[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 100 (Tuesday, July 7, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7186-S7188]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I offered an amendment to the Homeland 
Security legislation that is before us which would make that system 
permanent, and make its use mandatory for contractors that do business 
with the U.S. Government.
  Essentially, employers all over America are accessing the E-Verify 
online system that allows them to have an instant check to determine 
whether the person who has applied for employment with them is legally 
in the country. They simply check their Social Security number and 
other data against the Social Security Administration and Department of 
Homeland Security databases. When the system determines a person is not 
here legally, employers don't hire them. Over 96 percent of the people 
are cleared automatically when a business checks. Of the remaining 3.9 
percent of queries with an initial mismatch, only .37 percent of those 
were later determined to be work authorized. A certain percent of 
applicants are found to be here illegally, and they should not get a 
job or any taxpayers' money from a part of the stimulus package. 
Stimulus funds were set aside to help us reduce our unemployment rate 
in this country and to hire American workers. The prospect of jobs 
should not be a magnet to draw more illegal workers into the country.
  The first thing you do, if you have an immigration problem, is stop 
rewarding those who break the law. One of the things you do not do is 
reward people who come illegally with jobs. You do not have to arrest 
them or do anything unkind. You simply do not hire them, especially 
with taxpayers' money that is designed to create American jobs.
  This has been a matter we have talked about for some time. It is very 
important in this time of economic slowdown because the Bureau of Labor 
Statistics reported that the unemployment rate for June, just a week or 
so ago, had jumped to 9.5 percent, 467,000 jobs lost, the highest 
unemployment rate in 25 years. We have massive job losses. A lot of 
good people are out of work, they need work and are willing to work.
  E-Verify is not a perfect system. People can find ways beat it, no 
doubt, but it actually works. One study by the Heritage Foundation 
concluded that as much as 13 percent of the jobs created under the 
stimulus plan would go to people illegally in the country the way we 
were operating. By utilizing the E-Verify system, I have no doubt we 
could drop that percentage dramatically. I am very concerned about it. 
I am a bit baffled by the difficulty we have had in moving forward with 
this amendment.
  I will say that two bits of progress--small progress, I know--have 
occurred. The House Homeland Security appropriations bill for fiscal 
year 2010 has come over to the Senate, and it includes a 2-year 
extension of E-Verify. That is better than letting it expire. In 
addition, the Senate version of the bill includes a generous 3-year 
extension of this proven system. I have to say that is OK, but neither 
bill has any language that would make this system permanent. It leaves 
it on very shaky ground, making businesses that might voluntarily want 
to utilize it wonder if it really is the policy of our country to use 
it. Madam President, over 1,000 businesses a week are now voluntarily 
signing up to use the system.
  Failing to make the system permanent also raises questions about the 
sincerity of our commitment. More significantly, neither one of the 
bills has any language that says that government contractors, people 
who are doing work for the U.S. Government, paid for by us, the 
taxpayers, must use this system. I ask, Why not? What possible, 
justifiable, rational reason can we give to pass legislation designed 
to help deal with this recession, to try to create American jobs and 
not make sure federal contractors only hire lawful workers? What basis 
could we utilize to say that those contractors should not at least take 
about 2 minutes--that is about all it takes to punch in a Social 
Security number into the system--to see whether a person applying for a 
job is legally in the country.
  There is a long history on this amendment. For some reason, interest 
groups have been lobbying against permanent authorization and mandating 
use of E-Verify by federal contractors. Certain business groups oppose 
this amendment. It scares them. Why? I suggest there is only one 
logical conclusion: They like the idea of hiring illegal workers. But 
how can we as Members of the Senate representing the American taxpayers 
possibly justify using their money that is designed to create jobs for 
American citizens to hire people who are here illegally, creating an 
even greater magnet to attract more people to come into our country 
illegally?
  I have offered this amendment to the appropriations bill to ensure 
this successful program be made permanent. And, of course, any time in 
the future if it ceases to be practical, we could end it. But this 
amendment would make it permanent, sending a signal--that is part of 
what we want to do--and it would also be mandatory for government 
contractors. If a Federal contractor gets a contract to do work, at

[[Page S7187]]

least they ought to determine whether a worker is legally in the 
country before they hire them. I don't think that is too much to ask, 
and I cannot imagine why anyone would oppose it. But I understand, once 
again, we are going to have objections.
  It is working, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet 
Napolitano recently said this in response to a question I asked:

       The administration----

  She is talking about the Obama administration--

     strongly supports E-Verify as a cornerstone of work site 
     enforcement and will work to continue to improve the program 
     to ensure it is the best tool to prevent and deter the hiring 
     of persons who are not authorized to work in the United 
     States.

  I think that is a pretty good affirmation of it. In fact, that has 
been a known reality for years. We have known this system has worked 
for years, but we have had people say: Oh, it is a bureaucratic 
nightmare. Why do businesses voluntarily sign up to use it, then? They 
say some people might be held up in employment. Under the bill, if 
something in the system raises questions about your employability, the 
person can still be hired while the problem is worked out. What we 
found is that 96 percent of the people are cleared immediately and only 
a very small number have turned out to have some sort of mistake in 
their situation. It is just not a practical objection, in my view.
  I understand that some are claiming--my colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle--that it looks as if Secretary Napolitano will announce 
something with regard to federal contractors soon, maybe even tomorrow. 
That would be good. It would be a Presidential directive that could, in 
the short run, solve this problem. But we have heard that talk before.
  President Bush finally, after being subjected to some criticism about 
this, issued Executive Order 12989 last June. That order mandated the 
use of the E-Verify system for Federal contractors and subcontractors 
and was supposed to take effect in January of this year. President 
Obama came in, as he has the power to do, and he delayed implementation 
of the order. Indeed, we have had four delays to date in implementing 
this Executive Order. The first was when President Obama said that the 
January 28 date was not appropriate. He put it off to February 20 and 
said that on February 20, businesses that get government contracts have 
to use the system. Then a few weeks later, the implementation was 
pushed back to May 21. Before May 21 got here, they pushed it back to 
June 30. A few weeks ago, we heard it would not be implemented until 
some time in September. And now we are hearing that they may implement 
it soon.
  E-Verify is certainly one of the most effective tools we have, as the 
Secretary herself has stated. Why are we not moving forward with making 
it permanent, I ask. I ask Members of Congress in the House and in the 
Senate, why don't we play a role in this? Why leave it totally up to 
the President, who is subjected to all kinds of political and corporate 
lobbying to not do this program? Why don't we as a Senate just pass it, 
as we do so many other things, and make it law? If Secretary Napolitano 
plans to do this in the future, it wouldn't conflict with anything she 
planned to do. If they were not going to do it, it would be mandated 
and it would come into effect.
  We have to be aware that we have had a lot of obstacles before with 
the implementation with this system and it has not gone forward in an 
effective way. I don't think we should wait any longer. Jobs are being 
lost every single day. They are being lost in significant numbers to 
people illegally in our country.
  T.J. Bonner, the head of the Border Patrol Union, told us most 
passionately at a Judiciary Committee hearing a number of years ago 
that jobs are the magnet. If you can stop the magnet, the number of 
people they have to deal with at the border can be reduced. It sends a 
signal that the days of open borders and the ability to get a job even 
if you are illegally here are past. That is the way you do things and 
make it work. It is all part of a plan to send a message to the world 
that we are not open for illegality. Under E-Verify nobody is arrested, 
nobody is captured and taken to be deported. We just simply are taking 
a reasonable step to reduce the magnet of jobs from taxpayers' money, 
not private businesses, just government businesses and government 
contractors. The Federal Government uses it today in its hiring 
process.
  I was surprised to hear one of my Democratic colleagues asking that 
we not support this amendment, saying that we should have a biometric 
employment identification database and that he cannot support E-Verify 
because it is not strong enough. That was a remarkable thing. Anyone 
who has studied the history of this program has good reason to wonder 
about the sincerity of people who object because E-Verify is not tough 
enough. The reason people are objecting is because it works. That is 
why the immigrant advocacy groups and the business crowd object to it. 
That is why. There may be better systems, but this one has been up and 
running for some time and been incredibly successful.
  It was contended that I.D. thieves can defeat the system. I suspect 
that is so. But does that mean the system has to be perfect before we 
use it? That argument ignores the fact that this bill appropriates a 
significant amount of extra funds to assist the Department of Homeland 
Security's continuing effort to reinforce the system's antifraud 
protections. We have money in this legislation to try to eliminate the 
ability of people to defeat the system by fraud.
  I don't think the argument can rationally be made that extending it 
would be ``a waste of taxpayers' money.'' We already have the system up 
and running. In reality, it is not going to cost any more money to have 
people use it. The system is up and working. I guess if people want to 
use that as an excuse to vote against the amendment, they can, but it 
makes little sense to me.
  I would like to see an enhanced biometric system. It is absolutely 
something that can work. We need to do that. There are a lot of things 
we can do this very day, but you have to admit, if we cannot get the 
votes to just maintain the E-Verify system, it looks as if we may have 
even more difficulties with an advanced system.
  I won't go on at length about this anymore. We have debated it 
before. Earlier this year on the stimulus bill, I offered an amendment 
to make E-Verify apply to the stimulus bill and the people who got 
government contracts would have to use it. The House put that in their 
bill. I kept getting objection from the Democratic leadership to my 
amendment. I couldn't understand why. And then I began to think about 
it, and it dawned on me what was happening. If my amendment were to 
pass and the language was in the House bill, unless real skullduggery 
were to occur, that language should be in the final bill. But if they 
could keep the language out of the Senate bill, even though the House 
had put the language in their bill by an overwhelming vote, they could 
take it out in conference when they meet in secret to deal with the 
conflicts between the House bill and the Senate bill. So I brought it 
up three or four times, and every time I tried to get a vote, it was 
blocked.

  Then, finally, the bill passed without my amendment having passed. 
And do you know what happened? When they met in secret, in conference, 
the House leadership--the Speaker and her team--receded to the Senate 
bill, agreed to eliminate their language, and therefore the language 
wasn't in the bill. And what happened politically? All the House 
Members, Republicans and Democrats, could say: I voted for E-Verify. 
And the Senate Members, when hearing complaints, could say: Well, I 
would have voted for it if it had come up. It just never came up.
  See, this was the plan all along. I just have to tell you what the 
truth is and how this happened and what is at work out there.
  So I hope Secretary Napolitano will do what she can do and the 
President will do what he can do and order that this system be 
mandatory for government contractors and to permanently authorize it. 
But I don't see any reason in the world why we should wait on that. 
What we should do as a Congress, if we believe in what we say about our 
goal to eliminate the surge of illegal immigration and trying to 
protect American jobs at this time of economic recession, is we ought 
to vote for the amendment. What harm can there be?

[[Page S7188]]

  So I urge my colleagues to do the right thing on this amendment and 
vote for it. I am baffled as to why there would be hesitation about it. 
I think if people look at it, it is very simple. The E-Verify system is 
up and running. The government employment offices use it before they 
hire anybody for the government. Thousands of businesses are using it 
every day. Over 130,000 employers are currently enrolled in the 
program, and about a thousand businesses a week are signing up to use 
it. It protects them, in a way. If somebody says: You knowingly hired 
illegal workers, they can say: I checked and they had a good I.D. and a 
good name, and I did my best. And that will protect them from 
complaints against them. Most employers want to do the right thing. 
They do not want to hire people who are not lawfully in the country. So 
that is why it is working even as a voluntary program. We are not 
hearing complaints about it. It is not violating people's civil rights. 
It is working in a healthy way.
  All we need to do now is make this system permanent, not keep leaving 
it out here in limbo. And secondly, let's make sure it applies to 
people who not only go directly to work for the U.S. Government but for 
contractors who do work for the government, people who are getting 
money under the stimulus bill, which was designed to create jobs for 
American citizens.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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