  Now, why did I stop this chart at 6 years? The truth is, this 
legislation has no sunset. This legislation continues indefinitely 
until Congress changes the law again. So this chart could just as 
easily have been for 10 years or 15 years or 20 years. And if you 
really want to see the power of compound immigration, just like the 
power of compound interest, we should have developed a chart that takes 
us out 10 or 15 or 20 years. So the chart exemplifies how the number of 
guest workers may increase over this 6-year period under these 
different scenarios. The chart could have been made for a longer 
period.
  If the 325,000-person cap is reached within the first 3 months of the 
fiscal year, we will have added almost 4 million guest workers over 
this 6-year period. If the cap is reached in the second quarter of the 
fiscal year, we will have added just over 3 million. And if the cap is 
hit in the third quarter of the year, we will have added a little under 
3 million workers under this particular program.
  In addition, it is important to note that although these visas are 
issued only for up to 6 years, these workers have the right to petition 
to become legal permanent residents within 1 year if the employer files 
for them or within 4 years if they self-petition.
  Frankly, I believe we need to be a little more judicious with respect 
to the number of visas we are allocating under this program. This is a 
brandnew program. Under my amendment, which sets the numerical limit 
for such visas at 200,000, there would be no more than 1.2 million 
guest workers admitted over these first 6 years.
  We need to recognize that guest worker programs, if they are not 
properly implemented, can impact on American workers. Senator Dorgan 
made the case, I believe very eloquently, that many economists have

[[Page S4601]]

spoken about the downward pressure on wages that results when you 
increase the labor supply. We need to recognize that our success with 
regard to the temporary worker program we have now, such as with regard 
to agricultural workers, has been mixed. We should not make a mistake 
here by erring on the side of extravagance in allocating these visas or 
authorizing the issuance of these visas until we know how this program 
is going to impact American workers.
  I did not vote for Senator Dorgan's amendment to eliminate the guest 
worker program, but I do believe we need to be judicious about the 
extent of the guest worker program that we authorize. We definitely 
should not be signing on to some kind of automatic compounding of the 
number of workers eligible for legal entry into this country under that 
program. There are a variety of jobs that may be filled by these guest 
workers--from construction jobs to hotel service jobs--but we should 
not be placing American workers in these sectors of our economy in the 
position of competing with virtually an unlimited number of guest 
workers, which is what I fear we are putting in the law if we leave the 
law the way it now pends in this pending legislation.

  The underlying bill does create a temporary guest worker task force. 
This task force is charged with assessing the impact of the guest 
worker program on wages and on labor conditions and the employment of 
American workers and with then making recommendations about whether the 
numerical cap should be lowered or raised. But then you go on with the 
legislation, and the increase mechanism is not in any way tied to the 
recommendations of the task force. The overall number of visas could 
significantly increase automatically, regardless of whether the program 
is determined, by this temporary guest worker task force, to be hurting 
American workers.
  So if Congress wants to raise the caps, we have the authority to do 
that every year. We meet here every year. We can raise the cap. But we 
should not provide for an automatic increase in the number of temporary 
visas irrespective of how that increase is affecting American workers.
  Just to be clear, reducing the number of guest worker visas to 
200,000 a year is not a drastic measure that undercuts the bill's goal 
of providing a more realistic framework for immigrants to legally come 
into this country. According to the Congressional Research Service, 
under this overall bill, we will at least be doubling--here is a chart 
that shows what is going to happen to the projections for employment-
based legal permanent residents coming into this country under this 
legislation. We will at least be doubling the flow of legal permanent 
immigration under the bill in the first year. We increase family- and 
employment-based numerical limits, and we exempt categories of 
individuals from these caps.
  Overall, the bill does provide for many legal avenues for individuals 
to legally come into the United States and to work. For example, as 
this chart shows--this is a chart based on the Congressional Research 
Service report--we are significantly increasing the number of 
employment-based legal permanent residents under the bill.
  I strongly believe the amendment I am offering with Senator Feinstein 
is a reasonable approach. It ensures that an unlimited number of guest 
workers are not admitted under this program. I hope my colleagues will 
agree with me that this is a good change. This amendment would improve 
the legislation, would allow us to maintain a guest worker program, 
which the President has strongly endorsed maintaining, but would 
improve the program by limiting it to a level we can understand and 
manage in these first few years.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I reserve the remainder of my 
time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and 
ask unanimous consent that it be equally divided between the two sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk 
will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, how much time remains on my side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 17\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Seventeen and a half?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I yield 12 minutes to the Senator from 
California.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. President, I would like to speak as a member of the Judiciary 
Committee. I think one of the things we really need to understand about 
this bill is that it is a very large bill. It is 640 pages long. It 
contains a multitude of programs. And it--through the visa programs, 
the nonimmigrant visas--brings in large numbers of people.
  I think when we were in Judiciary we did not realize the extent to 
which large numbers of people are brought in on some of these visas. We 
were working to a march. We had to get the bill done. And it is my 
understanding that studies of the bill now on the floor have shown that 
this bill could allow up to 193 million new legal immigrants. That is a 
number greater than 60 percent of the current U.S. population in the 
next 20 years. Now, that is a way-out figure--20 years--but I think we 
have to begin to look at each of the visa increases over at least the 
next 10-year period to determine how many people would come in, 
particularly the guest worker program.
  I am happy to cosponsor this amendment with Senator Bingaman. The 
amendment does two things: it lowers the annual numerical cap from 
325,000 of H-2C guest worker visas--and there are a myriad of guest 
worker visas, but this one is H-2C--to 200,000, and it eliminates the 
annual escalator.
  In my view, all annual escalators in this bill should be eliminated 
because they bring in too many people over a relatively short period of 
time. This bill has the potential, as I said, to bring in millions of 
guest workers over the years. This means that over 6 years--the length 
of an alien's stay in the United States in this one temporary visa 
category--there could be 1.2 million workers in the United States.
  Under the current proposal, let's say you start at 325,000 guest 
workers in the first year, and you add the 10-percent escalator. The 
10-percent escalator would yield, over 6 years, 2.7 million people. The 
15-percent escalator would take it to, over 6 years, 3.2 million 
people. And if you had the 20-percent escalator, it would take it up 
to, over 6 years, 3,807,000 people. It is simply too many. So the 
current bill doubles and even triples the number of foreign guest 
workers who could enter the United States over the 6 years of our 
amendment.
  I hope this amendment will pass. I would hope that we could eliminate 
the escalators in these visa programs. The H-1B visa escalator would 
have a total of 3.67 million people over the next 10 years coming in 
under an H-1B visa. We increase the H-1B from 56,000 to 115,000, and 
then we put in a 20-percent escalator each year. If the number of visas 
reached the 115,000--and it will--therefore, the next year you add 20 
percent. Then if that is reached, you add another 20 percent. And it 
compounds in this manner to the tune of a total of 3.6 million.
  I am very concerned about this. I hope the Bingaman amendment will be 
successful. Again, it does two things. It reduces the base amount from 
325,000 to 200,000, and it eliminates the escalator. Two hundred 
thousand guest workers a year are ample because this is just one part 
of the bill. There are other visa programs. There is AgJOBS. There is 
earned adjustment. It all adds up to millions and millions of people.
  I strongly support the Bingaman amendment. I urge my colleagues to 
vote yes.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Alexander). The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. First, I thank the Senator from California for her 
strong support for my amendment. Particularly because of her role in 
the development of the legislation in the Judiciary

[[Page S4602]]

Committee, she pointed out very well the reasons this amendment is 
meritorious. I hope people, even some Members on the Judiciary 
Committee with Senator Feinstein, will look at this favorably and 
consider it an improvement to the bill.
  I ask unanimous consent that Senator Alexander from Tennessee be 
added as a cosponsor of the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. I know we have one other Senator who has indicated a 
desire to speak in favor of the amendment. Let me point out to my 
colleagues that both myself and Senator Alexander are Members who voted 
against the Dorgan amendment that was just tabled. I cannot speak for 
Senator Alexander, but from my perspective, I am persuaded that there 
is value in having a viable guest worker program. I support that part 
of the legislation. My concern is with the magnitude of it, 
particularly since it is a new program.
  For us to start it at 325,000 per year and then have an automatic 
escalator in the law and have no sunset on it at all, so that we all 
understand that this is permanent law, unless Congress comes back and 
changes the law 10 years from now, we will still be taking the previous 
year's total and be able to increase it by 20 percent. That gets to a 
point where American workers are going to have a very legitimate 
complaint. I favor allowing an opportunity for people to come here and 
take jobs that Americans don't want. But I do not favor allowing people 
to come here to bid down the price of labor to such a point that 
Americans are unwilling to take jobs for the very meager salaries that 
employers are able to pay.
  It is a straightforward amendment. I hope my colleagues will support 
it. I know we do have one more speaker. I believe the Senator from 
California would like 2 minutes. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from 
California.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California is recognized.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from New Mexico. As 
anyone watching the debate saw, I was in support of what Senator Dorgan 
was trying to do which was to strip the guest worker program from this 
bill, a bill that has a lot of good to it. I do support strengthening 
the border, and I do support giving 11 or 12 million hard-working 
people who have paid their dues, who will come forward and learn 
English and who will pay the fines, who have a clean record, a path to 
legality. I strongly support that, and I strongly support the AgJOBS 
provision of this bill. But I predict that this guest worker program, 
which the Senate has now ratified, is going to come back to haunt 
people because, as Senator Bingaman has shown us, the way this bill is 
structured, the workers will grow exponentially in this guest worker 
program to the point where, according to some estimates, we are talking 
about tens of millions of guest workers over the next 20 years.
  What Senator Bingaman is trying to do is to put a cap on this, a real 
cap, not the phony cap that is in the bill that says it will escalate 
up to 20 percent every year. You figure out the math. It is kind of 
amazing.
  What Senator Bingaman is doing is making this a better bill. I 
strongly support the cap he is proposing. I thank him for the 
opportunity to speak on behalf of his amendment. As usual, he has 
brought commonsense to the Senate. I hope the Senate will strongly 
support the Bingaman amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, it is always difficult to make a 
determination as to what is the right figure. The committee came to the 
figure of 325,000, after a great deal of analysis and thought. It is 
the result of a compromise that was worked out, with some figures being 
substantially higher than that, some lower. But that is the figure the 
committee came to. The amendment offered by Senator Bingaman and 
Senator Feinstein would also eliminate the fluctuation which is to 
allow for a 20-percent increase if we hit the top. What we are trying 
to do in this legislation is to accommodate the market, if there is 
demand for these guest workers. So the fluctuating cap is perhaps even 
more important than the difference between 325,000 and 200,000.
  When we considered the Dorgan amendment, we were debating the issue 
as to the way the guest worker program fits into overall comprehensive 
reform so that if we were able to accommodate the needs of the American 
economy with these guest workers, then we fill the jobs. They are not 
open. We do not create a vacuum on jobs so that immigrants who are in 
this country illegally would be available to take the jobs. This is a 
regulatory approach which accommodates for the needs of the economy and 
is the figure that we best calculate to accommodate them. I think if we 
had come in at 200,000, we would be looking at an amendment for 125,000 
or at some other figure. There is an obvious give and take as to 
whatever figure we have. Somebody has a different figure to make it 
lower.
  I have great respect for those who say we ought to protect American 
jobs and that we ought not to have guest workers who are going to take 
those jobs or lower the compensation for the people who hold American 
jobs. We put into the Record on the Dorgan amendment testimony from 
three expert witnesses. I will not repeat it and put it into the Record 
again. But the essential conclusion was that there would be minimal 
impact on taking American jobs and minimal impact on compensation.

  The statute is carefully constructed to protect American workers, 
taking away any incentives for employers to hire foreign workers. For 
example, the employees must be paid the higher of what is the actual 
wage paid to other employees with the same skill or the prevailing wage 
rate for that job. So the law requires the employer to pay the 
immigrants the same as they would pay somebody else. And the employers 
must provide the same working conditions and benefits that are 
available for similar jobs. You don't have a class of immigrant workers 
who are being taken advantage of. The employers must provide insurance 
if the State workers compensation doesn't cover all of these workers. 
So you have a situation where there are no incentives to lose American 
jobs. We think this figure is a fair figure and a realistic figure 
arrived at by the committee after very long deliberation and after a 
compromise. We think this figure should stay.
  In the absence of any other Senator seeking recognition, I would 
inquire how much time I have remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 24 minutes remaining, and the 
Senator from New Mexico has 7 minutes. Mr. SPECTER. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. May I ask my colleague, is it his intent that I should 
close my argument now and then we would have a vote?
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, yes.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for that concise 
answer.
  Let me say that I have great respect for the chairman and his efforts 
to put together a bill that he believes makes sense. As he says, it 
accommodates the market. That is an interesting concept, accommodating 
the market. The amendment I am offering, along with Senator Feinstein 
and Senator Alexander, is an amendment that would say that we need to 
go at this in a prudent fashion and limit the number of people who are 
going to be able to come into the country and apply through this new 
program that we are defining for the first time in law as part of this 
bill.
  Some of the arguments I have heard in favor of the guest worker 
program relate to the workers themselves, the workers who are trying to 
get into this country to make a better life for themselves. I have 
empathy for those workers as well. But, quite frankly, there is a 
virtually unlimited supply of people who would like to come here and 
work and improve their life by doing so. We need to make judgments 
about how large a group we are going to allow in each year. That is why 
I am proposing the amendment.
  As far as employers are concerned, there are a lot of employers who, 
given the option of signing a contract to bring in workers from another 
country who they know will be in many respects less likely to complain 
about working conditions, less likely to raise

[[Page S4603]]

any concerns about their employment situation, would find that 
attractive. And accordingly, you could see a great demand by some 
employers to go ahead and meet their employment needs through this 
device.
  As I said before, I favor a guest worker program. It makes sense to 
have a guest worker program.
  But I think it also makes sense for us to do it in a more reasonable 
way than the bill currently calls for and not to build in some kind of 
automatic escalator that will occur regardless of what we determine the 
impact is going to be on American workers. I think we can come back and 
raise the cap again if we decide in 2 years or 5 years, or whatever, 
that we want to do that. But we should not build into this legislation 
an automatic escalator that will make it extremely likely that the 
number of workers will substantially increase in coming years by virtue 
of this legal provision that we put in the law.
  Mr. President, I urge the support of my amendment, and I hope my 
colleagues will see this as a way to improve the legislation rather 
than an undermining provision of the legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I move to table the amendment and ask for 
the yeas and nays. I put my colleagues on notice that this is going to 
be a strict 20-minute vote because we have Members who have planes to 
catch.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is all time yielded back? All time is yield 
back. Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion to table.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. The following Senators were necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran) and the Senator from Mississippi 
(Mr. Lott).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. 
Rockefeller) is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 18, nays 79, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 124 Leg.]

                                YEAS--18

     Bond
     Brownback
     Chafee
     DeWine
     Graham
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Kennedy
     Lieberman
     Lugar
     Martinez
     McCain
     Murkowski
     Salazar
     Shelby
     Smith
     Specter
     Stevens

                                NAYS--79

     Akaka
     Alexander
     Allard
     Allen
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Bunning
     Burns
     Burr
     Byrd
     Cantwell
     Carper
     Chambliss
     Clinton
     Coburn
     Coleman
     Collins
     Conrad
     Cornyn
     Craig
     Crapo
     Dayton
     DeMint
     Dodd
     Dole
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Frist
     Grassley
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Isakson
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lincoln
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Mikulski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Obama
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Roberts
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Snowe
     Stabenow
     Sununu
     Talent
     Thomas
     Thune
     Vitter
     Voinovich
     Warner
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Cochran
     Lott
     Rockefeller
  The motion was rejected.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and I move to 
lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 3981) was agreed to.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. KERRY. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, we have been engaged in extensive 
discussions to try to move the schedule along. What we plan to do is to 
take Senator Kerry's amendment and accept it, with 15 minutes to 
Senator Kerry. He says he will try not to use all of it.
  Tomorrow morning we will go to Kyl-Cornyn, and since people are still 
looking at it, we do not have a time agreement. Senator Kennedy says he 
will make a good-faith effort to limit debate to 30 minutes tomorrow.
  Then we will go to the amendment of Senator Obama, and once we have 
had a chance to analyze it, we will see if we can accept it. Then we 
will go to Senator Sessions. The majority leader has authorized me to 
say that there will be no further votes tonight.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, might I ask the chairman to yield?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. It is my understanding that following Senator Kerry this 
evening we will lay down the Kyl-Cornyn-Graham-Allen-McCain-Frist-
Brownback-Martinez amendment so all can see what it is and we can start 
some debate this evening and then finish the debate tomorrow. Is that 
correct?
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, the Senator from Arizona is correct.
  I now yield to the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kerry.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.


                           Amendment No. 3999

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3999.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kerry] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 3999.

  Mr. KERRY. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To improve the capacity of the United States Border Patrol to 
             rapidly respond to threats to border security)

       On page 63, between lines 9 and 10, insert the following:
                  Subtitle F--Rapid Response Measures

     SEC. 161. DEPLOYMENT OF BORDER PATROL AGENTS.

       (a) Emergency Deployment of Border Patrol Agents.--
       (1) In general.--If the Governor of a State on an 
     international border of the United States declares an 
     international border security emergency and requests 
     additional United States Border Patrol agents (referred to in 
     this subtitle as ``agents'') from the Secretary, the 
     Secretary, subject to paragraphs (1) and (2), may provide the 
     State with not more than 1,000 additional agents for the 
     purpose of patrolling and defending the international border, 
     in order to prevent individuals from crossing the 
     international border into the United States at any location 
     other than an authorized port of entry.
       (2) Consultation.--Upon receiving a request for agents 
     under paragraph (1), the Secretary, after consultation with 
     the President, shall grant such request to the extent that 
     providing such agents will not significantly impair the 
     Department's ability to provide border security for any other 
     State.
       (3) Collective bargaining.--Emergency deployments under 
     this subsection shall be made in accordance with all 
     applicable collective bargaining agreements and obligations.
       (b) Elimination of Fixed Deployment of Border Patrol 
     Agents.--The Secretary shall ensure that agents are not 
     precluded from performing patrol duties and apprehending 
     violators of law, except in unusual circumstances if the 
     temporary use of fixed deployment positions is necessary.
       (c) Increase in Full-Time Border Patrol Agents.--Section 
     5202(a)(1) of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism 
     Prevention Act of 2004 (118 Stat. 3734), I as amended by 
     section 101(b)(2), is further amended by striking ``2,000'' 
     and inserting ``3,000''.

     SEC. 162. BORDER PATROL MAJOR ASSETS.

       (a) Control of Border Patrol Assets.--The United States 
     Border Patrol shall have complete and exclusive 
     administrative and operational control over all the assets 
     utilized in carrying out its mission, including, air, craft, 
     watercraft, vehicles, detention space, transportation, and 
     all of the personnel associated with such assets.
       (b) Helicopters and Power Boats.--
       (1) Helicopters.--The Secretary shall increase, by not less 
     than 100, the number of helicopters under the control of the 
     United States Border Patrol. The Secretary shall ensure that 
     appropriate types of helicopters are procured for the various 
     missions being performed.
       (2) Power boats.--The Secretary shall increase, by not less 
     than 250, the number of power boats under the control of the 
     United States Border Patrol. The Secretary shall ensure that 
     the types of power boats that are procured are appropriate 
     for both the waterways in which they are used and the 
     mission requirements.
       (3) Use and training.--The Secretary shall--

[[Page S4604]]

       (A) establish an overall policy on how the helicopters and 
     power boats procured under this subsection will be used; and
       (B) implement training programs for the agents who use such 
     assets, including safe operating procedures and rescue 
     operations.
       (c) Motor Vehicles.--
       (1) Quantity.--The Secretary shall establish a fleet of 
     motor vehicles appropriate for use by the United States 
     Border Patrol that will permit a ratio of not less than 1 
     police-type vehicle for every 3 agents. These police-type 
     vehicles shall be replaced not less than every 3 years. The 
     Secretary shall ensure that there are sufficient numbers and 
     types of other motor vehicles to support the mission of the 
     United States Border Patrol.
       (2) Features.--All motor vehicles purchased for the United 
     States Border Patrol shall--
       (A) be appropriate for the mission of the United States 
     Border Patrol; and
       (B) have a panic button and a global positioning system 
     device that is activated solely in emergency situations to 
     track the location of agents in distress.

     SEC. 163. ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT.

       (a) Portable Computers.--The Secretary shall ensure that 
     each police-type motor vehicle in the fleet of the United 
     States Border Patrol is equipped with a portable computer 
     with access to all necessary law enforcement databases and 
     otherwise suited to the unique operational requirements of 
     the United States Border Patrol.
       (b) Radio Communications.--The Secretary shall augment the 
     existing radio communications system so that all law 
     enforcement personnel working in each area where United 
     States Border Patrol operations are conducted have clear and 
     encrypted 2-way radio communication capabilities at all 
     times. Each portable communications device shall be equipped 
     with a panic button and a global positioning system device 
     that is activated solely in emergency situations to track the 
     location of agents in distress.
       (c) Hand-Held Global Positioning System Devices.--The 
     Secretary shall ensure that each United States Border Patrol 
     agent is issued a state-of-the-art hand-held global 
     positioning system device for navigational purposes.
       (d) Night Vision Equipment.--The Secretary shall ensure 
     that sufficient quantities of state-of-the-art night vision 
     equipment are procured and maintained to enable each United 
     States Border Patrol agent working during the hours of 
     darkness to be equipped with a portable night vision device.

     SEC. 164. PERSONAL EQUIPMENT.

       (a) Border Armor.--The Secretary shall ensure that every 
     agent is issued high-quality body armor that is appropriate 
     for the climate and risks faced by the agent. Each agent 
     shall be permitted to select from among a variety of approved 
     brands and styles. Agents shall be strongly encouraged, but 
     not required, to wear such body armor whenever practicable. 
     All body armor shall be replaced not less than every 5 years.
       (b) Weapons.--The Secretary shall ensure that agents are 
     equipped with weapons that are reliable and effective to 
     protect themselves, their fellow agents, and innocent third 
     parties from the threats posed by armed criminals. The 
     Secretary shall ensure that the policies of the Department 
     authorize all agents to carry weapons that are suited to the 
     potential threats that they face.
       (c) Uniforms.--The Secretary shall ensure that all agents 
     are provided with all necessary uniform items, including 
     outerwear suited to the climate, footwear, belts, holsters, 
     and personal protective equipment, at no cost to such agents. 
     Such items shall be replaced at no cost to such agents as 
     they become worn, unserviceable, or no longer fit properly.

     SEC. 165. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

       There are authorized to be appropriated to the Secretary 
     such sums as may be necessary for each of the fiscal years 
     2007 through 2011 to carry out this subtitle.

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that Senator 
Bingaman be added as a cosponsor of this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, obviously this is an issue that has touched 
a lot of nerves all across the country. We all understand the 
volatility and the tension within in it. We have an enormous task to 
try to find a fair, orderly, humane, and secure process for protecting 
our border. That is what we are trying to do.
  Last night, President Bush spoke to the Nation about the challenge we 
face. I have strong reservations about some of the President's 
immigration proposals. But I believe on balance the President gave a 
thoughtful and compelling address that laid out why we have to act 
urgently. I think he particularly talked about the importance of acting 
comprehensively in solving the immigration puzzle.
  I say to my colleagues, I think most of us have found as we have been 
wrestling with this issue, it is like a balloon. If you push in one 
place, it expands in another place, so you have to come at it in a 
comprehensive way. Each component of this reform is dependent on the 
other component in order to make the overall reform successful. We are 
not going to be successful if we don't create an effective employer 
verification system because workers will find a way to keep coming if 
we don't. By the same token, securing the border doesn't address the 11 
million undocumented workers currently in the country.
  We need the President's leadership so that this bill or this approach 
does not turn into one of those unfunded mandates or neglected 
opportunities like No Child Left Behind or even the Medicare 
prescription drug law.
  Last night, the President announced his intention to dispatch 6,000 
National Guard troops to the southern border. All of us agree we need 
to strengthen the southern border. But I disagree with President Bush 
about how we ought to get there and how fast we can get there. Yes, we 
need more strength and more personnel at the border. We need better 
enforcement of our immigration laws. But, particularly in a post-9/11 
world, when you look at the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, we 
need to do a better job of preventing the flood of immigrants who are 
crossing the borders every day.
  But the bottom line is, what you need to do that job is not a 
makeshift force of already overextended National Guardsmen to 
militarize the border but rather specialized agents who are trained to 
do the police work, to track down individuals who make an illegal 
crossing, and to ensure that the borders are not easy avenues for those 
crossings.
  I remind my colleagues that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when 
our cities and our communities were facing a crime epidemic, we didn't 
send the National Guard in to do the job. We hired more police officers 
and invested in community policing. The COPS Program put 100,000 
skilled and trained law enforcement officers on the streets of the 
communities of our country and crime dropped.
  After 9/11, the mission of the Border Patrol changed. No longer are 
they charged with simply securing the border. They are now patrolling 
one of the greatest vulnerabilities in the war on terror. As their 
mission changed, their numbers increased, but they have never increased 
enough to do the job.
  Each year for the past 10 years between 700,000 and 800,000 illegal 
immigrants arrived in this country. Despite more than doubling the 
number of Border Patrol agents between 1995 and 2005, Federal 
enforcement of our immigration laws has decreased significantly. The 
number of border apprehensions has declined by 31 percent, from an 
average of 1.5 million apprehensions a year between 1996 and 2000, to 
an average of 1.05 million between 2001 and 2004.
  At the same time, the number of illegal immigrants apprehended within 
the interior of the country has plummeted by 36 percent, from an 
average of 40,193 between 1996 and 2000, to an average of 25,901 
between 2001 and 2004.
  As much as the strength of the Border Patrol has grown in the last 
years, actual performance demonstrates that we have to close a gap by 
almost twice or three times as much. The current Border Patrol agents 
protect more than 8,000 miles of international border and they detect 
and prevent smuggling, unlawful entry, undocumented immigrants, they 
apprehend persons violating the immigration laws, and they interdict 
contraband such as narcotics. They work under difficult circumstances 
for long periods and in all kinds of weather.
  Currently, we have fewer than 12,000 Border Patrol agents. Those 
agents are responsible for patrolling 8,000 miles of land and seacoast, 
and because of the need to provide continuous coverage, no more than 25 
percent of those agents are securing our borders at any given moment. 
That means there are only 4,000 agents patrolling 8,000 miles of land 
and our borders. So, if instead of spreading them out as we do today 
you put them all along the border, with just Texas alone, you would 
then have roughly two Border Patrol agents per mile. It is physically 
impossible to protect the borders of the United States under those 
circumstances.
  There are additional numbers put into this legislation, but I have 
heard

[[Page S4605]]

that, in fact, by joining the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center 
together with the National Training Center in Artesia, NM, which has 
recently increased its training capacity, we could do more. It is not 
rocket science, it is about capacity. If you don't have the capacity, 
then you build the capacity to meet the demand.
  If we have the will to make this happen, we can make it happen.
  So we already know this is a stopgap measure with the military to 
cover up what is already a failed immigration policy and a failed 
border policy. The
9/11 Commission warned us, several years ago now, that we needed to 
have additional personnel. Those calls have never been heeded. We need 
to heed them now. My amendment will increase the number by an 
additional 1,000 this year and that will be above the increase of 2,000 
agents contained in the underlying bill.
  Frankly, I think we ought to be trying to do more than that, but that 
is the reasonable level that we seem to be able to accept and also 
train at the same time under the current circumstances.
  In addition, my amendment would give border State Governors the 
ability to request up to 1,000 more Border Patrol agents in the 
Department of Homeland Security in times of international border 
emergencies. In deciding whether to grant the Governor's request, the 
Secretary would have to consider the effect any shuffling of Border 
Patrol agents would have on overall border security.
  Last year, a survey by Peter D. Hart found that just 34 percent of 
the front-line Border Patrol agents said they were satisfied with the 
``tools, training, and support'' they received to protect our borders. 
That should be 100 percent. What we need to do is guarantee that we 
take the steps in order to make it so.
  In addition, my amendment increases the number of helicopters and 
power boats available for Border Patrol, and it provides Border Patrol 
agents with the training they need to use those tools. We guarantee a 
ratio of one patrol vehicle for every three agents and ensure that each 
of those vehicles is equipped with a portable computer. That also 
provides every agent with clear and encrypted two-way radios, night 
vision equipment, GPS devices, high-quality body armor, and reliable 
and effective weapons. It makes each and every agent certain that they 
have the necessary equipment and uniforms for the kind of climate in 
which they are working.
  I am glad that the Senator from Pennsylvania is prepared to accept 
this amendment. I thank my colleagues for their support of it.
  As I said, if we don't have a sufficient training capacity, it is 
clear that the expertise needed is real. I heard of Border Patrol 
agents who have had to go through survival training and different kinds 
of training that is highly specialized. These individuals are engaged 
in law enforcement and police work. I think everybody in this country 
would like to see our National Guard, which is already stretched thin, 
minimally involved to the degree possible. The best way to do that is 
to get more Border Patrol agents trained faster.
  I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I think it is a good amendment to 
increase the number of Border Patrol agents. We accept the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Chambliss). The question is on agreeing to 
the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 3999) was agreed to.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. SPECTER. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I now yield to Senator Kyl for the Kyl-
Cornyn amendment. I ask unanimous consent that it be the first 
amendment pending tomorrow morning.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Arizona is recognized.


                           Amendment No. 4027

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, there is an amendment at the desk which I 
would like to have considered at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Arizona [Mr. Kyl] for himself and Mr. 
     Cornyn, Mr. Graham, Mr. Allen, Mr. McCain, Mr. Frist, Mr. 
     Brownback, and Mr. Martinez, proposes an amendment numbered 
     4027.

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       On page 358, line 3, insert ``(other than subparagraph 
     (C)(i)(II)'' after ``(9)''.
       On page 359, after line 12, insert the following:
       ``(6) Ineligibility.--
       ``(A) In general.--An alien is ineligible for adjustment to 
     lawful permanent resident status under this section if--
       ``(i) the alien has been ordered removed from the United 
     States--
       ``(I) for overstaying the period of authorized admission 
     under section 217;
       ``(II) under section 235 or 238; or
       ``(III) pursuant to a final order of removal under section 
     240;
       ``(ii) the alien failed to depart the United States during 
     the period of a voluntary departure order issued under 
     section 240B;
       ``(iii) the alien is subject to section 241(a)(5);
        ``(iv) the Secretary of Homeland Security determines 
     that--
       ``(I) the alien, having been convicted by a final judgment 
     of a serious crime, constitutes a danger to the community of 
     the United States;
       ``(II) there are reasonable grounds for believing that the 
     alien has committed a serious crime outside the United States 
     prior to the arrival of the alien in the United States; or
       ``(III) there are reasonable grounds for regarding the 
     alien as a danger to the security of the United States; or
       ``(v) the alien has been convicted of a felony or 3 or more 
     misdemeanors.
       ``(B) Exception.--Notwithstanding subparagraph (A), an 
     alien who has not been ordered removed from the United States 
     shall remain eligible for adjustment to lawful permanent 
     resident status under this section if the alien's 
     ineligibility under subparagraph (A) is solely related to the 
     alien's--
       ``(i) entry into the United States without inspection;
       ``(ii) remaining in the United States beyond the period of 
     authorized admission; or
       ``(iii) failure to maintain legal status while in the 
     United States.
       ``(C) Waiver.--The Secretary may, in the Secretary's sole 
     and unreviewable discretion, waive the application of 
     subparagraph (A) if the alien was ordered removed on the 
     basis that the alien (i) entered without inspection, (ii) 
     failed to maintain status, or (iii) was ordered removed under 
     212(a)(6)(C)(i) prior to April 7, 2006, and--
       ``(i) demonstrates that the alien did not receive notice of 
     removal proceedings in accordance with paragraph (1) or (2) 
     of section 239(a); or
       ``(ii) establishes that the alien's failure to appear was 
     due to exceptional circumstances beyond the control of the 
     alien; or
       ``(iii) the alien's departure from the U.S. now would 
     result in extreme hardship to the alien's spouse, parent, or 
     child who is a citizen of the United States or an alien 
     lawfully admitted for permanent residence.
       On page 376, strike lines 13 through 20 and insert the 
     following:
       ``(4) Ineligibility.--
       ``(A) In general.--The alien is ineligible for Deferred 
     Mandatory Departure status if the alien--
       ``(i) has been ordered removed from the United States--
       ``(I) for overstaying the period of authorized admission 
     under section 217;
       ``(II) under section 235 or 238; or
       ``(III) pursuant to a final order of removal under section 
     240;
       ``(iii) the alien is subject to section 241(a)(5);
       ``(ii) the alien failed to depart the United States during 
     the period of a voluntary departure order issued under 
     section 240B;
       ``(iv) the Secretary of Homeland Security determines that--
       ``(I) the alien, having been convicted by a final judgment 
     of a serious crime, constitutes a danger to the community of 
     the United States;
       ``(II) there are reasonable grounds for believing that the 
     alien has committed a serious crime outside the United States 
     prior to the arrival of the alien in the United States; or
       ``(III) there are reasonable grounds for regarding the 
     alien as a danger to the security of the United States; or
       ``(v) the alien has been convicted of a felony or 3 or more 
     misdemeanors.
       ``(B) Exception.--Notwithstanding subparagraph (A), an 
     alien who has not been ordered removed from the United States 
     shall remain eligible for adjustment to lawful permanent 
     resident status under this section if the alien's 
     ineligibility under subparagraph (A) is solely related to the 
     alien's--
       ``(i) entry into the United States without inspection;
       ``(ii) remaining in the United States beyond the period of 
     authorized admission; or
       ``(iii) failure to maintain legal status while in the 
     United States.
       ``(C) Waiver.--The Secretary may, in the Secretary's sole 
     and unreviewable discretion,

[[Page S4606]]

     waive the application of subparagraph (A) if the alien was 
     ordered removed on the basis that the alien entered without 
     inspection, failed to maintain status, or (iii) was ordered 
     removed under 212(a)(6)(C)(1) prior to April 7, 2006, and--
       ``(i) demonstrates that the alien did not receive notice of 
     removal proceedings in accordance with paragraph (1) or (2) 
     of section 239(a); or
       ``(ii) establishes that the alien's failure to appear was 
     due to exceptional circumstances beyond the control of the 
     alien, or
       ``(iii) the alien's departure from the U.S. now would 
     result in extreme hardship to the alien's spouse, parent, or 
     child who is a citizen of the United States or an alien 
     lawfully admitted for permanent residence.''

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, let me briefly explain this amendment. It is 
a somewhat different version from what was introduced a couple of weeks 
ago and was pending at the time this legislation was laid aside for 
other business.
  This amendment has the primary purpose of ensuring that people who 
have committed serious crimes or have absconded after on order for 
their removal has been issued would not be entitled to the benefits of 
the legislation.
  Specifically, in the bill as written, there were certain crimes which 
were included, and if you had committed one of those crimes, you 
couldn't participate in the program--certain crimes of moral turpitude, 
for example.
  What we found was that list was not all-inclusive and there were 
other serious crimes, including felonies, that were not included and 
therefore we felt should be added so that nobody who had committed a 
serious crime would be able to participate in the program.
  Among the crimes that courts have said did not involve moral 
turpitude and therefore needed to be included in this legislation are 
the following: alien smuggling, conspiracy to commit offenses against 
the United States, simple assault and battery, involuntary 
manslaughter, simple kidnapping, weapons possession--for example, one 
of the cases dealt with possession of a sawed-off shot gun--burglary, 
money laundering, and there are others as well.
  The point is, we want to be sure this legislation denies the benefits 
of legal status, including potential citizenship, to anyone who has 
committed a serious crime of this type. Therefore, the statute provides 
that if you have been convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors or 
have been convicted of a serious crime or there are reasonable grounds 
to believe the alien has committed a serious crime outside of the 
United States prior to arrival, and there are reasonable grounds for 
regarding the alien as a danger to the security of the United States, 
then in those events the individual would not be able to participate in 
the benefits of the law.
  In addition to that, there are several categories of individuals who 
for various reasons have been ordered removed from the United States 
and have adjudicated their case and a final order of removal has been 
issued, either by an immigration judge or another judge or immigration 
official. Here, too, given the fact that we want the benefits of this 
legislation to apply to people who are willing to comply with the law, 
even where there has been a court adjudication of this statute, if they 
do not like the results and decide they are not going to leave even 
though the judge ordered them to leave, then we should not allow the 
benefits of this legislation to apply to them.
  One of the things which is inherent in most of the bills--I think in 
all of the bills, including the bill that is on the floor--is the 
concept that you are not permitted to be in the United States unless 
certain things happen. If you commit a crime, for example, then you 
can't stay here. That relies to some extent on the individual complying 
with the court order to leave.
  This part of the amendment says that when you have been ordered to 
leave by a judge, you have to do that. If you have demonstrated that 
you are not willing to do that, then you shouldn't be able to 
participate in the benefits of this law.
  One of the things we have done--and as a result, there have been 
several cosponsors added to the legislation--is provided some 
opportunities to have this provision waived if people can make certain 
arguments. For example, if an individual who has been ordered to be 
removed can demonstrate they did not receive notice of removal 
proceedings, under that condition, this provision could be waived.
  In addition, the alien could argue that his failure to appear and be 
removed was due to exceptional circumstances beyond the control of the 
alien or that the alien's departure from the United States would result 
in extreme hardship to the alien's spouse, parent, or child who is a 
citizen of the United States or an alien lawfully admitted for 
permanent residence.
  There is one other factor that has been added relative to coming into 
this country based upon fraudulent documents. In those situations, the 
alien could argue that there was a reason this provision should be 
waived and the alien should still be permitted to participate in the 
benefits of the legislation.
  We think we have drafted something that is fair, that ensures that 
people who should not be citizens of the United States or granted other 
legal status under the bill will not be granted the status, but that if 
there is some reason they can argue that there should be an exception, 
they will have every right to do so. In that sense, we think this is a 
firm but fair provision.
  I hope our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and colleagues 
who support the underlying legislation would consider this not an 
unfriendly amendment but an amendment that is truly designed to ensure 
that a key principle is upheld. The principle is already built into the 
underlying bill in one respect. The object of this amendment is to make 
sure it is complete and covers all of the kinds of crimes one might 
want to cover. As a result, we would hope this would receive an 
overwhelming response and could be supported by a large number of our 
colleagues, both on the Democratic and Republican side.
  Let me conclude by saying that this vote will not occur until 
tomorrow, but it is an important vote. I think it will demonstrate our 
willingness to continue to move this legislation forward.
  I appreciate the consideration of this amendment and ask my 
colleagues to support it tomorrow.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I thank Senators Kyl and Cornyn for this 
amendment. I thank them for the intense discussions and negotiations 
for which we have been able to get widespread support for this 
amendment; also, the Senator from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, on 
the other side of the aisle.
  Senator Cornyn and Senator Kyl have focused attention very 
appropriately on one who is convicted of a crime, who would more 
likely, obviously, commit another crime. That is not what this bill is 
all about. I think these efforts bear fruit in this amendment, and they 
seek to bar the potentially dangerous criminal alien from taking 
advantage of this program.
  The amendment specifically addresses individuals who have been 
convicted of one felony or three misdemeanors. It also addresses those 
who have just ignored our laws and thumbed their nose at our judicial 
system. But thanks to these negotiations, we allow individuals who may 
have been caught up in an unjust and unfair system to apply for a 
waiver and possibly have their cases reconsidered.
  I believe that ultimately this amendment makes the bill better and 
our country safer.
  I wish to again thank Senators Kyl and Cornyn for their willingness 
to negotiate some questions that we had about a very small aspect of 
this bill. I think it preserves the very important intent of the Kyl-
Cornyn amendment--that we will never allow people who have committed 
felonies or crimes to be eligible for citizenship in this country. I 
thank them for their efforts in this direction. I hope our friends on 
the other side of the aisle will have a chance to examine this 
amendment overnight, and perhaps we could dispense with it early in the 
morning.
  There are a number of amendments on our side. I am told there are a 
number of amendments on the other side. I think we have made good 
progress today in addressing some of the major issues, but obviously we 
need to move forward. I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle 
will see fit to have a vote as quickly as possible so we can move on to 
other amendments.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague and

[[Page S4607]]

thank him, Senator Graham, and Senator Kennedy for their work in 
helping us to negotiate provisions of this amendment.
  I join my colleague from Arizona in expressing the view that we 
should not take very long tomorrow to conclude the debate, and I hope 
we will receive substantial support for the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, for the record, I would like to compliment 
our staff because most of the hard work in this place goes on in some 
back room with our staff people trying to work through the problems of 
the bill. They have done a great job for Senators Kyl, Cornyn, and 
McCain. I am proud of what my staff has done, and particularly Senator 
Kennedy's staff. We have all gotten good staff support on this issue.
  Very clearly, succinctly, to the point, if you are a criminal, if you 
have committed a felony, if you have committed a crime or three 
misdemeanors, you don't get a second shot. Off you go. That, to me, is 
important.
  Under the bill, we are trying to give people a pathway to citizenship 
that would be earned and that would add value to our country. Senators 
Kyl and Cornyn have made this a better bill because the one thing we 
should all be able to agree on here is you are not adding value to the 
country when you openly admit people who are criminals, who are mean 
and hateful, and who keep breaking the law.
  There is another group of people who are subject to deportation on 
the civil side. I think it is very fair that in a limited class of 
cases, we will allow people on the civil side subject to deportation a 
chance to make their case anew in terms of being eligible for a future 
guest worker program that may become our Nation's law based on the base 
bill.
  Who are these people? If you are in a civil deportation hearing and 
you can demonstrate that you never received the order to leave, then we 
are going to give you a second shot. It is hard to comply with 
something you don't know about. That happens on occasion.
  Second, we are going to allow you, on the civil side receiving a 
deportation order, to make an argument about how it would affect your 
family and take the human condition into consideration.
  There is a unique group of people who come to this country--not by 
illegally crossing the border and overstaying their visa--who are one 
step ahead of a death squad in some foreign land. It could be Haiti or 
other places, it could be Cuba, with an oppressive Communist regime, 
and the only way they can get out of that country to come here is it 
make up a story that would keep them from being killed. What we are 
saying is, if you come into our country through an inspection system 
and you have to save your family from an oppressive government or ahead 
of a death squad, we will let you tell us about that. We will sit down 
and figure out if it makes sense to make you part of this program.
  There are not that many people, but we don't want to leave anybody 
behind that has a meritorious case to be made on the civil side. If you 
are a criminal, forget it. You have had your chance, and you have blown 
it. This, to me, makes the bill better, whether it is the underlying 
bill or not. This is a concept that is uniquely American.

  If you believe in playing by the rules, as Americans do, and you hurt 
people, you are not going to get a second shot at hurting people again 
in our country. If you got caught up in a legal system that sometimes 
is complicated and you have a meritorious argument to be made and you 
have never hurt anyone, we are going to listen to what you have to say.
  I am proud to be part of it. Senator Kennedy has been very helpful. I 
hope we can get close to 100 votes. This is something that should bring 
us together. Senators Kyl and Cornyn demonstrated the best of this 
body, reaching out, even though Members may not agree with the base 
bill, to try to find a way to make this part of the bill better.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, let me express my appreciation to the 
Senator from Arizona, the senior Senator, the Senator from South 
Carolina, for working with Senator Kyl and myself on this amendment.
  This whole subject is complicated and has so many different moving 
parts. What I mean by ``subject,'' I mean comprehensive immigration 
reform. Sometimes I think people start with a deep skepticism about 
what other Senators are actually trying to do.
  I hope as this amendment is accepted when we vote tomorrow, showing 
the alliance that has been created around this amendment, that our 
colleagues understand, even though there may be some who disagree with 
some aspects of the bill in the Senate, we are deeply committed to 
comprehensive immigration reform. We understand it is important we have 
border security, interior enforcement, worksite enforcement, a 
temporary worker program, and that we deal in a humane and 
compassionate fashion with the 12 million people who now live in our 
country in violation of our immigration laws.
  Certainly, there are improvements that can be made to this underlying 
bill. This amendment is designed to do exactly that. It is ironic that 
it was first introduced well over a month ago and then, unfortunately, 
we were unsuccessful in getting a vote on the amendment. It now looks 
as if, through hard work, discussion and cooperation, the intent behind 
the amendment is better understood. It has already been eloquently 
explained by Senators Kyl, Graham, and McCain.
  Let me say the whole purpose of this amendment was to make sure that 
those who have already had access to our criminal justice system and 
our civil litigation system, and lost, cannot come back and get another 
second bite at the apple. This amendment clarifies whether certain 
convicted criminals are eligible for the benefits of the legalization 
program contained in the underlying bill.
  To be clear, the underlying bill, without this amendment, would allow 
certain criminal aliens to get legal status. The underlying bill 
disqualifies aliens who are ineligible to obtain a visa because of 
certain criminal convictions. But this only means crimes that are 
defined as crimes involving moral turpitude or drug-related crimes.
  Under the current bill, without this amendment, not all crimes--
including some felonies--would bar an alien from obtaining legal 
status. Let me share quickly a few examples of crimes that do not 
automatically exclude an alien from getting a visa and therefore would 
not render an alien ineligible for legalization absent this amendment.
  For example, someone who has been convicted of the crime of 
kidnapping; someone who has been convicted of the crime of weapons 
possession; for example, possession of a sawed-off shotgun. Another 
example would be alien smuggling. This amendment would make ineligible 
any alien who has been convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors.
  Ironically, this provision, once this amendment is accepted, will 
bring this bill in the Senate up to par, basically, with the 1986 law 
which recognized that problem and excluded any alien that had been 
convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors. That is the basis upon 
which this amendment is offered.
  I might also add, of course, those who have had an opportunity to 
have their cases adjudicated, to have their day in court, but simply 
thumb their nose at the law and have gone underground, those 
individuals who have already had a bite at the apple, have already had 
their day in court and lost and simply gone underground and defied 
their deportation order, they also would be excluded from the 
legalization benefits contained in the bill, subject to some of the 
exceptions and the extreme hardship provisions that Senator Graham and 
others have discussed.
  I very much appreciate my colleagues, including Senator Kennedy, the 
manager of the bill on the minority side, indicating their positive 
response to this amendment. While there is no formal agreement, it is 
the sense that this amendment is likely to be accepted by overwhelming 
numbers.
  It just goes to show if we continue to work together, talk to each 
other and try to work our way through our differences, we can make 
progress on the bill and actually improve it over the bill as proposed.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.

[[Page S4608]]

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, in view of some things that were said a 
couple weeks ago, let me close this out with a couple of brief 
comments.
  At the time that Senator Cornyn and I first introduced this 
amendment, we speculated that it might ultimately result in 300,000, 
400,000 500,000 people being denied the benefits of the legislation. 
However, there were those on the other side who said this was a poison 
pill, this was going to preclude everyone who came into the country 
illegally or overstayed a visa from getting the benefits of the 
legislation. We said: No, that is not true. It is cast narrowly by its 
terms. It talks about convicted felons, three misdemeanors, and the 
people who have avoided a court order or a judge's order that they 
leave the country. That is it.
  Some on the other side said: We look at the language, and we think 
maybe this could apply to anyone who comes into the country illegally. 
By laying it down, you have created a poison bill. As a result, they 
would not permit a vote on the amendment. As a result, this legislation 
came to the end of the period of time, the end of the week, and the 
majority leader had to lay it aside so that the Senate could go on its 
recess.
  Senator Cornyn and I never had an intention to bring the bill to a 
halt or to create some kind of a poison pill that would make it 
impossible for anyone to support the legislation if the amendment were 
agreed to. We simply were trying to point out that there was a 
deficiency in the bill. Serious criminals could become citizens of the 
United States. We felt that was wrong.
  So we introduced the amendment and tried to explain at the time that 
was our sole motivation. Frankly, we could have dispensed with this 
amendment 3 weeks ago if our colleagues had simply gotten down to the 
debate, carefully read it, talked it out with us, and gotten a vote.
  Because of a question that our colleagues raised that we referred to 
earlier this evening, we have made a couple of modifications to the 
amendment, demonstrating that we are perfectly willing to negotiate a 
provision if there is a sense that we should have done something a 
little bit differently, which we did.
  I hope as we proceed to introduce other amendments to this 
legislation, that our colleagues on the other side will be willing to 
have votes. We wanted to have a vote on this earlier today or tonight 
or to lock in a time for a vote tomorrow. No, the other side said: No, 
we are not ready yet.
  If we continue at this pace, we are not going to finish the bill by 
Memorial Day, as the majority leader has requested, as the President 
has requested, and as we are committed to do.
  Our colleagues are going to have to do two things with respect to the 
rest of the debate on this bill: No. 1, to be willing to move with us 
to a quick consideration of amendments, a reasonable time for debate, 
then a vote, and then move on to the next amendment. No. 2, instead of 
characterizing amendments in a way that is not correct and attributing 
political motives to those who are simply trying to point out 
deficiencies in the bill and correct them with these amendments, they 
ought to simply be willing to come to the Senate, have the debate, and 
then proceed to a vote on the amendment.
  We are not in this to somehow try to stop the legislation as our 
repeated efforts to get a vote and move on have demonstrated.
  I join my colleague from Texas in saying I appreciate the fact that, 
hopefully now, knock on wood, tomorrow morning, first thing, we will be 
able to have a vote on this amendment and not only vote on it but 
finally, having sat down and looked at it, our colleagues will say: 
This is an amendment we can support. It makes sense to deny citizenship 
to serious criminals.
  If we can approach the other amendments in the same fashion we have 
finally gotten to with this amendment, we can actually finish this 
bill. I urge my colleagues to cooperate with us in that way.
  Mr. CORNYN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. KYL. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, through the Chair, I inquire, isn't it a 
fact over the last few weeks on behalf of the Republican leadership, 
the Senator has tried to collect all of the potential pool of 
amendments and consolidate those amendments down into a reasonable 
number in a good-faith effort to try to move this process forward? We 
shared that list with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. 
Does the Senator believe that demonstrates the good faith we have tried 
to demonstrate from the very start?
  Mr. KYL. I thank the Senator from Texas.
  Yes, we have tried to do that.
  I see the distinguished minority leader is here, and I suggest the 
best way to get this bill quickly considered and finished is to lay 
down as many of the amendments as Members have ready and then have the 
minority and majority side work together to figure out the proper order 
of those amendments, to try to enter into time agreements. If we are 
able to do that, I don't have any doubt that working in good faith we 
can complete the work of this Senate before the Memorial Day recess on 
this important piece of legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. The distinguished Senator from Oklahoma has asked that I 
indicate that we have no objection to his being in the queue.
  As has been announced by the distinguished manager of the bill, the 
Senator from Pennsylvania, we are going to take up the Kyl amendment, 
the Obama amendment, and then we are going to go to Sessions, then a 
Democrat, and as far as we are concerned on our side, we have no 
objection whatever to Senator Inhofe being the next Republican 
amendment in order.
  I have not checked with the majority leader, and if there is a 
problem, I can change it, but I ask consent that be the case.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, I thank the minority leader 
for that quick response to my request. I know we are all anxious to get 
as many amendments up and taken care of as possible.
  I know we cannot do this until probably tomorrow sometime, and it is 
our understanding there is now a unanimous consent for Senators Kyl, 
Obama, Sessions, a Democrat, and then me. With that, if no others want 
to be heard on the amendments, I would like to visit about the 
amendment we will take up tomorrow.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, in his speech, the President endorsed the 
idea that people immigrating to this country should assimilate and 
learn English.
  I will quote from his speech:

       . . . We must honor the great American tradition of the 
     melting pot, which has made us one nation out of many 
     peoples. The success of our country depends upon helping 
     newcomers assimilate into society, and embrace our common 
     identity as Americans. Americans are bound together by our 
     shared ideals, an appreciation for our history, respect for 
     the flag we fly, and an ability to speak and write the 
     English language. English is also the key to unlocking the 
     opportunity of America. English allows newcomers to go from 
     picking crops to opening a grocery . . . from cleaning 
     offices to running offices . . . from a life of low-paying 
     jobs to a diploma, a career, and a home of their own. When 
     immigrants assimilate and advance in our society, they 
     realize their dreams . . . they renew our spirit . . . and 
     they add to the unity of Americans.

  Last November, speaking to an audience in Davis-Monthan Air Force 
Base in Tucson, President Bush again stated his support for immigrants 
to learn English. He said:

       Every new citizen of the United States has an obligation to 
     learn our custom and our values, including liberty and civic 
     responsibility, equality under God and tolerance for others, 
     and the English language.

  So this has been very specific. Ronald Reagan addressed it many 
times, certainly, in the State of the Union Message. I recall being 
here in 1999, when President Bill Clinton at that time said:

       Our new immigrants . . . have a responsibility to enter the 
     mainstream of America. That means learning English.

  It goes on and on and on. I think almost every Member has at one time 
or another talked in the Senate about the reasons it is necessary for 
the English language to be part of any kind of an immigration bill.
  Today, once again, I am offering my English amendment, No. 3996, 
along

[[Page S4609]]

with my colleagues, Senators Sessions, Coburn, Burns, Bunning, and 
others. My amendment follows Congressman Peter King's bill, H.R. 4408, 
as well as Senator Shelby's bill, S. 323, from the 105th Congress, by 
making English the official language and requiring all official 
business of the United States to be conducted in English.
  It also allows exceptions. This is very important because arguments 
have been made against it. But there are exceptions where our law 
specifically says something should be done in another language, such 
things as protecting someone's legal rights to make sure they 
understand what their privileges are, what their responsibilities are 
when they are served.
  Also, recently, when we experienced Hurricane Katrina, where an 
evacuation order was issued, that order could be delivered by the 
Federal Government in necessary languages to get the message out.
  So we have taken care of these problems.
  I would suggest there are three main reasons to adopt this amendment. 
One is for unity and assimilation. To begin with, as the President has 
said numerous times, learning English is vital to achieving 
assimilation, assimilating yourself into society. So many people are 
looking at illegals who are coming over and getting jobs, but they do 
not stop and think about the fact that in order to become a citizen, 
you have to assimilate into society so you can enjoy the benefits. They 
do not come naturally. You have to make it happen.
  President Theodore Roosevelt echoed this point at a luncheon for the 
National Americanization Committee on February 1, 1916. He said:

       Let us say to the immigrant not that we hope he will learn 
     English, but that he has got to learn it. . . . He has got to 
     consider the interest of the United States or he should not 
     stay here.

  It goes all the way back for many years. Our leaders have reiterated 
this. Our country is made up of immigrants from all over the world, 
immigrants who have joined together under common ideas, common beliefs, 
and a common language to function as ``one nation under God.''
  As we allow great numbers of immigrants, legal and illegal, into the 
country, we are overwhelming the assimilation process and creating what 
some have called ``linguistic ghettos,'' segregating these immigrants 
into a massive underclass who are not able to obtain good-paying jobs 
and climb out of poverty and Government dependency.
  By not requiring immigrants to assimilate and learn English, we are 
also undermining our unity and importing dangerous, deadly philosophies 
that go against our American ideals.
  September 11 is an example of this, as Muslim extremists executed 
their jihadist philosophy against the United States and caused 
thousands of Americans to lose their lives.
  The second thing to be considered is the cost. The Office of 
Management and Budget estimates that it costs taxpayers between $1 
billion and $2 billion to provide language assistance under President 
Clinton's Executive order that came out during his Presidency.
  There are also enormous costs associated with the mandate that local 
governments provide multilingual ballots. For example, Los Angeles 
County taxpayers spent over $1.1 million in 1996 to provide 
multilingual voting assistance in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, 
Japanese, and Filipino, according to a GAO report.
  In 2002, Los Angeles's multilingual election costs more than doubled 
to $3.3 million, according to the Associated Press.
  The third reason is, this is something the American people want. All 
the American people want it. I have never seen anything polled more 
consistently than this issue has been polled. Three national 
associations are dedicated solely to this amendment: U.S. English, 
English First, and Pro-English.
  Senator Specter's Judiciary Committee invited this amendment in the 
Legislative Directors' meeting in the Republican Policy Committee by 
saying it ``welcomed amendments on English'' as a means to enhance 
``assimilation'' of immigrants.
  This issue has raised millions of dollars in direct mail over the 
years. These donors must include populists, given the huge levels of 
support. No other amendment has been more thoroughly vetted. This 
concept has been around for decades, indeed, for centuries. 
Historically, the legislation has been bipartisan.
  In 1997, several of us joined Senator Shelby in his official English 
bill. It was a bipartisan bill with 21 cosponsors, including Democrats 
Hollings and Byrd and many others. And over 150 current Members of the 
House of Representatives have cosponsored official English legislation.
  Most of the States--27--have made English their official language. 
This is kind of interesting. The vast majority of the States, on their 
own, on a State basis, have made English the official language.
  There are 51 nations around the world that have made English their 
official language, but we have not. Now, can you explain to me why 
Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia, and 
Zimbabwe have made English their official language, yet the United 
States has not?
  The pollsters, consistently over the last 20 years, have all shown 
positive results at levels in the 80s, the 80-percentile range. In 
1988, G. Lawrence Research showed 87 percent favored English as the 
official language, with only 8 percent opposed and 5 percent not sure.
  A 1996 national survey by Luntz Research asked: Do you think English 
should be made the official language of the United States? Eighty-six 
percent of Americans supported making English the official language. 
Only 12 percent opposed it.
  Eighty-one percent of first-generation immigrants, 83 percent of 
second-generation immigrants, and 87 percent of third- and fourth-
generation immigrants supported making English the official language.
  I think a lot of people have this misunderstanding that this is some 
kind of a protectionist issue. Yet the vast majority of Latinos, the 
vast majority of immigrants have supported this, also.
  In 2000, Public Opinion Strategies showed 84 percent favored English 
as the official language, with only 12 percent opposing.
  Ninety-two percent of Republicans, 76 percent of Democrats, and 76 
percent of Independents favor making English the official language. 
That is according to a 2004 Zogby International poll.
  Another Zogby International poll question on official English--this 
poll is a month old, conducted between March 14 and 16 of 2006--said: 
Five out of six likely voters support official English. When informed 
the United States has no official language, five out of six likely 
voters--84 percent--agree the country should make English the official 
language. The majority of Hispanic voters support official English. An 
overwhelming majority of likely Hispanic voters--71 percent--agree the 
country should make English the official language.
  A bipartisan majority support official English. Official English is 
not an ``extreme'' position. Eighty-four percent of self-identified 
``moderate'' voters support English as the official language.
  Hispanics also agree learning English is important. So it is not just 
that it is the right thing to do, it is what they can do for 
themselves. The National Council of LaRaza, which opposes official 
English, commissioned a 2004 Zogby poll showing that Latinos believe in 
the importance of learning English. Over 97 percent strongly agreed 
that ``the ability to speak English is important to succeed in this 
country.''
  In south Florida, Hispanics back English, according to a 2005 
University of Miami School of Communications/Zogby International 
survey. ``How important is it for Hispanics who immigrate to the United 
States to adopt American culture?'' Seventy percent said it is very 
important. These are Hispanics who are responding.
  The December 2002 Pew Hispanic Center/Henry J. Kaiser Family 
Foundation National Survey of Latinos asked:

       Do you think adult Latino immigrants need to learn English 
     to succeed in the United States or can they succeed even if 
     they only speak Spanish?

  About 9 in 10--89 percent--of Latinos indicate that they believe 
immigrants need to learn to speak English to succeed in the United 
States.
  And this goes on and on and on. There should not be any question in 
anyone's mind that one of the most

[[Page S4610]]

popular notions out there is for us to adopt English as the official 
language.
  Finally, according to ProEnglish, a group dedicated to making English 
the official language, one out of every five Americans speaks a 
language other than English at home.
  Referring to immigrants speaking English in our country, Congressman 
Steve King of Iowa said:

       I don't think the immigrants are the problem; I think it is 
     the people at the border that are telling them that they 
     don't have to learn English, should not have to and keep them 
     in these cultural enclaves so that then allows them to 
     control the immigrants and gives them political power.

  I believe we are doing a great disservice if we do not recognize this 
as one of the true, great issues of our time. There is no more 
appropriate time than during the consideration of this immigration bill 
to bring this out and finally do something we have talked about doing 
now for over 100 years and getting it done and getting it done on this 
bill.
  Mr. President, let me repeat how much I appreciate the minority 
leader allowing me to get into the queue. We look forward to having 
this debated and voted on tomorrow.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________