[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 64 (Monday, May 22, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4918-S4921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, cloture has been filed on the 
immigration legislation, and I suspect cloture will be obtained on the 
immigration bill. We will have a vote later on in the week. The train 
is moving. People simply want to do something, and I suppose that is 
where we are headed.
  I wish to make a couple comments about it. First, the difficulty we 
faced was that the bill which came out of the Judiciary Committee to 
the floor of the Senate, which was essentially the Kennedy-McCain bill, 
was not good legislation. In fact, it was so broadly problematic that I 
thought and said from the beginning there was no way we could file 
amendments to fix that bill. It was unfixable. It had too many basic 
problems that had not been evaluated carefully, that should have been 
thought through carefully before it was ever filed.
  Senator Specter just left the Chamber. He supports immigration. We 
started in the Judiciary Committee a few months ago--really just a 
couple of months ago--and his bill was a lot better than the bill that 
came out of the Judiciary Committee. The chairman's mark had a number 
of provisions in it. It did not have an automatic path to citizenship, 
for example. So we spent several days talking around at the committee. 
Senator Frist said he wanted this bill on the floor a certain date. 
That was a Tuesday. He wanted the bill out of committee. On Monday, we 
were still talking about various technical, complex legal issues and 
debating them and worrying about law enforcement issues, and, boom, the 
Kennedy-McCain bill is offered as a substitute to the Specter bill in 
committee. With about an hour's debate, this several-hundred page bill 
became the bill in committee.
  A few minutes later with very little debate, the agriculture jobs 
part was added to the bill, and that is what came out of committee. It 
was incredibly broad, huge in its increase in legal immigration into 
the country, as well as I think inadequate enforcement and overreaching 
in amnesty and a lot of other issues.
  So here we are trying to pass this legislation. I guess we have done 
it now. I spent some time pointing out some of the difficulties, and I 
will continue to do so. I will say this: The legislation that will hit 
the floor presumably this week and will be up for a vote should not be 
passed by us.
  I have four amendments on which I would like to have votes. I know 
what is going to happen. Cloture has been filed, and I will be lucky to 
get one vote on the four amendments I will be filing tonight, to get 
legislative council to approve them and worry about germaneness and a 
lot of other things, but I am ready to file these amendments and will 
file them.
  I want to talk about those amendments, and I ask the American people 
and my colleagues to think about some of the issues in these four 
amendments and ask: Should not, when we set about establishing a new 
immigration policy for America, which has consistently been a 20-year 
policy--we did one in the midsixties and we did another one in 1986. 
Here we are 20 years later in 2006 passing another one. We are going to 
pass a bill that could set policy for quite some time. It ought to be a 
good bill. It should be a bill of which we are proud.
  It should be a piece of legislation that considers the relevant 
issues facing our country and tries to fairly and decently and justly 
treat people who want to come here in a legitimate way, but 
fundamentally what we should be asking ourselves is how many people 
this country can accept and what kind of skill levels should they have, 
what expectation do we have that they will be successful when they come 
to this country and be able to take advantage of the opportunities that 
are here, to be able to pay taxes to the Government more than they draw 
from the Government, and those kinds of questions. That is what we are 
about. I submit that the legislation fails in that regard.
  I have four amendments. One is a numerical limit amendment. It would 
cap the immigration increases caused by the bill to the numbers CBO and 
the White House tell us to expect, 7 million under amnesties and 8 
million in new immigrations in the next 10 years. We had somewhat of a 
dispute. This bill is 600 pages. It is exceedingly complicated. It has 
a host of different categories. It has caps that apply and numbers that 
don't apply to caps and are exempted from caps. It is hard to figure 
out how many people might actually come.
  The Heritage Foundation and my staff have concluded that we are 
looking at four times the current rate of immigration. It was 5 to 10 
times the current rate of immigration until we discussed these huge 
numbers at a press conference last Monday, and Tuesday we adopted an 
amendment to knock that down. We think the immigration in that country 
will range from 73 million to 93 million people over the next 20 years. 
That represents approximately four times the amount we now allow in, 
which is a little less than 1 million a year, so it will be a little 
less than 19 million over 20 years, five times current rate, four times 
current rate at a minimum, we think.
  The administration and CBO say some of those numbers were not good 
enough, and they came up with some figures.
  That amendment would be designed to say: OK, we will look at your 
numbers and see if we can just make that the law so it won't be 
confusing. At least we will know what the numbers are. If the 
administration numbers are correct and the CBO numbers are correct, 
they are too high, way too high, but at least we would know what they 
are. At least we wouldn't have to worry that they might go and explode 
out of reason.

  Another amendment we will be offering is the amendment to eliminate 
the

[[Page S4919]]

earned income tax credit for illegal aliens and those who adjust status 
under this bill. Once illegal aliens become citizens, they will once 
again be eligible for the earned income tax credit, which is nothing 
more than a Government payment. It is a Government subsidy to low wage 
American workers, and it is very large. I will talk about that in a 
minute.
  Chain migration. We will offer an amendment that would eliminate 
certain chain migration provisions in this bill. If we want to admit 
more skill-based immigrants, we must reduce the right of immigrants to 
bring in certain categories of relatives automatically and they have an 
automatic right on the list to be able to come in. We need to make that 
choice. Why is this Senate dodging that issue? I don't know. Other 
countries, as I have noted just a few moments ago, are going in exactly 
the opposite direction. They are focusing less on some sort of 
connections and more on work skills.
  Then I will offer an amendment that deals with green cards for future 
flow H-2C workers. This would be an amendment to make sure that H-2C 
workers who come in the future--not those given amnesty under this 
bill--will be subject to the annual numerical limits on employment-
based green cards when they apply. There is some dispute about that. We 
were told originally: Oh, yes, they apply, the caps apply, these limits 
apply. And then we read the legislation carefully, and under that 
provision, it says: If you qualify for a green card, the Secretary 
shall give you the green card. And it appears that ``shall'' means you 
will get it whether the caps apply or not, or whether the caps would 
apply.
  I shared earlier thoughts about the large numbers and the CBO numbers 
in that amendment. I have discussed it. I would like to take a few 
moments to discuss the earned income tax credit limit.
  This amendment would do two things. One, it would clarify existing 
law that makes illegal aliens ineligible to claim the earned income tax 
credit and postpones the ability of illegal aliens who are given status 
by this bill to claim the earned income tax credit until they become 
citizens. So the amendment is clearly a moneysaver. It is also a way to 
make sure that illegal aliens are more likely to contribute more in 
taxes than they are taking out. The inability to claim the earned 
income tax credit should be one of the things added to the list of 
items illegal aliens will have to agree to do in order to receive the 
benefits of the amnesties contained in title VI of the bill. Other 
items on the list include a background check, a medical check, and 
payment of back taxes, and being required to not claim the EITC until 
the illegal alien becomes a citizen is a natural addition to that list.
  The EITC tax credit was established in 1975. It is a refundable tax 
credit for families that can offset income taxes or provide a tax 
credit directly to the family. According to IRS data for 2003, 22 
million households received $39 billion in EITC payments, an average of 
$1,782 per household or $2,100 for any families with children.
  Now, let me just repeat that. This is a huge Government program. And 
most of the low-income people don't owe any taxes. If you are making 
below $20,000 a year, you are unlikely to pay any income taxes. If you 
have children, you certainly are not going to be paying any income 
taxes. So how do you get a tax credit if you don't pay any taxes? Well, 
they send you a check. That is what they do. You file your tax return 
at the end of the year, and if you have worked and your income was 
lower, they send you a check. We looked at the numbers. If you are a 
minimum wage worker and you make around $14,000 a year, that family 
would receive a check, a subsidy from the Government of 4,700-and-some-
odd dollars.
  So this was designed to encourage Americans to work. It was a plan to 
make work more attractive for people on welfare. Do you remember all 
that talk: Well, you can make more money on welfare than you make 
working. So a brilliant Congress, a number of years ago, came up with 
this idea that we would just give people extra money if they would 
work. It will be less than welfare, so why not do it? OK. That is what 
we did. But it was not designed to reward illegal aliens for coming 
into the country illegally, for heaven's sake. But that is what this 
bill does. As soon as they get that regularized status, they get it.
  Now, this would allow them to get the earned income tax credit if 
they become a citizen but not before. That is not required of us. It is 
not required of the Senate that we should provide a $2,000 bonus check 
to individuals who work in our country, who seem to be happy to get the 
wages they are being paid, a $2,000 bonus check from Uncle Sam as a 
result and as an incentive for coming into the country illegally. That 
is a really big issue.
  To qualify for the credit, married couples filing jointly who earn 
certain sums of money would qualify. For example, a single mother with 
two children, the earned income tax credit provides a tax credit for 40 
percent of every dollar earned, up to $11,340. A family that earned 
between $11,000 and $14,000 received a maximum credit of $4,536, not 
$4,700. After the floor of $14,810 is reached, the credit is slowly 
reduced until the income cap of $36,000 is reached. It is only then 
that it is eliminated. For 2006, the maximum amount of the earned 
income tax credit is $4,556 for a worker supporting two kids and $2,747 
for a worker with one child, $4,012 for a child of eligible employees 
and adjusted for inflation.
  Now, a Social Security number is required in order to reap the 
benefits of this tax credit, and those applying must have a valid 
Social Security number and be a resident alien. Valid Social Security 
numbers are given out to all legally working people in the United 
States--legally working aliens. Legal permanent residents and citizens 
have Social Security numbers.

  Under the tax law, resident aliens are citizens of a foreign country 
who are either lawful permanent residents of the United States or have 
been physically present in the country for at least a certain specified 
amount of time during the past 3 years. They are taxed in the same 
manner as U.S. citizens, and thus they qualify for the refundable tax 
credits.
  According to the IRS, under the residency rules of the Tax Code, any 
alien who is a nonresident alien--an alien will become a resident alien 
in one of three ways: No. 1, by being admitted to the United States as 
or changing in status to a lawful permanent resident under the 
immigration laws; No. 2, by passing a substantial presence test, a 
numerical formula which measures days of presence in the United 
States; or No. 3, by making what is called the first year election, a 
numerical formula under which an alien may pass the substantial 
presence test 1 year earlier than under the normal rules.

  Under these rules, legally present work-authorized aliens who pass 
the substantial presence test will be treated, for tax purposes, as 
resident aliens. They are able, then, to claim EITC. Under these rules, 
even an undocumented illegal alien who passes the substantial presence 
test will be treated for tax purposes as a resident alien. If they are 
using a fraudulent Social Security number, they can apply for the EITC. 
If they are using a legal IDIF number, they cannot apply.
  Under S. 2611, the bill before us today, if illegal aliens pay their 
taxes legally today, they do so with an individual taxpayer 
identification number they are given for tax purposes. The ITIN cannot 
currently be used to get the EITC because a Social Security number is 
required to claim the EITC. They are not eligible to get a Social 
Security number.
  So under S. 2611, illegal aliens will become legally present and work 
authorized immediately upon passage of the act. They would then be 
given Social Security numbers and will pass the substantial presence 
test, making them automatically, at once, eligible to claim the very 
generous benefits of the EITC.
  The Congressional Budget Office has looked at this and tried to 
figure out what the cost would be. American taxpayers would pay this. 
This would be a new cost on the taxpayers, created by the very bill 
that is before us today. Under the current legislation, in S. 2611 as 
initially offered and came out of the Judiciary Committee, the 
preliminary CBO score revealed the following about directed spending 
contained in the compromise. They say this:

       CBO and Joint Tax Committee estimate that direct spending 
     outlays would total about $8 billion for the first 5 years, 
     2007

[[Page S4920]]

     through 2011, and $27 billion for the first 10 years. Most of 
     those costs are for the earned-income tax credit and for 
     Medicaid and food stamp programs. Costs in subsequent decades 
     would be greater than in this first 10-year period.

  ``Costs in further decades would be greater than the first decade.'' 
Mr. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has worked on numbers like 
this. He was the architect of the welfare reform. He said to us 
recently, a group of Senators: Senators, this is how this Government 
gets out of control. This is how things go wrong. You don't start out 
to pass a bill that is going to cost $29 billion. You don't think it 
through. You pass the legislation, and a new Congress 20 years from now 
wakes up and says: How did this ever happen? We don't have the money to 
pay for this. We made this obligation way long ago. How are we going to 
get out of it? Maybe we should cut back.
  Then all the protests start because you can never cut a program, it 
seems.
  He warned us about that. That is exactly what is happening with this 
particular provision in the legislation.
  Once the Hagel-Martinez bill became S. 2611, I, along with five other 
Senators, asked CBO to provide a comprehensive score so we would know 
how much this amnesty provision would cost the taxpayers. The final CBO 
score estimates that, of the 2007-2016 period, 10 years, this bill 
would increase outlays for refunding tax credits $29.4 billion, the 
largest direct expenditure in the bill--$29 billion.
  I had a conversation a few moments ago with a fine Senator who is 
concerned about spending. He was sincerely asking me about the cost of 
enforcement at the border and at the workplace in our country. Where 
are we going to get this money so we are not just putting it to our 
grandchildren? I don't know how much it is going to cost. We spend $40 
billion now on homeland security every year. Maybe this is going to 
cost $5 or $6 billion. A lot of it will be one-time costs, setting up 
computer systems and border barriers and in purchases of equipment. A 
lot of that will be repetitive, like border patrol and bed spaces or 
removing people from the country. But it will not exceed $29 billion, 
trust me. It will be a fraction of that.
  Mr. President, $29 billion is a lot of money under any circumstances, 
I have to tell you. You can buy three aircraft carriers for $29 
billion. They have 4,000 people on them. Mr. President, $29.4 billion 
will be added. These refundable tax credits will include EITC and child 
tax credits, where most of the cost is clearly attributable to the 
EITC. To clarify, the credit first reduces an individual's tax 
liability. If the credit exceeds the tax liability, the excess is sent 
to the individual in the form of a check from Uncle Sam. These refunds 
are classified as outlays in the Federal budget. They are classified as 
outlays. They are not classified as tax deductions because they are, in 
fact, outlays. They are, in fact, payments from Uncle Sam sent in the 
form of a check to individual Americans.
  In conclusion, I would note the bill increases the amount of 
refundable tax credits by increasing the number of resident aliens, 
people who are illegal today, converted to resident aliens. Although 
this bill grants amnesty to those who came illegally, it is not 
required, in my view, that they be absolved from all consequences of 
coming here illegally nor be provided every benefit we provide to those 
who come legally. Certainly nothing is strange or unusual in that.
  If we decide to give certain benefits to people who came here 
illegally and not give them to others, what is wrong with that? For 
example, we are going to allow them to stay in the country. At least 
overwhelmingly, they will be able to stay in the country. We are going 
to forgive them for being prosecuted. Do we have to then also reward 
them for their illegal activity by providing a sizeable check every 
year from the Federal Government? No, you don't have to do that. If 
they become a citizen one day, fine, they are entitled to the same 
benefits of every other American citizen. But not in the interim.
  My amendment clarifies existing law to make sure that illegal 
aliens--existing law--who pass the substantial presence test cannot use 
fraudulent Social Security numbers to claim the earned-income tax 
credit, and it postpones the ability of illegal aliens at a given 
status, some sort of legal status by the bill, to claim the earned-
income tax credit until they become citizens. I believe that is the 
right approach. It is unthinkable that we would provide this kind of 
incentive when it really has no necessity.
  Mr. President, I would like to share some thoughts about another 
amendment. It deals with chain migration. It would reduce chain 
migration by eliminating the provisions in the Immigration and 
Nationality Act that allow parents and adult brothers and sisters to 
immigrate to the United States based solely on their family 
connections. Chain migration refers to the mechanism by which foreign 
nationals have the right to immigrate to the United States by virtue of 
one single characteristic: they are related to someone who previously 
immigrated to the United States. Chain migration does not refer to 
spouses and dependent children of immigrants. That does not encompass 
wives and children. Nothing in this amendment would say that a green 
card holder, a legal permanent resident or citizen would not be able to 
bring spouses and children. That will remain the law under this 
amendment. No changes are made whatsoever. But for immigrants who 
become citizens, chain migration refers to their ability to bring in 
parents, brothers and sisters, and spouses, and children of their 
brothers and sisters.
  You get to bring in your parents, your brothers and sisters, and the 
spouses and children of your brothers and sisters. People who immigrate 
based on this family relationship are in no way evaluated for their 
skill levels, their age, their English proficiency, or if they are 
needed by the American economy whatever skills they have. How they will 
benefit the United States is completely irrelevant to this process. The 
only relevant characteristic is their family connection.
  Until the late 1950s, American family immigration policy focused 
solely on the nuclear family; only spouses and minor dependent children 
of the immigrant were allowed to immigrate solely on their family 
connection.
  In the late 1950s, family migration policies of the United States 
began to extend beyond children and spouses. Immigrants were allowed to 
bring in their adult unmarried children. You are here, you can bring in 
adult children from that foreign country. But they are unmarried, and 
you can bring them. Immigrants who became citizens were allowed to 
bring in their married adult children and their parents and their 
brothers and sisters, parents and brothers and sisters, and adult 
children can bring in their own spouse and their children. If the 
extended spouse has parents and siblings, they, too, can get in line to 
immigrate to the United States based solely on the family connection.
  To show you a little bit how this works--it sounds a bit complicated. 
By viewing the charts behind me, maybe we can make this a little bit 
clearer.
  Here are the people in green. That means they possess a green card. 
You can get green cards in any number of ways if you come in under the 
language of this legislation that is so inaccurate. Let me say it that 
way.
  Under the rubric they call a temporary guest worker, the first day 
you are here, your employer can apply for a green card, and within a 
month presumably you will get that green card. Once you become a green 
card holder, you become green on that chart, but you also became a 
permanent resident of the United States, not a citizen.
  What happens when you become a permanent resident? You can 
immediately bring in your spouse and your children, maybe half a dozen 
children. You can bring in all of those children.
  One thing about this amnesty is this: There are a lot of people who 
are working in our country today who have not brought their families. 
They have not been that interested in bringing their wives and children 
here, but under the bill, we give them legal status. We allow them to 
become a green card holder in short order, and then they are 
automatically allowed to bring in their spouses and children.
  Five years after they get the green card, they can apply to be a 
citizen. So 5 years, they become a citizen. Here is the family now, 
this group here, green. They come over. This is the nuclear family: 
Father, mother, and two children. The mother is now legal. She can

[[Page S4921]]

bring in her parents; he can bring in his parents.
  What about brothers and sisters? Each one gets to bring in their 
brothers, and then they can bring in their wife and their children.
  This lady has one brother. She allows that brother to come in as a 
relative within the category, and then he can bring his wife and his 
children.
  What about her? She probably has brothers and sisters, too. Once she 
gets in and gets in the system, she can bring her brothers and sisters 
and her parents into the system. The father here can bring in his 
brother or sister, and she can bring in her husband and her two 
children, or however many they have.
  I believe somebody detailed once on the floor of the Senate that one 
family brought in 85 under this system. It is not at all impossible to 
imagine. Can you see how it can happen? One person comes in, and as a 
result of the family connections he brought in 85. I think that was 
Senator Allen Simpson in the debate 20 years ago in 1986.
  It is a remarkable story, how the nuclear family, 5 years after they 
become citizens, can bring in their parents.
  What can the parents do? The parents can bring in their parents, if 
they are still alive. They really can. Maybe they are 90. They can 
bring in their brothers and sisters. All the uncles can come in through 
the parents. The wife can bring in brothers and sisters. Then the wife 
brings in her brother, who brings in his wife and two children, and she 
brings in her parents. It just goes on and on.
  We would like to do the right thing. We would like to be generous. 
Someone made the argument, I guess at one point in time it seemed like 
a good idea to have that policy. But every now and then, when we review 
a bill once in 20 years, you would think we would have discussed this. 
It has not been discussed, to my knowledge. Not a single Senator has 
discussed it on the floor of the Senate, to my knowledge. No amendment 
has been offered on it. It was not discussed, I don't think, but maybe 
just in passing in some of the Judiciary Committee debate of which I 
was a member. It is a serious matter.
  Obviously, we ought to do a better job of thinking through who should 
come to America. I keep thinking about a valedictorian in the Dominican 
Republic, some small town in Colombia, Peru, or Brazil, top of his 
class, learned English, speaks it well, and wanting to come to the 
United States of America. We have a limited number of people who come. 
He can never get in because grandparents, great-grandparents, brothers 
and sisters and grand-nephews are coming in under migration, crowding 
those numbers out. With regard to all of these people, there is no 
requirement of any educational level, no requirement of any job skills 
or any other capability.
  I think we need to make progress. There is no reason in the world we 
shouldn't be discussing that in an effective way. Over the past 5 
years, approximately 950,000--almost 1 million--extended family members 
immigrated to the United States and immediately received a green card--
lawful permanent resident who will never have to leave.
  The numbers equal about 20 percent of all aliens who immigrated to 
the United States in the last 5 years. Immigration, therefore, makes up 
a significant portion of family-based immigration.
  If we want to discuss the percentage of family-based immigration and 
increase the percentage of skill-based, it makes sense that we would 
deal with this issue. I think this amendment needs to be considered. I 
am disappointed that we really have not had time, with cloture being 
filed we will not have time to seriously discuss that.
  Let's talk about one more issue. I don't mind saying I cannot be sure 
that we have dealt in years with a bill more important than this one. 
Mr. Rector of the Heritage Foundation said this bill is so significant 
it compares with the passage of Social Security and Medicare, in his 
opinion. He has been a student of these things for several decades. 
This is a huge piece of legislation.

  What has happened, a group has gotten together. They have reached a 
compromise. We were told flatout the other night that one of the 
amendments could not be accepted because the people who put the 
compromise together would not accept it. They would not accept the 
amendment because they said it violated the compromise, the compromise 
would fall apart, and we could not amend it in that fashion. And it 
failed. The machinery around here is working.
  We will have an opportunity to talk about this additional issue 
tomorrow. I will plan to do that then. I am proud at least to have had 
the opportunity to talk about this. The fact is, we are not going to be 
able to vote on this. We will be lucky to get a vote on one of them, 
and then this will be voted on. I assume it will be passed and sent to 
the House of Representatives. If we are fortunate, the House of 
Representatives will say it has to be better; we will not accept it; we 
are going to insist on that before we pass it.
  Who knows what will happen in the political processes of our country?

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