Congressional Record, Volume 153 Issue 86 (Thursday, May 24, 2007)

[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 86 (Thursday, May 24, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6583-S6597]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 2007

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of S. 1348, which the clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (S. 1348) to provide for comprehensive immigration
reform and for other purposes.

Pending:

Reid (For Kennedy/Specter) amendment No. 1150, in the
nature of a substitute.
Grassley/DeMint amendment No. 1166 to amendment No. 1150,
to establish a permanent bar for gang members, terrorists,
and other criminals.
Cornyn amendment No. 1184 (to amendment No. 1150), to
establish a permanent bar for gang members, terrorists, and
other criminals.
Coleman/Bond amendment No. 1158 to amendment No. 1150, to
amend the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant
Responsibility Act of 1996 to facilitate information sharing
between federal and local law enforcement officials related
to an individual's immigration status.
Akaka amendment No. 1186 to amendment No. 1150, to exempt
children of certain Filipino World War II veterans from the
numerical limitations on immigrant visas.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey is recognized.

Amendment No. 1158

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I would like to start this morning's
debate on immigration by speaking to two of the pending amendments that
are before the Senate. First, I would like to speak toward the Coleman
amendment.
Under Senator Coleman's amendment, he would, in essence, undermine
the rights of States and local municipalities which have instructed
their police, health, and safety workers from inquiring about the
immigration status of those they serve in order to protect the health
and safety and promote the general welfare of the community.
As Ronald Reagan said: Here we go again. Over the last several years,
particularly in the House of Representatives, there have been different
pieces of legislation and amendments offered and debated that would
deputize State and local police to enforce what is, in essence, Federal
civil immigration law. The Coleman-Bond amendment would effectively
prohibit State and local Government policies that seek to encourage
crime reporting and witness cooperation by reassuring immigrant victims
that police and other government officials will not inquire into their
status.
So the amendment would send a mandate from Washington that would end
State and local policies that prevent their employees, including police
and health and safety workers, from inquiring about the immigration
status of those they serve if there is ``probable cause''--probable
cause; exactly what standard we are going to use for that is still, in
my mind, not quite defined--to believe the individual being questioned
is undocumented.
Now, I have talked to some of the toughest law enforcement people
across the country. Many cities, counties, and police departments
around the country have decided that it is a matter of public health
and safety not to ask, not to ask about the immigration status of
people when they report crimes or have been the victims of domestic
abuse or go to the hospital seeking emergency medical care.

[[Page S6584]]

Currently, scores of cities and States across the Nation have such
confidentiality policies in place, some upwards of 20 years of having
such policies in place. The point of these policies is to make sure
immigrants report crimes and information to police and do not stay
silent for fear that their immigrant status or that of a loved one
could come under scrutiny if they contact the authorities.
Information is one of the most powerful tools law enforcement has to
prosecute individuals in the course of a crime, to know who the
perpetrator was, to know who was in the gang activity, to know who is
the drug dealer. Think of the potential chilling effect this amendment
could have on the willingness and ability of immigrant crime victims
and witnesses, those who have been victims of domestic abuse, and those
who may need emergency health care to turn for assistance if they
feared that deportation rather than receiving assistance would result.
That is why cities and States have passed local laws and set policies
limiting when police and city and county employees can ask people to
prove their immigration status.
States and local police have long sought to separate their activities
from those of the Federal immigration agents in order to enhance public
safety. Now, why do States and local law enforcement entities do that?
Why is that? Because when immigrant community residents begin to see
State and local police as deportation agents, they stop reporting
crimes and assisting in investigations. It undermines the trust and
cooperation with immigrant communities that are essential elements of
community-oriented policing.
There are numerous examples of police opposing such efforts. In fact,
in 2005, Princeton, NJ, police chief Anthony Federico said:

Local police agencies depend on the cooperation of
immigrants, legal and illegal, in solving all sorts of crimes
and in the maintenance of public order. Without assurances
that they will not be subject to an immigration investigation
and possible deportation, many immigrants with critical
information would not come forward, even when heinous crimes
are committed against them or their families.

So those who are entrusted to protect us understand that the
relationship of trust built with the immigrant community would be
ruined overnight if this provision becomes law.
This amendment would also cause millions of people in this country,
not just immigrants--not just immigrants--to think twice about getting
the medical treatment they need. Why would we discourage individuals
from receiving medical care? Let's think about the possible
consequences for a second. You are rolled into an emergency room, and
you do not have insurance. Would there be ``probable cause'' to be
asked whether you are here legally in the United States?
Assume I get rolled into an emergency room ``Mr. Menendez'' or maybe
someone who might even be described as more characteristically Hispanic
or maybe Asian or some other group, and I do not happen to have
insurance, as, unfortunately, 40 million Americans who are here as U.S.
citizens do not have, and in that moment, I am asked whether I am an
American citizen. That would be shameful. You would not ask any other
citizen that. But what you create under these sets of circumstances is
the opportunity for law enforcement, for health officials, for
emergency management officials to begin to ask the questions. And under
what probable cause? The way someone looks? The accent with which they
speak? The surname? Under what probable cause? Under what probable
cause? The misfortune of not having health insurance? Is that an
indicator that you are likely not here in a documented fashion, those
who look a certain way?
This amendment can clearly also encourage racial profiling. People
who look or sound foreign would be the ones whose citizenship or
immigration status will be questioned. Under this amendment, we are
asking public hospital workers, teachers, police, social workers, and
all public employees to decide where there is probable cause to believe
someone does not have lawful immigration status. That means treating
anyone who looks or sounds foreign with suspicion. In my mind, that is
just plain wrong.
One could argue that the Coleman amendment is a coercive action
against any State, municipality, or other entity to say to that State,
municipality, or other entity that they must do a series of things,
such as obtaining information on a person's status, like my own, which
I was born in this country. So much for States rights. So much for the
local municipalities know best. For 15 years in the Congress, I have
listened to my Republican colleagues speaking of States rights, of
local rules, of States knowing best. But I guess they do not know best
when it comes to the law enforcement of their own communities.
We don't need a provision such as this. Current law already provides
ample opportunity--ample opportunity--for State and local police to
assist Federal immigration agents in enforcing the laws against
criminals and terrorists. What they cannot do is start asking everyone
they come across for their ``papers.'' ``Let me see your papers.''
States and localities that do want to take on a broader role in
immigration enforcement can enter into a memorandum of understanding
with ICE, receive training in immigration law, and assist in
enforcement operations under Immigration's supervision. That already
exists in the law, and there are communities which have chosen to do
that.
Mr. President, this amendment would create fear in entire
communities, would inevitably deter not only undocumented immigrants
but legal immigrants and citizens from not being subject to being
prosecuted simply because of who they are, what they look like, how
they sound, what their surname is, because God knows what the probable
cause is.
Mr. KENNEDY. Would the Senator yield on that point?
Mr. MENENDEZ. I don't think that is the America we want.
I am happy to yield.
Mr. KENNEDY. I just wonder if the Senator would yield on this point
because this is extremely important. This is about American citizens
too. There are individuals who go to a hospital, people who take their
children to school for vaccinations, and this has the language that if
an official has probable cause to believe they are undocumented, they
can question that individual.
Suppose they question them before they treat them? The way I look at
it and read that, this could be an American who goes in, an American
citizen goes in, and for some reason, some attendant says: Well, I have
reason to believe this is undocumented, let's see all of your papers,
while the person is either trying to be attended to, with a serious
injury, or trying to get their child immunized to protect not only that
child but other children in the classroom. How in the world are they
going to be able to do that without opening up a whole system of
profiling in this country?
I maintain that we have very strong border security and we have very
strong provisions in here in terms of employment security, to try to
make sure we are going to have the right people who are going to be
able to work here and we are going to know who is going to be able to
come into the United States. But this here really seems to me to be
endangering American citizens in a very important way. I was just
wondering if the Senator might comment on that.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Well, I appreciate the question and the Senator's
observations. The Senator is absolutely right. Actually, this makes
hospital workers enforcement workers. This makes your local volunteer
ambulance corps an agent because a municipality may say: We don't want
you to ask that question; we want you to deal with the lifesaving
moment that is before your hands.
As a matter of fact, let's think about an outbreak of disease. We
have an outbreak at a hospital. Do you not want that individual to be
able to go and be treated and contain the outbreak? No, let's find out
what their status is. If you happen to have a surname that is what we
conceptualize as undocumented, or if you don't have command of the
English language in a powerful way, we conceptualize that you must be
undocumented. If you don't have insurance, that must be an indicator of
probable cause, even though there are 40 million U.S. citizens who
don't have

[[Page S6585]]

it. Clearly, this turns people who have professed to protect, to
defend, and to provide health care into agents against their will. That
is why municipalities and States have chosen a different course. They
understand better. That is why I certainly urge a strong ``no'' vote on
the Coleman amendment.

Amendment No. 1184

I wish to turn to another amendment pending before the Senate, the
Cornyn amendment. I will talk about some elements of this to give our
colleagues in the Senate a taste of what is here. This is far from a
technical amendment. It has very substantive consequences, if it were
to be adopted. It actually undermines the ``grand bargain'' that I
understood was struck. Let me give one of the examples of how it
undermines the ``grand bargain.'' A provision of the Cornyn amendment
adds new grounds of deportability for convictions relating to Social
Security account numbers or Social Security cards and relating to
identity fraud. As with virtually all of the other provisions in his
amendment, this suspension is retroactive. So upon passage of this
bill, if it were to become law, these new offenses would go backward,
would become retroactive, so that the acts that occurred before the
date of enactment would become grounds for removal. If part of the goal
is to bring those in the shadows into the light and to apply for a
program, you would have huge numbers of people who would in essence be
caught by this provision in a way that would never allow the earned
legalization aspect of what is being offered as a real possibility for
them. It would undermine the very essence of the ``grand bargain.''
Significantly, this provision would place individuals applying for
legalization in a catch-22 situation. We want them to come forward and
register because we want to know who is here pursuing the American
dream versus who is here to destroy it. Yet if they admit to having
used a false Social Security card to work in the United States, only to
be prosecuted by a U.S. Attorney or one working in concert with the
Department of Homeland Security to selectively target certain
applicants, that individual's ultimate prosecution changes to a removal
because of conduct that occurred prior to the enactment, conduct that
was fundamentally incident to his or her undocumented status.
The potential impact of making literally thousands and thousands of
undocumented workers subject to these provisions would in essence
nullify the very essence of the earned legalization aspect of the
``grand bargain.'' We know that because of the failed employer
sanctions, which this bill undoes and makes sure we have the right type
of employer verification and the right type of sanctions and the right
type of enforcement, undocumented workers have moved consistently in
order to earn a livelihood and support their families in a way that
would be undermined by this amendment. Given ICE'S new interior
enforcement strategy, it seems to me what we will see is the rounding
up of thousands of undocumented workers during worksite enforcement
actions while we are supposedly waiting for the triggers which we
enhanced yesterday. We made those even more difficult, which means it
isn't going to be 18 months for those triggers to take place, it is
going to be a lot more time, if this is what ends up being the final
bill.
In that effort, we are going to have individuals who ultimately are
not going to be subject to the opportunities we supposedly say are a
pathway to earn legalization as part of the overall solution to our
problem. Because the amendment is retroactive, and retroactivity as a
provision of law is something we generally have disdain for, it would
apply even to those applying for admission after the date of enactment.
Clearly, it puts in jeopardy the total element of the legalization
process.
Secondly, to address a different provision of the Cornyn amendment,
it permits secret evidence to be used against an individual without any
opportunity for it to be reviewed. This amendment gives the Attorney
General--and we have seen of late what is capable out of the Justice
Department--unreviewable discretion to use secret evidence to determine
if an alien is ``described in''--not guilty of anything, but just
described in--the national security exclusions within the immigration
law. A person applying for naturalization could have her application
denied and she would never know the reason for that denial, never have
a chance to appeal and prove it was wrong.
If a lawful permanent resident already, somebody who followed the
rules, obeyed the law, waited, came in, now a lawful permanent
resident, maybe even serving their country, was giving money to tsunami
relief and accidentally that money went to a charity controlled, for
example, by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, that person could be denied
citizenship on the basis of secret evidence, and there would be no
review in the courts. In sum, it allows deportation based upon
unreviewable determinations by the executive branch, determinations
that can be based on secret evidence that the person cannot even see,
let alone challenge.

All of these provisions are retroactive. Retroactivity is
antithetical to core American values. What could be more unfair than
changing the rules in the middle of the game. That is why it is
unconstitutional in criminal law and strongly objectionable in a
context like immigration law, where such changes can have profound,
life-altering consequences. Why would we want to repeat the mistakes of
past immigration reform? Retroactivity in that law led to incredible
hardship and had the most strident immigration hardliners questioning
whether the law had gone too far. Retroactivity was eliminated from all
of those provisions during Judiciary Committee markup in past
legislation, but now it emerges again.
We can be tough. We can be smart. The underlying substitute does so
much to move us forward in this regard. But at the end of the day, let
us not undermine the very essence of the constitutional guarantees that
have been upheld by the courts--of judicial review, of due process,
which makes America worthy of fighting for and dying for, the
Constitution, the Bill of Rights that enshrines those essential rights
and guarantees them to all of us, for its enforcement that makes us so
different than so much of the rest of the world. We are moving in this
bill, by a series of amendments--some that would have been adopted and
some that are already pending and others I fear may come--into a state
in which that is continuously eroded to great alarm. I hope the Senate
will reject these because in terms of their pursuit and enforceability,
at the end of the day, they will become real challenges.
We are going to overturn States and municipalities. We will make them
enforce them. Will there be penalties against States and municipalities
that have a different view of public safety? Secret evidence, is that
the new standard for us, secret evidence that is not subject to review,
not subject to be contested? What are we going to permit now?
Retroactivity as a rule of law for the United States? You never know
what you did before may have been right or wrong. That is the essence
of why we don't like retroactivity. We tell people: This is the law,
follow this law. We expect them to do it. But we also don't change it
on them by passing a new law and saying: By the way, that was wrong,
you couldn't do that, even though we told you you could, but
retroactively we changed it; now we catch you in a set of circumstances
in which you have committed a crime. That is why we don't do that
generally in the law. That is why the Cornyn amendment should be
defeated.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tester). The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from New
Jersey for his comments, both on the Coleman amendment and the Cornyn
amendment.
To remind our colleagues, we intend to have votes starting at 12:15.
Yesterday we had some success on a number of different amendments. We
have a number here which we expect votes on through the afternoon. We
will have a full morning and afternoon.
With regard to the Coleman amendment, because the American people
obviously are concerned about security, we are concerned about security
from terrorism. We are concerned as well about security from
bioterrorism or from the dangers of nuclear weapons. We have heard
those words. We have

[[Page S6586]]

taken action on many of them. We still have much to do. But we have in
this legislation taken a number of very important steps with regard to
security. It is important to understand what has been done in this
legislation in terms of security and how the Coleman amendment fails to
meet the test. In a number of areas, it probably endangers our
security. It does so with regard to health care, education. It may even
in other areas as well.
In this legislation, we are doubling the Border Patrol. We are
creating a new electronic eligibility verification system, increasing
penalties on noncompliant employers by a factor of 20. We are
increasing detention space and requiring more detention of undocumented
immigrants, pending adjudication of their cases. We are expanding the
definition of aggravated felony to encompass a wider array of offenses.
We are increasing the penalties related to gang violence, illegal
entry, and illegal reentry. We are increasing penalties related to
document and passport fraud. The list goes on. The question is, does
this amendment add to our security, or does it make us more vulnerable
to a public health crisis, more vulnerable to crime, terrorist attack,
and less competitive?
What we are basically doing with the Coleman amendment is saying to
any teacher, any doctor, any nurse, any public official, if they
believe they have probable cause--and we have to understand what that
means in terms of the individual, how they are going to know there is
probable cause--then they can test the individual that is before them
to find out whether they are undocumented, whether they are legal, or
whether they are an American.
Let's take an example. Tuberculosis, which we have seen grow
dramatically over the last 3 years for a number of different reasons--
71 percent of those who have tuberculosis are foreign. But in order to
protect American children from tuberculosis, we need to screen and
protect those who have tuberculosis; otherwise, we will find the
tuberculosis is going to spread.
Well, what are we going to do? What is important is that if we find
out a person comes in and the family has tuberculosis and the
individual says: Well, I am not sure I am going to treat you because I
am not sure you are an American citizen or if you are undocumented or
if your papers are right, so I am not sure we are going to treat you,
and that family has tuberculosis, the child goes into a classroom with
a communicable disease and infects a number of American children? This
is the typical kind of challenge.
On immunization: Immunization is down in this country dramatically.
What happens? We know when we do not immunize the children, they become
more vulnerable to disease. Maybe these children are going to go into
the public school system and are going to spread that disease. Isn't it
better to make sure they are going to get the immunization? Or are we
going to say to the medical professionals: Well, I think that person is
undocumented. I think they may be illegal. Sure, they have papers. They
look OK. But I am not sure they are OK, so therefore I am not going to
treat them.
This is false security. We have tough security in the bill.
What are we going to say in the situation where we have battered
women--which is taking place today in too many communities across this
country? It is a reality. We might not like it, but it is a reality,
and many of the people who are being battered happen to be immigrants,
undocumented individuals. What are they going to do after they are
getting beaten and beaten and beaten and they go on in to try to get
some medical care? Oh, no. Well, you are undocumented, so we are going
to report you for deportation. Report to deport. That is the Coleman
amendment: Report to deport--trying, in these situations, to meet the
immediate needs.
What is going to happen to the migrant, the undocumented, who sees a
crime, knows the people, is prepared to make sure the gangs who are
distributing drugs--they are a witness to a crime in the community and
they go down to the police department and the first thing the police
officer says is: Well, you look like you are undocumented. Let's see
your papers, and they arrest the person, rather than solving the crime,
rather than stopping the gang.
So this is, I think, false security and unnecessary. We will have a
chance to address that. As we mentioned earlier, the amendment would
prevent the local governments from having the flexibility to reassure
fearful immigrant communities it is safe to come forward for programs
that are absolutely essential to public health and safety. If the
immigrant families are afraid to access the key public health
interventions, such as immunization or screening for communicable
disease, the public health consequences for the entire community are
severe.
When the Nation is attempting to be prepared for the threat of
biological terrorism or serious influenza epidemic, this is a dangerous
policy. Local governments need the flexibility to keep the entire
community safe.
Public health workers should not be enforcers. Public health workers
should not be enforcers of immigration law. This can create a massive
fear of the health care system and upset the trust of a patient-doctor
relationship that many public health workers have worked to build among
the immigrant community for years.
Further, social service and health care providers are unlikely to be
familiar with the complex and constantly changing immigration laws,
which would be needed to determine a patient's status and for which
they would have to undergo extensive training.
I have listened to the Members of the Senate talk about the 1986
immigration laws like they understood it and knew what they were
talking about. How in the world are we going to expect the local
policeman or the local nurse or the local doctor to understand it when
on the floor of the Senate they do not even understand it?
What are going to be the implications? The implications are going to
be: There is going to be increased fear, increased discrimination,
increased prejudice, and increased disruption--not only of people's
lives but also of the public health system, the education system, and
the law enforcement system.
So this amendment does not make sense. At an appropriate time, we
will comment further about it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown). The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I respect the purpose the distinguished
Senator from Minnesota has in advancing this amendment, but I believe
it would have a chilling effect on the reporting of crime by immigrants
whose status is undocumented.
We had a hearing on this subject in Philadelphia, for example. The
chief of police, Sylvester Johnson, had this to say:

Meeting public safety objectives is only possible when the
people trust their law enforcement officials. Fear of
negative consequences or reprisal will undermine this
important element of successful police work.

Many major cities in the United States have adopted so-called
sanctuary city policies, such as Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego,
Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Haven, Portland, Baltimore, Detroit,
Minneapolis, Albuquerque, and New York.
Mayor Bloomberg testified before the Judiciary Committee saying:

Do we really want people who could have information about
criminals, including potential terrorists, to be afraid to go
to the police?

Mayor John Street of Philadelphia, in a letter to me, said:

It is imperative that immigrants who may be witnesses to or
victims of crime not suffer repercussions as they attempt to
give and receive assistance from law enforcement.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full statement of the
analysis of the amendment 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 essential point is that undocumented immigrants, if
they are victims and make a report, or if they are witnesses, or if
they have information about dangerous people--terrorists,
illustratively--should have confidence and feel free to come to the
police. Well-intentioned as this amendment is, I think it would be
counterproductive and unwise.

Amendment No. 1190

Mr. President, I think we are in a position to accept the McCain
amendment when Senator Kennedy returns

[[Page S6587]]

to the floor. The thrust of the amendment offered by Senator McCain,
No. 1190, would provide that undocumented immigrants would have an
obligation to pay Federal back taxes at the time their status is
adjusted under the provisions of the bill.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be added as an original
cosponsor to the McCain amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I note the presence of the Senator from
North Dakota in the Chamber, who intends to speak, so I yield the
floor.

Exhibit 1

Analysis of Amendment

Requiring local law enforcement to inquire about
immigration status undermines both law enforcement efforts
and raises national security concerns:
``Meeting public safety objectives is only possible when
the people trust their law enforcement officials. Fear of
negative consequences or reprisal will undermine this
important element of successful police work.'' [Philadelphia
Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, Written testimony to
SJC, 7/5/06 hearing, p. 1.]
``Crime does not discriminate. Requiring immigration
enforcement by local Departments will create distrust among
persons from foreign lands living in the United States.
Undocumented immigrants will not report victimization or
cooperate in solving crimes or testifying for fear of
deportation.'' [Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester
Johnson, Written testimony to SJC, 7/5/06 hearing, p. 1.]
``If an undocumented person is a victim or a witness of a
crime, we want them to come forward. They should not avoid
local police for fear of deportation.'' [SJC 7/5/06 hearing
transcript, p. 31, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester
Johnson.]
``It is imperative that immigrants who may be witnesses to
or victims of crime not suffer repercussions as they attempt
to give and receive assistance from law enforcement.''
[Letter from Philadelphia Mayor John Street to Sen. Specter.]
``Do we really want people who could have information about
criminals, including potential terrorists, to be afraid to go
to the police?'' [SJC 7/5/06 hearing transcript, p. 27, New
York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.]
``It will also undercut homeland security efforts among
immigrant communities, in that those who that may know
persons who harbor knowledge of terrorist activities will no
longer be willing to come forward to any law enforcement
agency for fear of reprisal against themselves or their loved
ones.'' [Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson,
Written testimony to SJC, 7/5/06 hearing, p. 1.]
Immigrants who live in fear of local authorities may
undermine public health efforts:
``In the event of a flu pandemic or bioterrorist attack,
the City would provide prophylaxis to all of its infected
residents regardless of immigration status. The immigrant
population, due to fear, might refrain from identifying
themselves if infected, potentially resulting in the spread
of disease leading to a public health crisis.'' [Letter from
Philadelphia Mayor John Street to Sen. Specter.]
``Do we really want people with contagious diseases not to
seek medical treatment? Do we really want people not to get
vaccinated against communicable diseases?'' [SJC 7/5/06
hearing transcript, p. 27, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.]
Local law enforcement officials who inquire about
immigration status may subject themselves and their offices
to civil litigation and claims of racial profiling:
``[A]ll Police Departments are susceptible to civil
litigation as a result of civil rights suits. . . . [T]ime in
court on a civil suit equates to fewer officers of our
streets and settlements, court costs, and Plaintiff's rewards
all cost all citizens precious resources. With questionable
federal law authority to enforce such immigration laws, and
with a precedent of local police being sued for assisting in
the enforcement of immigration law, the probability of civil
suits against local departments as primary enforcers is a
major concern.'' [Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester
Johnson, Written testimony to SJC, 7/5/06 hearing, p. 2-3.]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is--I will wait for
Senator Kennedy to appear on the floor--my understanding is there would
be an agreement to allow me to offer my amendment at this point, which
would require me to set aside whatever pending amendment exists. If
that is acceptable, I will do that, offer my amendment, and then speak
on my amendment.
So I ask whether that it is acceptable for me to ask consent to set
aside the pending amendment.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I think it is acceptable for the Senator
from North Dakota to ask that the pending amendment be set aside. I
will not object, and I am the only Senator on the floor--unless the
Presiding Officer objects.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending
amendment be set aside so I may be able to offer an amendment that is
at the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 1181 to Amendment No. 1150

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask for the amendment's immediate
consideration.
The bill clerk read as follows:

The Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan], for himself,
and Mrs. Boxer, proposes an amendment numbered 1181 to
amendment No. 1150.

The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To sunset the Y-1 nonimmigrant visa program after a 5-year
period)

At the end of section 401, add the following:
(d) Sunset of Y-1 Visa Program.--
(1) Sunset.--Notwithstanding any other provision of this
Act, or any amendment made by this Act, no alien may be
issued a new visa as a Y-1 nonimmigrant (as defined in
section 218B of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as added
by section 403) after the date that is 5 years after the date
that the first such visa is issued.
(2) Construction.--Nothing in paragraph (1) may be
construed to affect issuance of visas to Y-2B nonimmigrants
(as defined in such section 218B), under the AgJOBS Act of
2007, as added by subtitle C, or any visa program other than
the Y-1 visa program.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator
Durbin be added as a cosponsor to the amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this amendment is relatively simple. It is
an amendment that would sunset the so-called guest worker or temporary
worker provision.
As my colleagues know, I was on the floor the day before yesterday
attempting to abolish the temporary or guest worker provision. I failed
to do that. We had a vote and, regrettably, in the Senate they count
the votes, and when they counted those votes, I was on the short end. I
have felt very strongly about this issue, and I wish to describe why.
But having lost that vote, what I next propose is that we sunset the
temporary or guest worker provision.
Let me describe that even if we were not on the floor of the Senate
talking about immigration today, we have a great deal of legal
immigration in this country. We have a system by which there is a quota
where we allow in people from other countries to become citizens of our
country, to have a green card, to work, and then work toward
citizenship.
Let me describe that even if we were not here with an immigration
proposal, here is who would be coming to our country. The 2006 numbers,
I believe, are: 1.2 million people--1,266,000 people--last year came to
this country legally; 117,000 of them came from Africa; 422,000 came
from Asia; 164,000 came from Europe; 414,000 came from various
locations in North America, including the Caribbean, Central America,
and other portions of North America; 138,000 came from South America.
Let me reiterate, the cumulation is 1.2 million people that came to
this country legally, and received green cards last year. So it is not
as if there is not immigration--legal immigration. We have a process by
which we allow that to happen.
There are people, even as I speak this morning, who are in Africa or
Europe or Asia or South America or Central America, and they have
wanted to come to this country, and they have made application. They
have waited 5 years, 7 years, 10 years, and perhaps they have risen to
the top of the list or close to the top of the list to--under the legal
process for coming to this country--be able to gain access to this
country.
Then, they read we have a new proposal on immigration. No, it is not
that immigration quota where you apply and you wait over a long period
of time. It is that if you came into this country by December 31 of
last year--snuck in, walked in, flew in--illegally, we, with this
legislation, deem you to be here legally. We say: Yes, you came here
illegally. You were among 12 million of them who came here illegally--
some of them walking across, I assume, on December 31, who crossed the
southern border--and this legislation says: Oh, by the way, that does
not matter. What we are going to do is describe you as being here
legally, and we are going to give you a permit to go to work.

[[Page S6588]]

What does that say to people in Africa or Asia or Europe who have
been waiting because they filed, they believed this was all on the
level, there is a process by which you come to this country legally--it
is quota--and they decided to go through that process? What does it say
to them that now we have said: Do you know what. You would have been
better off sneaking across the border on December 31 of last year
because, with a magic wand, this legislation would say you are
perfectly legal.
In addition to the 1.2 million people who came here legally, under
this bill there would be another 1.5 million people coming to do
agricultural jobs. There are also 12 million people who have come here
illegally. Let me say quickly I understand there will be some of them
who have been here 10 years, 20 years, and more, who came here--they
didn't come legally, I understand that--but they have been here for two
or three decades. They have raised their families here, they have been
model citizens, they have worked. I understand we are not going to
round them up and ship them out of this country. I understand that.
There needs to be a sensitive, thoughtful way to address the status of
those who have been here for a long period of time and who have been
model citizens. This is different than deciding that those who walked
across the border on December 31 of last year are going to be deemed
legal. That is very different.

But in addition to those questions about the legal status of 12
million people who came here without legal authorization, the other
question is: Should we decide to bring additional people into this
country who aren't now here to take American jobs under a provision
called the guest worker or temporary worker provision?
Now, you don't have to read many newspapers in the morning to see the
next story about the company that closed its plant, fired its workers,
and moved its jobs to China. You don't have to spend a lot of time
looking for stories such as that. They are all around us, American
companies exporting American jobs in search of cheap labor in China,
Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and at exactly the same time, we see
all of these stories about exporting American jobs. We now see the
urgings of the biggest enterprises in this country, many of which do
export these jobs in search of cheap labor. We see their urgings to
allow them to bring in additional cheap labor from outside of this
country into this country to assume jobs American workers now have.
They say these workers are necessary because they can't find American
workers to do those jobs. That is not true. They don't want to pay a
decent wage for those jobs. The people across the counter at the
convenience store, the people who make the beds in the morning at the
hotels, if they paid a decent wage, they will get workers, but they
don't want to have to do that. What they want to do is bring in cheap
labor, and that is why we have a guest or a temporary worker provision.
I talked yesterday on the floor of the Senate about Circuit City, the
story which reinforces all of this for me. Circuit City, a corporation
all of us know, announced they have decided to fire 3,400 workers. The
CEO of Circuit City, it says in the newspaper, makes $10 million a
year. They announced they are going to fire 3,400 workers at Circuit
City because they make $11 an hour and that is too much to pay a
worker. They want to fire their workers and hire less experienced
workers at a lower wage. This pernicious downward pressure on income in
this country--fewer benefits, less retirement, less health care, lower
income--is, in my judgment, initiated by the export of American jobs
for low wages and the import of cheap labor for low wages, all of it
coming together to say to the American worker: It is a different day
for you and a different time for you. Don't expect the kind of wages
you used to have. There is downward pressure on all of those wages, and
that is part and parcel of what this proposal is: temporary guest
workers.
Let me show you a graph I put up the other day, and this is a graph
that has 200,000 temporary workers, because the proposal I tried to
completely abolish was bringing in 400,000 temporary workers a year.
That was cut by the Bingaman amendment to 200,000 a year. Let me
describe how it works, because I am anxious to put a tape recorder on
somebody and go listen to how they describe this at a town meeting, if
they decide to vote for this.
Two hundred thousand foreign workers can come in as temporary or
guest workers for 2 years. So these 200,000 come in for 2 years; then
the second year another 200,000 can come in, so you have 400,000 the
second year, but the 200,000 who come in can come in for 2 years, and
they can bring their family if they wish. Then they have to go home for
a year and take their family with them, and then they can come back for
2 more years. Or, they can come in for 2 years, not bring their family,
go home for a year, and bring their family for another two years. Or,
they can decide to come in for 2 years without a family, 2 years
without a family, 2 years without a family, as long as they stay 1 year
between each of the 2-year periods; as long as they stay 1 year outside
of this country between those periods. It is the most Byzantine thing I
have seen.
Now, what are the consequences of it? The consequences are this: This
is cumulative, so what we have are these blocks of 200,000 workers who
come and go, come and go. They stay 2 years, leave a year, bring their
family, maybe don't bring their family. It is unbelievable. We are not
talking about a few million people here. Add all these family members
to these 200,000 workers who come for 2 years with their families and
ask yourselves: What kind of immigration is this? By the way, where
will they get jobs when they come to this country? We already have an
agricultural provision that is in this legislation, so these are not
farm workers. We are not talking about people who come and pick
strawberries here. We are talking about people who will assume jobs--we
are told--in manufacturing. Why? Because we don't have enough American
workers in manufacturing? Are you kidding me?
I have described at length on the floor of the Senate the people who
lost their jobs because their manufacturing jobs went to China for 20
cents an hour labor, 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. They want to
know where to get people to work in manufacturing? Go find the people
who were laid off--thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions
laid off--because their company decided they were going to make their
products in China. If they need hints, go back and read my previous
speeches on the floor of the Senate. Fruit of the Loom underwear, a lot
of folks worked there; not anymore. Levi's, not any more. Huffy
Bicycles, no more. Radio Flyer, Little Red Wagon, no more. Fig Newton
Cookies, no. All of those folks worked for all of those companies.
Pennsylvania House Furniture.

My colleague from Pennsylvania is on the floor. Pennsylvania House
Furniture is a great example of what has been happening, if you want to
find some great workers, some real craftsmen. I know I have told this
story before, and I will tell it again, because it is so important and
so emblematic of what is going on.
Not many people know it, but Pennsylvania House Furniture, which is
fine furniture--those folks in Pennsylvania who use Pennsylvania wood
and were craftsmen to put together upper-end furniture, they all got
fired because La-Z-Boy bought them and they decided they wanted to move
Pennsylvania House Furniture to China, and they did. Now they ship the
Pennsylvania wood to China, make the furniture and sell it back here as
Pennsylvania furniture. But on the last day of work with the last piece
of furniture these Pennsylvania House Furniture craftsmen produced--not
many people know that they turned the last piece of furniture upside
down, and as it came off the line, all of these craftsmen who for years
have made some of the finest furniture in this country, decided to sign
the bottom of that piece of furniture. Somebody in this country has a
piece of furniture and they don't know it has the signatures of all the
craftsmen at Pennsylvania House Furniture on the bottom of their piece
of furniture. Do you know why they signed it? Because they understood
how good they were. They didn't lose their jobs to China because they
didn't do good work. They were wonderful craftsmen and they were proud
of their work and

[[Page S6589]]

they wanted to sign that piece of furniture. Somebody has that piece of
furniture today, but none of those craftsmen have a job today. If
somebody is looking for a manufacturing worker, I can steer them in the
right direction. We have plenty of people in this country who need
these jobs.
We are told two things that are contradictory. We are told there is
bona fide border security in this bill. I happen to think the way you
deal with immigration, first and foremost, is to provide border
security. If you don't have border security, you don't have immigration
reform because all you will do is nick at the edges and continue to
have a stream of illegal workers flowing into this country. So the
first and most important step is to provide border security.
I was here in 1986, and I heard the promises of border security, but
in fact, there wasn't border security. Employer sanctions. In fact,
there were not employer sanctions that were enforced. No enforcement on
the border of any consequence; no enforcement with respect to employer
sanctions.
We are told a guest worker provision is necessary because we cannot
provide border security. Several of those who have been involved with
this compromise have said: Workers will come here illegally or legally;
one way or another, they are going to come in. My colleague has a
couple of times pointed to the Governor of Arizona--and I suspect she
did say this; I don't contest that--the Governor of Arizona, Governor
Napolitano, says: You know, if you build a 50-foot-high fence, those
who want to come in will get a 51-foot ladder.
Well, if that is the case, if Governor Napolitano is correct, then I
guess we are not going to have border security unless we cut the legs
off 51-foot-ladders. The implication of that is: Illegal immigration is
going to occur, like it or not. Therefore, let's have a temporary
worker program, which means we will describe as legal those who come in
illegally. That is the point. I mean, I don't understand this; I just
don't.
So I lose the amendment fair and square to try to strike that
temporary worker provision. I understand where the votes were on it.
But I come to the floor suggesting let's do one additional thing. Let's
at least sunset this provision.
Here is what will happen for 10 years under the temporary worker
provision. This chart shows 10 years, 200,000 in the first year,
200,000 the second year. That first group of 200,000 will be on their
second year, so as those 200,000 continue their work the second year,
another 200,000 will join them, and then by the fourth year, we have
600,000. By the fifth year, we have 800,000.
My proposition is this: Why don't we decide to sunset this at the end
of 5 years and take a look at it and see. We have plenty of experience
with claims that have never borne fruit here on the floor of the
Senate. Why don't we take a look at 5 years and see where the claims
were made for the temporary worker provisions. Were they claims that
turned out to have been accurate or not?
Now, my understanding is--and I was looking for a statement in the
press that was reporting on a colleague who was part of the compromise,
if I can find it. Let me read from Congress Daily, Wednesday, May 23,
which would have been yesterday.

One change that might win over some would be a sunset
provision which Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat, North Dakota,
said he wanted to offer after his proposal to eliminate the
guest worker program failed.

Continuing to quote:

Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, who helped
negotiate the compromise immigration bill, said today he
would not consider the sunset proposal a deal breaker.

I am quoting now Senator Martinez from Congress Daily:

Labor conditions might change, Martinez said. I don't see
why in five years we shouldn't revisit what we have done.

Martinez is among a group of roughly a dozen Senators dubbed the
``grand bargainers,'' who have agreed to vote as a block to stop any
amendments they believe would unravel the fragile immigration
compromise on the Senate floor.
So at least one of the grand bargainers, Senator Martinez, has told
Congress Daily that the amendment I offer is not a deal breaker. He
says:

I think it is perfectly reasonable.

Again quoting him:

I don't see why in five years we should not revisit what we
have done.

So I would say to my colleagues, at least one of the ``grand
bargainers,'' so described by Congress Daily, has said the amendment
that I offer with Senator Boxer and Senator Durbin to provide a sunset
after 5 years to the temporary or guest worker provision would not be a
deal breaker.
We have passed a lot of legislation in the Congress that represents
important policy choices and a number of those pieces of legislation
have sunset provisions. The farm bill. The farm bill has sunset
provisions in it. The Energy bill, the bankruptcy reform bill, the
intelligence reform bill, all have sunset provisions. The purpose:
Let's find out what happened and then determine what we do next. A
sunset clause doesn't mean a piece of legislation will not get
reauthorized. It might. If all of the claims that buttress the original
passage turn out to be accurate, then you might well want to
reauthorize it. But with other pieces of legislation, we have sunsetted
key provisions. Why wouldn't we want to do the same with respect to
temporary workers, which will open the gate and say come into this
country.

This immigration bill that we have, with 12 million people being
deemed legal, who came without legal authorization, that is not enough.
We need more. I know we had discussion yesterday about chicken pluckers
on the floor of the Senate. How much money will chicken pluckers make?
Well, I will tell you one thing about chicken pluckers and those who do
that kind of work. They are never going to make the money they used to
make because of downward pressure on wages. That downward pressure in
that sector comes directly from a massive quantity of cheap labor that
has come into this country. That may be all right if you are not
plucking chickens.
If you are working in one of those plants and you see what happened
to wage standards and wage rates, it is very hard to say we are making
progress on behalf of the American worker. We are not. That is what
brings me to the floor of the Senate. I regret that I disagree with
some very good friends in the Congress on these issues. But the fact is
that this is very important public policy. This public policy and
things that attend to it and relate to it determine what kind of jobs
we are going to have in the future, what kind of economic expansion we
will have, and what can the middle-income families expect for
themselves and their kids and their lives.
I am not going to speak much longer, but I wish to say this. I remind
all my colleagues where we have been. Almost a century ago, there was a
man who was killed. I wrote about him and said he died of lead
poisoning. He actually was shot 54 times--James Fyler. The reason he
was shot 54 times almost a century ago is he was one of these people
who decided to fight for workers' rights in this country. He believed
that people who were coal miners and went into a coal mine ought to be
able to expect, one, a fair wage; two, they ought to expect to be able
to work in a safe workplace; they ought to have the right to organize
and fight for those things. For that, he was shot 54 times.
For over a century, beginning with that, we dramatically, and through
great difficulty, improved standards in this country. We demanded safe
workplaces, fair labor standards, and all these things that would raise
people up. We expended the middle class and created a country that is
extraordinary, a middle class in which they could find good jobs that
paid well and had decent fringe benefits. They negotiated for decent
health care and retirement benefits. We did something extraordinary in
this country. That didn't happen by accident.
At this point, all around the country, with middle-income workers,
they see a retraction of those things, a downward pressure on their
income, much less job security, and too many workers being treated akin
to wrenches--use them up and throw them away. If you pay $11 an hour,
that is too much. You find workers for $8 an hour, with no experience.
Terrific. Or you can pay 30 cents an hour in China; that is even
better.

[[Page S6590]]

You may say, what does that have to do with this bill? A lot, in my
judgment. That is what pushes me to come to the floor on these
amendments--not because I wish to hear myself talk or because I wish to
take on friends but because I think the direction we are headed in is
wrong. Yes, we have an immigration problem. I accept that and I
understand that. I believe the first step to resolving it is border
security because, otherwise, 10 or 15 years from now, we will be back
with another immigration problem, and we will understand there was not
border security. Those who tell us there is border security are the
same ones who tell us, as Janet Napolitano says, that if we build a 50-
foot fence, they will get a 51-foot ladder. You can't stop it, so
declare it legal. Illegal immigration is going to occur, like it or
not; therefore, let's have a temporary worker program. I disagree with
that.
The fact is, I don't know all the nuances of what happened this week.
I know this: The price for the support of the national Chamber of
Commerce in the last bill brought to the Senate--the price for the
support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was to allow them to bring in
this cheap labor in the form of guest or temporary workers. I didn't
support it then; I don't support it now.
We have 1.2 million people who came in legally last year. I support
that process. That is a quota system. The process works. We refresh and
nurture this country with immigrants. So 1.2 million were allowed in
under the legal immigration system last year. That doesn't count the
agricultural workers who would come in under the AgJobs program in this
bill. That is another 1 million-plus people.
I also understand the urging and the interest to try to be sensitive
in resolving the status of people who have been here a long time. Yes,
they came without legal authorization, but they have been model
citizens. They have lived up the block, down the street, and on the
farm, and they have been among us and raised their families and gone to
school; they have good jobs. Should we resolve their status with some
sensitivity? Of course, I fully support that. But you do not resolve
that, in my judgment, by pointing to December 31 of last year and
saying, by the way, anybody who came across December 31 of last year
and prior to that is considered to have legal status in our country.
That is the wrong way to resolve it.
Let me do two things. Let me urge my colleagues to support a 5-year
sunset on this legislation. Let me say a second time to those with whom
I disagree, I respect their views. I disagree strongly with them. I
mean no disrespect on the floor of the Senate about the views they
hold. They perhaps hold them as strongly as I hold my views. I believe
in my heart, when you look at people who got up this morning and got
dressed and went to work, many of whom packed a lunch bucket, they came
home and took a shower after work because they work hard and sweat,
those people want something better for their lives in this country.
They want the ability to get ahead and to get a decent wage for their
work.
Regrettably, all too often, that is being denied them by a strategy
that says this country values cheap labor.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Massachusetts is
recognized.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the proposal of
the Senator from North Dakota. I appreciated over the period of these
days the good exchanges we have had on the issues of the labor
conditions in this country, which is what this legislation is all
about.
I am going to put a chart behind me that describes the circumstances
of what is happening to undocumented workers and to American workers in
New Bedford, MA. This is a picture of a company in New Bedford, MA.
This was taken probably in the last 4 weeks. These were the
undocumented workers in New Bedford. This sweatshop is replicated in
city after city all over this country. One of the key issues is: Can we
do something about it? We say yes, and we say our legislation makes a
very important downpayment to making sure we do.
Many of these individuals--not all--are undocumented workers. This is
what happened to these workers. These workers were fined for going to
the bathroom; denied overtime pay; docked 15 minutes pay for every
minute they were late to work; fired for talking while on the clock;
forced to ration toilet paper, which typically ran out before 9 a.m. So
this is the condition in sweatshops in New Bedford, MA.
These conditions exist in other parts of my State, regrettably, and
other parts of this country. Why? Because we have, unfortunately,
employers who are prepared to exploit the current condition of
undocumented workers in this country--potentially, close to 12\1/2\
million are undocumented. Because they are undocumented, employers can
have them in these kinds of conditions. If they don't like it, they
tell them they will be reported to the immigration service and be
deported. That is what is happening today.
I yield to no one in terms of my commitment to working conditions or
for fairness and decency in the workplace. That is happening today. The
fact that we have those undocumented workers and they are being
exploited and paid low wages has what kind of impact in terms of
American workers? It depresses their wages. That should not be too hard
to grasp. Those are the facts.
Now what do we try to do with this legislation? We are trying to say:
Look, the time of the undocumented is over. You are safe. You will not
be deported. Therefore, you have labor protections. If the employer
doesn't do that, you have the right to complain, a right to file
something with the Labor Department, and we are going to have a
thousand labor inspectors who are going to go through the plants in the
country to make sure you are protected. That doesn't exist today. It
will under this legislation.
So what we are saying is that those who are coming in to work
temporarily are going to be treated equally under the U.S. labor laws.
Employers must provide them workers' compensation. So if something
happens to them in the workplace, they will be compensated rather than
thrown out on the street. Employers with histories of worker abuse
cannot participate in the program. There are the penalties for
employers who break the rules, which never existed before.
Now, we say: Well, you may very well be taking jobs from American
workers. That is the question. What do you have to do to show that you
are not going to take jobs from American workers? Well, if the employer
wants to hire a guest worker, the employer must advertise extensively
before applying for a temporary worker. The employer must find out if
any American responds to that. If they do, they get the job. So the
employer has to advertise and the employer must hire any qualified
American applicant. Temporary workers are restricted in areas with high
unemployment, and employers cannot undercut American wages by paying
temporary workers less.
So we are saying the temporary workers are going to come in and be
treated as American workers, and those who are undocumented are going
to be treated as American workers. That is not the condition today.
That is the condition in this legislation. How do we get there? Well,
we get there with a comprehensive approach. What do you mean by a
comprehensive approach? We are saying a comprehensive approach is that
you are going to have border security. That is part of it. But you are
also going to have the opportunity for people who are going to come in
here through the front door--if you have a limited number of people
coming in through the front door, and that number is down to 200,000
now, they will be able to come through the front door, and they will be
able--in areas where American workers are not present, willing or able
to work--to work in the American economy, with labor protections, which
so many do not have today.
But we are going to have to say you need a combination of things--the
security at the border. You have a guest worker program which is part
of the combination. Is that it? No, no, it is not it. You have to be
able to show your employer that you have the biometric card to show
that you are legally in the United States. Therefore, you have rights.
If that employer hires other people who do not have that card, they are
subject to severe penalties. That doesn't exist today.

[[Page S6591]]

So when we hear all these voices about what is happening about the
exploitation of workers, that happens to be true today. But those of us
who have been working on this are avoiding that with the proposal we
have on this particular issue.
Included in this proposal--the Senator makes a very good point,
although I never thought we sunsetted the Bankruptcy Act. I wish we
had. In this legislation, we have the provisions which set up and
establish a commission. The commission in the legislation does this: In
section 412 we say: Standing commission on immigration and labor
markets. The purpose of the commission is what? To study the
nonimmigrant programs and the numerical limits imposed by law on
admission of nonimmigrants; to study numerical limits imposed by law on
immigrant visas, to study the limitations throughout the merit-based
system, and to make recommendations to the President and the Congress
with respect to these programs.

So we have included in this legislation a very important provision to
review the program we have. That panel is made up of representatives of
the worker community, as well as the business community to make these
annual reports to Congress about how this program is working so that we
will then be able to take action: Not later than 18 months after date
of enactment and every year thereafter, submit a report to the
President and the Congress that contains the findings, the analysis
conducted under paragraph 1; make recommendations regarding adjustments
of the program so as to meet the labor market needs of the United
States.
What we have built into this is a proposal to constantly review this
program and report back to the Congress, so if we want to make the
judgment to change the numbers, the conditions, the various incentives,
we have the opportunity to do so. We believe--and I think the Senator
makes a valid point--that it is useful to have self-corrective
opportunities. He would do it by ending the program, by finishing it,
by sunsetting it. We do it by having a review by people who can make a
judgment and a decision and give information to Congress so that we can
do it.
There is one final point I wish to make. We have a system, as the
Senator from North Dakota pointed out, where people will work here, go
back to their country of origin for a period of time, come back to
work, go back to their country, and come back to work. Under our
proposal, they get a certain number of points under the merit system
which help move them on a pathway toward a green card and toward
citizenship.
I wish that merit system could be changed in a way that favored
workers more extensively and provided a greater balance between low
skill and high skill because the labor market demands both. If you read
the reports of the Council of Economic Advisers, you find there is a
need for high skill, but 8 out of the 10 critical occupations are also
low skill. We have tried, during this process, to see if we couldn't
find equal incentives for both.
It is a fair enough criticism to say this merit system is more skewed
toward the high skilled than it is toward the low skilled, but there
are still very important provisions and protections in there for low
skilled, and there are additional points added in case of family
associations or if you are a member of an American family.
I really do not see the need. We moved from 400,000 down to 200,000.
This is a modest program at best. We have in the legislation the report
that will be made available to the Congress on a variety of areas. We
have been very careful to make sure that everyone who is going to
participate in this program, who is going to come in legally, is going
to have the protections for working families today. That doesn't exist
today. This legislation does protects them. The amendment of the
Senator from North Dakota would cut out those provisions with regard to
the temporary worker program.
The fact is, we need some workers in this country. All of us will
battle and take great pride in being the champion of the increase in
the minimum wage, and I commend my friend from North Dakota for his
support over the years in increasing the minimum wage. We are very
hopeful that we are going to finally get that increase in the next
couple of days as part of this other legislation, the supplemental. We
will be out here trying to get further increases in protections for
American workers.
This is a modest program. It has the self-corrective aspect to it. It
is a program that ought to be tried, and it ought to be implemented.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Pennsylvania is
recognized.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, recognizing the good-faith interest of
the Senator from North Dakota in proposing this amendment, I
nonetheless believe it should be rejected by the Senate. What the
Senator from North Dakota has here is a fallback position. He offered
an amendment yesterday to eliminate the guest worker program. Having
failed there, he has a fallback position of trying to have it
sunsetted.
There is no doubt about the need for guest workers in our economy.
Last year in the Judiciary Committee, we held extensive hearings on
this matter. We did not hold hearings this year, and we did not process
this legislation through the Judiciary Committee, which in retrospect
may have been a mistake, but here we are. But we have an ample record
from last year.
We had the testimony of Professor Richard Freeman from Harvard
outlining the basic fact that immigration raises not only the GDP of
the United States because we have more people now to do useful
activities, but it also raises the part of the GDP that goes to the
current residents in our country.
We heard testimony from Professor Henry Holzer of Georgetown
University to the effect that immigration is a good thing for the
overall economy. ``It does lower costs. It lowers prices. It enables us
to produce more goods and services and to produce them more
efficiently.''
The executive director of the Stanford Law School program on law,
economics, and business, Dan Siciliano, testified that there is a
``mismatch between our U.S.-born workers' age, skills, and willingness
to work, and the jobs that are being created in the economy, in part as
a function of our own demographics, whether they be elder care, retail,
daycare, or other types of jobs.''
There is no doubt that there is a tremendous need for a guest worker
program in our restaurants, hotels, on our farms, in landscaping,
wherever one turns.
The Assistant Secretary of Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor
testified earlier this month before the House Immigration Subcommittee
that there are three fundamental reasons the United States needs
immigrants to fuel our economy. That is the testimony of Assistant
Secretary Leon Sequeira. The reasons he gives are that we have an aging
workforce; we do not have enough people of working age to support the
economy and support the social welfare programs, such as Social
Security for the aging population; and immigrants contribute to
innovation and entrepreneurship.
The chart which had been posted shows that the guest worker program
is being treated fairly. Senator Kennedy has outlined in some detail
the review and analysis of the program, so the Congress is in a
position to make modifications, if necessary.
After the laborious efforts in producing this bill, it would be my
hope that we would not have to revisit it on an automatic basis in 5
years. If we find a need to do so, we will be in a position to
undertake that review and to have congressional action if any is
warranted. But on the basis of the record we have before us, I think
this amendment ought to be rejected, and I urge my colleagues to do
just that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, unless the Senator from North Dakota wishes
to briefly respond to Senator Specter, let me speak for 3 or 4 minutes.
I join Senator Specter in urging our colleagues to defeat this
amendment. This is simply a light version of the amendment we defeated
a couple days ago that would have eliminated the temporary worker
program.
The problem here is twofold. First, there has been a basic agreement
that even though Republicans generally did not want to allow illegal
immigrants to remain in the United States and, in some situations, be
permitted to stay

[[Page S6592]]

here for the rest of their lives, if that is their desire, and even get
a green card and ultimately become citizens, there was an understanding
that certain tradeoffs had to occur if we were going to get
legislation. Part of the legislation does enable some 12 to 15 million
people to have that right, as well as immigrants whose applications are
pending, many of whom have no reasonable expectation of being able to
naturalize, to actually be able to come here and get green cards and
naturalize, perhaps some 4 million people.
If we have a temporary worker program, which is part of what Senators
such as myself were proposing to relieve our labor shortages, if that
program is only in existence temporarily but these other benefits are
conferred permanently, you can see that you have a significant
imbalance in the legislation.
Somebody said: What is mine is mine, and what is yours is up for
grabs. In other words, one side pockets the ability of all the illegal
immigrants to stay here, to get citizenship rights if they go through
all of the process that enables them to do that, but the temporary
worker program, which is desired by many in the business community and
many foreign nationals who want the opportunity to come here and work,
is only going to be temporary, and that might go away. That is not a
fair way to proceed to the legislation, to have what you like is
permanent, what I like is only temporary.
But there is a deeper problem. The whole point of having a temporary
worker program is to ensure we are going to meet our labor needs in the
future. We don't know exactly what those labor needs are, but they are
going to be substantial. If you cannot plan with certainty that you
know you can expand your business, you can make the capital investment
in whatever the business is--let's say a meatpacking plant--that you
are going to need some foreign nationals to come here on a temporary
basis with a temporary visa to meet the employment needs because you
found in the past that there are not sufficient Americans who have
applied for that kind of work in the past, so you know you are going to
need the temporary worker program, but you don't know whether that
program is going to be in existence in 5 years, are you going to make
the capital investment necessary? Are you going to be able to provide
more tax base, more employment opportunities for Americans, as well as
others, provide for more consumer choice in the country if you don't
know you are going to have the labor force necessary to meet your
needs?
Having a temporary worker program is not going to meet our long-term
needs. As a result, I suggest that for planning purposes, for being
able to know that labor pool is going to be available if we need it, we
are going to have to have this temporary worker program. Therefore,
there is not very much difference between simply eliminating the
program now and saying in 5 years it is going to evaporate unless we
take steps to reinitiate it.
I urge my colleagues to vote against the amendment. We defeated an
amendment a few days ago. This is a killer amendment. Everybody knows
that if this program goes away, it undercuts the entire program we
tried to craft in a bipartisan way. We have to relieve the magnet of
illegal employment in this country. That magnet is jobs that Americans
won't do. As long as there is an excess of labor demand over supply,
that magnet for illegal immigration is going to continue to pull people
across our borders. That magnet is demagnetized when we have a
temporary worker program that says we now have a legal way for you to
meet your labor needs. It can be done within the rule of law. It is
based on temporary workers. We need to keep that in this bill. It
cannot be subject to some kind of a sunset so that it disappears 5
years from now and we have no idea at that point how to meet our labor
needs.
I urge my colleagues, as we did 2 days ago, to reject the Dorgan
amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.
Mr. SPECTER. Will the Senator yield to me for a very brief unanimous
consent request?
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, of course I will yield.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator is recognized.

Amendment No. 1168, as Modified

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
previously agreed to Hutchison amendment No. 1168 be modified to read
``on page 7, line 2.''
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The
amendment is so modified.
Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield for a request?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 12:15
p.m., the Senate proceed to a vote in relation to the Akaka amendment
No. 1186, to be followed by a vote in relation to the Coleman amendment
No. 1158; that no amendments be in order to either amendment prior to
the vote; that there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided and
controlled in the usual form prior to each vote and that the second
vote in the sequence be 10 minutes in length; further, that at 2:15
p.m., the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Dorgan amendment
No. 1181, with 5 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled in
the usual form prior to the vote, with no amendment in order to the
Dorgan amendment prior to the vote, all without further intervening
action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. SPECTER. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, I ask only
that the Senator from Massachusetts amend the request to give Senator
Coleman 5 minutes before the 12:15 vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, Senator
Durbin will ask to speak for 10 minutes, and we will do that in
addition to the 10 minutes I will want to speak before my vote, if that
is acceptable.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the amended unanimous
consent request is agreed to.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I understand the request, the time the
Senator is getting is prior to his vote at 2:15.
Mr. DORGAN. Prior to my vote.
Mr. KENNEDY. And there will be time prior to that available as well
for the Senator from Illinois.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, following the entry of that unanimous
consent request, I would ask the Senator from Massachusetts if we could
call up the McCain amendment with the modification change which is at
the desk and ask that it be adopted.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the pending amendment is
set aside and the Kennedy unanimous consent request, as amended by
Senator Dorgan and Senator Specter, is agreed to.

Amendment No. 1190, as Modified

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I urge adoption of the McCain amendment
with the modifications which are at the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment, as
modified.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Specter], for Mr.
McCain, for himself, Mr. Graham, and Mr. Burr, proposes an
amendment numbered 1190, as modified, to amendment No. 1150.

The amendment, as modified, is as follows:

On page 293 redesignate paragraphs (3) as (4) and (4) as
(5).
On page 293, between lines 33 and 34, insert the following:
``(3) Payment of income taxes.--
``(A) In general.--Not later than the date on which status
is adjusted under this section, the alien establishes the
payment of any applicable Federal tax liability by
establishing that--
``(i) no such tax liability exists;
``(ii) all outstanding liabilities have been paid; or
``(iii) the alien has entered into an agreement for payment
of all outstanding liabilities with the Internal Revenue
Service.
``(B) Applicable federal tax liability.--For purposes of
clause (i), the term `applicable Federal tax liability' means
liability for Federal taxes, including penalties and
interest, owed for any year during the period of employment
required by subparagraph (D)(i) for which the statutory
period for assessment of any deficiency for such taxes has
not expired.
``(C) IRS cooperation.--The Secretary of the Treasury shall
establish rules and procedures under which the Commissioner
of Internal Revenue shall provide documentation

[[Page S6593]]

to an alien upon request to establish the payment of all
taxes required by this subparagraph.
``(D) In general.--The alien may satisfy such requirement
by establishing that--
``(i) no such tax liability exists;
``(ii) all outstanding liabilities have been met; or
``(iii) the alien has entered into an agreement for payment
of all outstanding liabilities with the Internal Revenue
Service and with the department of revenue of each State to
which taxes are owed.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, would
somebody tell the body what the McCain amendment is?
Mr. SPECTER. Yes. As I had explained earlier this morning, the McCain
amendment has a provision for the payment or a requirement of the
payment of back Federal taxes.
Mr. MENENDEZ. The payment of back Federal taxes?
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, it calls for payment of back Federal
taxes.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I have not had an opportunity to see the
amendment, so I would object at this time. I may not ultimately object,
but I would object at this time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection of the Senator from New Jersey
is acknowledged.
The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.

Amendment No. 1181

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my colleague from Arizona used the dreaded
words ``killer amendment.'' It is like killer bees and killer whales.
On the Senate floor, it is ``killer amendment.'' Pass this amendment,
and we will kill the bill, we are told.
I said yesterday that it is like the loose thread on a cheap sweater:
You pull the thread, and the arm falls off or, God forbid, the whole
thing comes apart. It is not just this bill. This happens every single
time a group of people bring a bill to the floor of the Senate. If you
amend it, if you change our work, then somehow you kill what we have
done. Of course, that is not the case at all.
Let me talk about a couple of the items that have been raised. Worker
protection. The workers in New Bedford, MA. Let me describe to you a
worker in the Gulf of Mexico just after Hurricane Katrina hit. His name
is Sam Smith. Sam Smith was an electrician. Just after Katrina hit, he
knew there was going to be a lot of reconstruction work. Sam Smith was
a skilled craftsman, an electrician. He was told by an employer that he
could come back and take a $22 an hour job--$22 an hour--for work as an
electrician. The job would last 1 year. It only lasted a couple weeks.
I don't have the picture to show you, but I have had it here on the
floor before to show what Sam Smith faced, and it was a picture very
similar to New Bedford, MA. Those who came into this country,
presumably illegally, living in squalid conditions, being given very
low wages to take the work Sam Smith was promised.
What is the solution? Well, the fact is, in New Bedford, MA, and in
this case, the employer is guilty, in my judgment, of mistreating its
workers. We have worker protection laws in this country. We have worker
protections. If an employer abuses them in New Bedford, MA, or New
Orleans, LA, that employer is responsible. Law enforcement is
responsible to investigate and prosecute.
That is not what this bill is about. My colleague says, well, the way
to resolve the situation in New Bedford, MA, is to make the illegal
immigrants working there legal. Just describe them as legal. Would that
be the way you would handle it in New Orleans, LA, to say, well, the
people who came in to take Sam's job should be deemed legal? I don't
think so. Why not punish the employer for abusing the rights of these
immigrant workers and why not restore those jobs to those who were the
victims of the hurricane in the first place? Is the principle here that
we describe the problem as mistreatment of workers who are illegal
immigrants, and therefore what we will do is deem them legal to hold
those jobs and therefore expect some other kind of behavior by the
employer? I don't think so. So that is a specious argument, frankly. We
have worker protection laws. They ought to be enforced. If they are not
enforced, there is something wrong with the system.
Now, one of my colleagues says there is no doubt that we need
additional workers. Oh yes, there is doubt--probably not in the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce. There is no doubt they want additional cheap
labor. But there is plenty of doubt.
My colleague says there is an economist from Harvard who says this
raises the GDP, this bringing in of immigrant labor, presumably illegal
labor, determining that they are then legal once they have come across
illegally. It raises the GDP. Well, you can get a Harvard economist to
say anything you want. We all know that.
Let me describe my Harvard economist--my Harvard economist, Professor
George Borjas. Here is what he says. The impact of immigration between
1980 and 2000 on U.S. wages is lower wages in this country, and he
describes which ethnic group is hurt the worst. Hispanics are hurt the
worst and Blacks next.
My colleague says that his Harvard economist states that one of the
benefits of bringing in this additional labor from outside of our
country is lower costs. Well, in my hometown, I understand what lower
costs means. It means they are going to pay less to the people making
it. That is called lower wages. And that is exactly what my Harvard
professor says is the case.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will suspend.
Under the previous order, the Senator from Minnesota is recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I profoundly misunderstood the unanimous
consent request. That is my fault, not the Presiding Officer's. I will
ask consent, of course, to speak after the break for the luncheons, and
I guess we have in order 10 minutes for me and 10 minutes for Senator
Durbin prior to the vote on my amendment; is that correct?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I am not going to object to the time. The
Senator ought to have wrap-up on this. But if we can have the 5 minutes
prior to the Senator's last 5 minutes, I would be agreeable.
Mr. DORGAN. One of the things I am good at is wrapping up. So let me
wrap up in 2 minutes by going through this grid so that we would then
recognize Senator Coleman for the time he has been given.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, there is a
unanimous consent agreement that says the vote starts at 12:15. I want
to make sure everything is pushed back accordingly, if there is an
extra 2 minutes here.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will yield the floor to the Senator from
Minnesota. I will have time to wrap up. If we are in a time
requirement, I will yield the floor and find time elsewhere.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized for 5
minutes.

Amendment No. 1190

Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, I first ask unanimous consent that the
McCain amendment, No. 1190, which was called up as modified, with the
changes at the desk, be adopted.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. MENENDEZ. Reserving the right to object, is this the same
amendment that was just offered a few minutes ago?
Mr. COLEMAN. Yes.
Mr. MENENDEZ. I have no objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment?
If not, the question is on agreeing to the amendment.
The amendment (No. 1190), as modified, was agreed to.
Mr. McCAIN. I thank the bill managers for agreeing to accept this
amendment, which I am pleased to be joined in sponsoring with Senator
Graham.
As my colleagues will hear throughout this debate, the bipartisan
group of Members who developed this legislation, along with
representatives of the administration, worked to develop this
comprehensive reform measure with the foremost goal of developing a
proposal that can be enacted this year. It is not a bill on which we
are just ``going through the motions.'' Like any legislation on an
expansive issue like immigration reform, this is a complex

[[Page S6594]]

compromise agreement, and that means that while perhaps no one is
entirely happy with every single provision in the bill, we believe it
provides a solid foundation for this floor debate. It is a serious
proposal to address a very serious problem.
When Senator Kennedy and I first proposed legislation in May 2005, it
included, among other things, a series of strict requirements that the
undocumented population would have to fulfill before being allowed to
get in the back of the line and apply for adjustment of legal status.
One of those provisions failed to be part of the consensus before us
today due to concerns raised with respect to practicality. That
provision required the undocumented to pay any back-taxes owed as a
result of their time living and working in our country illegally.
I strongly believe everyone living and working in our country has an
obligation to meet all tax obligations, regardless of convenience or
practicality. Yes, requiring any undocumented immigrant to prove he or
she has met their tax obligations will take manpower. After all, we are
talking about as many as 12 million people. Undocumented immigrants
will most likely have to find and submit plenty of paperwork to prove
they have met their obligations. But that is what citizens here do. We
pay our taxes. We may complain, but we pay our taxes. And while I don't
doubt that it may be a difficult undertaking to require as a condition
of receiving permanent status in the United States the payment of back-
taxes, that isn't a good reason to toss the requirement aside. If an
undocumented immigrant is willing to meet the many stringent
requirements we are calling for under this bill, and I think they will
be willing, including learning English and civics, paying hefty fines,
and clearing background checks, that person should also have to prove
their tax obligations have been fulfilled prior to adjusting their
status.
Again, I thank the bill managers and urge the adoption of this
amendment.
Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I support the amendment offered by Senator
McCain that requires the collection of back taxes from those who have
worked in our country illegally and seek future adjusted status.
As one of the Founders of our Nation, Benjamin Franklin, wisely
acknowledged long ago, ``In this world, nothing is certain but death
and taxes.'' All individuals enjoying the American lifestyle have to
pay taxes. As burdensome, painful, and onerous as the process may be,
anyone who lives and works in the United States has the responsibility
to pay Uncle Sam. The people whose legal status is affected by this
bill should be no different. If they have worked in our country
illegally, they should not get a free-ride when it comes to paying the
tax obligations they have avoided for the time that they have been
here.
Undocumented aliens who seek to assimilate into our society and want
to become American citizens have high hurdles to overcome--and that is
the way it should be. Those who want to become a part of our great
country must come out of the shadows, tell us who they are, pay heavy
fines, return to their country, learn English, consistently hold a job,
follow the law, and they should also have to pay their tax obligations.
There is no doubt that these requirements will be difficult to achieve
for those seeking adjusted status--both practically and financially.
However, this additional requirement is absolutely necessary. Payment
of back taxes for unauthorized work is not only financially critical,
it is morally right.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized for 5
minutes.

Amendment No. 1158

Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, I just want to, in perhaps less than 5
minutes, address the amendment we are going to vote on in a little bit,
at 12:35. It is a simple amendment.
There is existing Federal law which says that municipalities may not
restrict in any way--the language is very clear--in any way prohibit or
restrict any governmental entity from sharing information with Federal
authorities about immigration status. It is the law. The law says you
can't restrict from sending, maintaining, or exchanging. What has
happened is that some cities--referred to as so-called sanctuary
cities--have adopted policies to circumvent what has been Federal law
since 1996. I want my colleagues to understand that this is an
amendment to a bill that, if passed, will end the need for sanctuary
cities. If passed, this bill will allow folks to come out of the
shadows and into the light. The only folks who won't come into the
light will be those folks who have criminal problems. In other words,
if this bill is passed with this amendment, it will allow folks to come
out of the shadows, a concept that I support, and I want to make sure
we do the right thing.
In the existing bill, we are telling employers they cannot create a
sanctuary, they cannot create a haven for illegal aliens. We are saying
to them that if they do, they will be penalized. If we do that, we
should also then go to those cities or communities which are creating
these sanctuaries and say to them that everyone is going to follow the
rule of law, everyone is going to.
I think one of the challenges we face in getting the public to accept
what we are trying to do is that there is a sense that somehow we are
not following the rule of law. So this is very simple. If we are
telling employers that they cannot provide a sanctuary, that they
cannot shield individuals, then we have to tell the same thing to
cities and to communities.
Lastly, there are those who say: Well, this is going to impact crime
victims. The reality is that these sanctuary cities protect criminals.
They are not limited. It protects criminals. So if we pass the
underlying bill, folks can come out of the shadows. And for those who
want to stay in the shadows, they should not get sanctuary by a city
policy that is in contravention to existing Federal law. I believe
those policies violate existing Federal law and in doing so protect
criminals.
Let's uphold the rule of law. Let's do what is the right thing and
the fair thing, and let's support this amendment, which, again, very
simply--very simply--requires cities and communities to comply with
what has been Federal law since 1996. Let's tell the public that this
bill is about respecting the law at every phase.
I hope my colleagues will support my amendment to get rid of this
concept of sanctuary cities.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator will yield the
last minute and a half to the Senator from Colorado. Would he be
willing to do that?
Mr. COLEMAN. I yield the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado is recognized.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Minnesota for
yielding me a minute and a half of time. I come to the floor to speak
against his amendment, No. 1158. At the end of the day, what his
amendment would do--it appears to be innocuous on its face--it would
essentially make cops out of emergency room workers, out of school
teachers, and out of local and State cops.
The reality is that we have a responsibility at the Federal
Government to make sure we are enforcing our immigration laws as a
national government. We ought not to put emergency room workers, we
ought not to put school teachers in a position where they have to be
the cops of our immigration laws in our country. New York City Mayor
Bloomberg, in his own statement in opposition to this amendment, said:

New York City cooperates fully with the Federal Government
when an illegal immigrant commits a criminal act. But our
city's social services, health and education policies are not
designed to facilitate the deportation of otherwise law-
abiding citizens.

Do we want somebody by the name of Martinez simply to go into an
emergency room and to have that emergency room responder be in a
position where he has to act as a cop because he suspects somebody
named Martinez might be illegal?
This is a bad amendment. It will create problems. I urge my
colleagues to oppose it.

Amendment No. 1186

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will now be 2
minutes of debate, equally divided, on amendment No. 1186, offered by
the Senator from Hawaii, Mr. Akaka. Who yields time?
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I see the Senator from Hawaii. Could we
delay the 1 minute? I ask unanimous consent we delay the 1 minute for
30 seconds.

[[Page S6595]]

Mr. President, I yield myself 1 minute.
I thank the Senator from Hawaii, Senator Akaka. He has brought to the
Senate the fact that there are about 20,000 immediate relatives of
courageous Filipino families who served with American forces in World
War II. They would be entitled under the other provisions of the bill
to come here to the United States. This particular proposal moves this
in a more expeditious way. These are older men and women who have been
members of families who served with American fighting forces in World
War II. He offered this before. It was accepted unanimously. I hope the
Senate will accept a very wise, humane, and decent amendment by the
Senator from Hawaii.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii is recognized for 1
minute.
Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I thank the chairman for bringing this
forward. My amendment seeks to address and resolve an immigration issue
that, while rooted in a set of historical circumstances that occurred
more than seven decades ago, still, and sadly, remains unresolved
today. It is an issue of great concern to all Americans who care about
justice and fairness. It goes back to 1941, when President Roosevelt
issued an Executive order, drafting more than 200,000 Filipino citizens
into the United States military. During the course of the war, it was
understood that the Filipino soldiers would be treated like their
American comrades in arms and be eligible for the same benefits. But
this has never occurred.
In 1990, the World War II service of Filipino veterans was finally
recognized by the U.S. Government and they were offered an opportunity
to obtain U.S. citizenship. Today we have 7,000 Filipino World War II
veterans in the United States. The opportunity to obtain U.S.
citizenship was not extended to the veterans' sons and daughters, about
20,000 of whom have been waiting for their visas for years.
While the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2007 raises
the worldwide ceiling for family-based visas, the fact remains that
many of the naturalized Filipino World War II veterans residing in the
United States are in their eighties and nineties, and their children
should be able to come to America to take care of their parents. My
amendment makes this possible. I urge my colleagues to support my
amendment and to make this come through for our Filipino veterans and
their families.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired. The
question is on agreeing to amendment No. 1186, offered by Senator
Akaka.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from South Dakota (Mr.
Johnson) is necessarily absent.
Mr. LOTT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Kansas (Mr. Brownback), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr.
Burr), and the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Thomas).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 87, nays 9, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 176 Leg.]

YEAS--87

Akaka
Alexander
Allard
Baucus
Bayh
Bennett
Biden
Bingaman
Bond
Boxer
Brown
Byrd
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Clinton
Coburn
Cochran
Coleman
Collins
Conrad
Corker
Cornyn
Craig
Crapo
DeMint
Dodd
Dole
Domenici
Dorgan
Durbin
Ensign
Feingold
Feinstein
Graham
Grassley
Hagel
Harkin
Hatch
Hutchison
Inouye
Kennedy
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Kyl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
Lott
Lugar
Martinez
McCain
McCaskill
McConnell
Menendez
Mikulski
Murkowski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Nelson (NE)
Obama
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Roberts
Rockefeller
Salazar
Sanders
Schumer
Shelby
Smith
Snowe
Specter
Stabenow
Stevens
Tester
Thune
Voinovich
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden

NAYS--9

Bunning
Chambliss
Enzi
Gregg
Inhofe
Isakson
Sessions
Sununu
Vitter

NOT VOTING--4

Brownback
Burr
Johnson
Thomas
The amendment (No. 1186) was agreed to.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. CRAIG. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

change of vote

Mr. HAGEL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
registered in favor of vote No. 176, the Akaka amendment. My change
will not affect the outcome. I ask unanimous consent that my vote be
changed from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The foregoing tally has been changed to reflect the above order.)
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.

Amendment No. 1158

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I understand there is 2 minutes evenly
divided. I yield our minute to the Senator from New Jersey.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order there will be 2
minutes equally divided on amendment 1158, offered by the Senator from
Minnesota.
The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, I want my colleagues to listen. I want my
colleagues to understand there is nothing in this amendment that
requires teachers, hospital workers, anyone, to do anything. What it
simply does is it lifts a gag order. It lifts a policy and a practice
in some cities that gags police officers from doing their duty, from
complying with what has been Federal law since 1996.
There is no requirement that anybody do anything. It lifts the gag
order. There was testimony by Houston police officer John Nichols
before the House Judiciary subcommittee. He said this: When we shackle
law enforcement officers in such a manner, instead of protecting U.S.
citizens and people here legally, the danger to society greatly
increases by allowing potentially violent criminals to freely roam our
streets.
If the underlying bill is passed, there should be no need for
sanctuary cities. The only folks who will want to remain in the shadows
will be those who do not want anyone to know they are in the shadows.
These present sanctuary cities, if the law passes, will protect
criminals, and we should again get rid of the gag order. That is all
this amendment does.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey is recognized for
1 minute.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, this amendment undoes what State and
local police have long sought to do, separate their activities from
those of Federal immigration orders, because they understand some of
the toughest law enforcement people in this country want the freedom to
be able to communicate with immigrant communities so they come forth
and talk about crimes. The standard the Senator offers here is probable
cause. Probable cause what? Based on what? My surname, Menendez?
Salazar? Martinez? Probable cause how? The way I look? Probable cause,
the accent I have? Is that the probable cause that leads an ambulance
worker or a municipal hospital worker to ask when somebody is being
rolled in? This leads to the opportunity for racial profiling. This
leads to the opportunity when we have disease spreading, such as
tuberculosis, for people, not coming forth to report themselves, this
leads to a woman who has been the subject of domestic violence not
reporting herself. This is clearly not in the interest of our country.
I believe it is discriminatory. It leads to racial profiling. It is not
necessary for the pursuit of law enforcement.
I urge my colleagues to vote no.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tester). All time has expired.
The question is on agreeing to amendment No. 1158.
Mr. KENNEDY. I ask for the yeas and nays.

[[Page S6596]]

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from South Dakota (Mr.
Johnson) is necessarily absent.
Mr. LOTT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Kansas (Mr. Brownback) and the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Thomas).
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCaskill). Are there any other Senators
in the Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 48, nays 49, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 177 Leg.]

YEAS--48

Alexander
Allard
Baucus
Bayh
Bennett
Bond
Bunning
Burr
Byrd
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Coleman
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
Craig
Crapo
DeMint
Dole
Dorgan
Ensign
Enzi
Grassley
Gregg
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Kyl
Landrieu
Lott
McCain
McCaskill
McConnell
Murkowski
Nelson (NE)
Pryor
Roberts
Sessions
Shelby
Smith
Stevens
Sununu
Tester
Thune
Vitter
Warner

NAYS--49

Akaka
Biden
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Clinton
Conrad
Dodd
Domenici
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Graham
Hagel
Harkin
Inouye
Kennedy
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
Lugar
Martinez
Menendez
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Obama
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Salazar
Sanders
Schumer
Snowe
Specter
Stabenow
Voinovich
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--3

Brownback
Johnson
Thomas
The amendment (No. 1158) was rejected.
Mr. DURBIN. I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. KENNEDY. 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 Connecticut.

Amendment No. 1199 to Amendment No. 1150

(Purpose: To increase the number of green cards for parents of United
States citizens, to extend the duration of the new parent visitor visa,
and to make penalties imposed on individuals who overstay such visas
applicable only to such individuals)

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending
amendment be set aside and send an amendment to the desk and ask for
its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, reserving the right to object--and I do
not intend to object--my friend from Connecticut has an amendment that
deals with family reunification. We have several other amendments--
Senator Menendez and Senator Clinton have other amendments--dealing
with family and family reunification. This is going to be a very
important aspect in terms of our debate and the completion of this
legislation.
It is our intention to try to consider these amendments in
relationship with each other at the appropriate time. We will work with
the proponents of each of these amendments. So I will not object, but I
would also put in the queue, so to speak, the other--I see Senator
Menendez on the Senate floor. He will probably put his in. And we would
then put in, I guess, Senator Clinton's amendment as well.
That is for the general information about how we are going to
proceed. But I have no objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, reserving the right to object--and I
will not object--if the Senator from Massachusetts would yield for a
moment for a question.
Mr. KENNEDY. Yes.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I have been waiting on the floor of
the Senate most of the day to offer an amendment related to families. I
will not be objecting to Senator Dodd's, which I am a cosponsor of as
well. The question is, I assume the Senator may be going to an
amendment, after Senator Dodd's, on the other side of the aisle, and
then I would hope we could come back and that my amendment would be
next in order--after the next Republican amendment.
Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, we thought we would try to take Senator
Dodd's and yours, and then take two Republican amendments.
Mr. MENENDEZ. That would be fine with me. Thank you.
I withdraw my objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to setting aside the
pending amendment?
Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment will be set aside.
The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Connecticut [Mr. Dodd], for himself, and
Mr. Menendez, proposes an amendment numbered 1199 to
amendment No. 1150.

Mr. DODD. Madam 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 printed in today's Record under ``Text of
Amendments.'')
Mr. DODD. Madam President, I have spoken about the amendment already,
last evening. Again, I have talked to Senator Graham of South Carolina
and the Senator from Massachusetts, the manager of this legislation on
the floor. My understanding is, at an appropriate time we will have an
opportunity to actually vote on these amendments.
Madam President, I rise to offer an amendment to the immigration bill
with my good friend from New Jersey, Senator Menendez, that relates to
the parents of U.S. citizens. My amendment is simple in what it
proposes but enormously important in what it seeks to accomplish.
It prevents this bill from dividing millions of American families by
making it easier for U.S. citizens and their parents to unite. As
currently written, this bill weakens the principle of family
reunification in a way that is harmful to our nation and unfair to our
fellow citizens.
Under current law, parents are defined as immediate relatives and
exempt from green card caps. Yet this bill drastically and
irresponsibly excludes parents from the nuclear family and subjects
them to excessively low green card caps and an overly restrictive visa
program.
This amendment rights this wrong by increasing the new annual cap on
green cards for parents of U.S. citizens; extending the duration of the
parent visitor visa; and ensuring that penalties imposed on overstays
are not borne collectively.
The debate on this provision goes to the heart of how a family is
defined in America. For millions of American citizens, parents are not
distant relatives but absolutely vital members of the nuclear family
who play a critical role, be it as grandparents providing care for
their grandchildren while their parents are at work or as sources of
strength and support for their bereaved or single children.
Ensuring that parents have every opportunity to unite with their
children or live with them for extended periods is important not only
because of their contribution to the nuclear family but also so that
their children can support and care for them in sickness and in health.
We all know that sense of duty from our own lives. And for those of
us who have lost our parents, we wish we had the opportunity to do so.
That is exactly why it has been our policy to date to allow U.S.
citizens to sponsor their parents to come to this country without caps.
Yet now we are told that parents are no longer immediate relatives and
subject to caps. That parents no longer fit in the same category of
relatives as minor children and spouses, an idea that millions of
Americans would disagree with.
We are told that we must weaken that principle, thus disrupting the
lives of countless law-abiding families, in the name of reducing
``chain migration.'' Well, that is a red herring. The truth is that
once parents of citizens obtain immigrant visas, they usually complete
the family unit and are unlikely to sponsor others.
That is why today we must do justice to the families of our fellow
citizens who seek nothing more than to keep their families intact. This
amendment does just that.

[[Page S6597]]

First, it increases the new green card cap from 40,000 to 90,000.
Ninety thousand is the average number of green cards issued each year
to parents who as I mentioned have to date been exempt from caps. Again
this is just an average. Last year the number was 120,000.
It is abundantly clear that 40,000 green cards per year is an
unreasonably low number. One of the goals of this bill is to clear the
backlog on immigrant visa applicants which in some cases extends as far
back as 22 years. If we don't allot sufficient numbers of green cards
for parents in this bill, we risk creating a whole new category of
backlog. Ninety thousand would meet this need.
To those who still think 90,000 is too high a number, I would also
argue that it is simply not the place of the Senate to tell our fellow
citizens that they should wait a year or two to see their parents. I
would ideally not want the parents of any citizen of this country
subject to caps but working within the framework of this bill, I
believe 90,000 is entirely fair and reasonable.
Second, it extends the parent visitor visa to allow for an aggregate
stay of 180 days per year and makes it valid for 3 years and renewable.
These are already accepted timeframes for the validity of a visa. Madam
President, 180 days is the length of a tourist visa; H-1Bs are valid
for 3 years. This would allow those parents who do not want to
permanently leave their countries of residence yet want to stay with
their children in the U.S. for extended periods the ability to do so.
The current bill however limits the length of this visa to only 30
days per year--30 days. This is far too soon to pry parents away,
particularly those who come to America for health reasons, or to care
for their children during and after childbirth.
Many parents who live abroad, come to the United States at great
expense. They often come from thousands of miles away just to be with
their children and grandchildren. To limit them to a 30-day visit per
year is simply unacceptable, especially when under a tourist visa, an
individual can come to this country for 6 months.
To think that a parent can only be with his or her child or
grandchild for 1 month out of 12 is simply unacceptable. Yet under this
provision, a tourist can be in America six times longer than a parent
of a citizen. That is not the America I know. That is not an America
that cherishes family values.
Third, and finally, this amendment prevents collective punishment for
parent visa overstays. Under this bill, if the overstay rate exceeds 7
percent for two years, either all nationals of countries with high
overstay rates can be barred or the entire program can terminated.
Needless to say, this form of collective punishment is patently wrong
and unjust. We should never punish law abiding individuals on account
of the misdeeds of others.
Under this bill, for example, a sponsor could be barred from
sponsoring his widowed mother because his father at some earlier date
overstayed his visa. That is not the type of law we want on our books.
That is not what this country is about. Nor is it about stopping
thousands of parents from entering this country because of the misdeeds
of some.
This my amendment will unite and strengthen the families of our
fellow Americans and the fabric of our society, while upholding the
best traditions of this great country. Because as we all know, families
are the backbone of our country. Their unity promotes our collective
stability, health, and productivity and contributes to the economic and
social welfare of the United States.
My amendment does not strike at this bill's core; nor should it be a
partisan issue. It is one of basic humanity and fairness for our fellow
citizens.
What is at stake here is whether Congress should dictate to U.S.
citizens if and when they can unite with their parents; if and when
their parents can come and be with their grandchildren; if and when
U.S. citizens can care for their sick parents here on American soil.
It is our duty to remove as many obstacles as we can for our fellow
citizens to be with their parents. None of us would stand for anyone
dictating the terms of that union to us. Why should we then apply a
double standard for other citizens of this country? We must craft a law
that is tough yet just.
I urge my colleagues not to think of this amendment in terms of
numbers and caps, but in terms of its all too real and painful human
impact for U.S. citizens.
I urge them to vote for this amendment and to take down the
legislative barrier that this bill has stood up between our fellow
citizens and their parents.
Again, at the appropriate time, I will ask for a recorded vote on
this amendment. I thank my colleague from Massachusetts for allowing us
to get in the queue here so that when these matters come up for votes,
we will be able to consider them.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland is recognized.

____________________