[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 121 (Thursday, August 12, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6996-S6999]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EMERGENCY BORDER SECURITY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 6080, received from the
House and at the desk.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the bill by
title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (H.R. 6080) making emergency supplemental
appropriations for border security for the fiscal year ending
September 30, 2010, and for other purposes.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, today, I come to the floor to seek
Unanimous Consent to pass a smart, tough, and effective $600 million
bill that will significantly enhance the security and integrity of our
Nation's southern border--which currently lacks the resources needed to
fully combat the drug smugglers, gunrunners, human-traffickers, money
launderers and other organized criminals that seek to do harm to
innocent Americans along our border.
[[Page S6997]]
The Senate first passed this bill last week by unanimous consent.
Last week's vote ended an impasse over how to pay for this package that
all of us agree needed to be passed as soon as possible.
At first, the House proposed a border security bill that was not
fully paid for and, thus, was unacceptable to many in the Senate.
And, here in the Senate, many of my colleagues on the other side of
the aisle wanted to pay for this bill by diverting critical funds from
the stimulus bill, The Recovery Act. This too was unacceptable because
border security does not need to come at the expense of programs that
create jobs for millions of Americans. As important as border security
is, we should not be taking away jobs from firemen in Buffalo and
teachers in Syracuse in order to hire more agents in El Paso. That is
the worst kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul that was simply an
unacceptable way to pay for increased border security.
Instead of raising the deficit--which we do not do in this bill--or
diverting vital stimulus funds, the Senate ultimately agreed to pay for
the border package by increasing visa fees on companies who hire
foreign workers in a manner contrary to the original intent of the H-1B
visa program.
After the Senate reached this compromise and unanimously approved
this border package last week, the House approved the same substantive
border package by voice vote on Tuesday.
But, regrettably, the House was unable to simply pass the Senate
bill. According to House rules--because the Senate's offset did not
originate in the House--it had to be approved by the House first,
before the Senate's passage. So today, I again seek the unanimous
consent of my colleagues to approve this border security bill and to
finally provide President Obama and Secretary Napolitano with the boots
on the ground and the resources necessary to combat the crime and
violence that currently exists on our southern border.
I would like to thank the original cosponsors of this legislation:
Senators McCaskill, Reid, Inouye, Murray, Feinstein, Bingaman, Udall of
New Mexico, Casey, Merkley, Lincoln, Udall of Colorado, Begich, and
Burris.
I would also particularly like to thank Senators McCain and Kyl for
joining on as cosponsors prior to the Senate's original approval and
for recognizing this bill as being significant border security
legislation.
In addition to providing many vital resources for securing our
southern border--all of which I will detail in a moment--this bill is
also enormously important because it will clear the path for restarting
the bipartisan discussions we absolutely need to have on how best to
restore the rule of law to our entire immigration system.
Although we all agree that we must secure our borders, we will never
fully resolve the problem of illegal immigration until we fix the
entirety of what is wrong with our immigration system.
But those of us who currently support comprehensive immigration
reform also believe in providing all of the resources our experts on
the ground are telling us they need to secure the border right now.
That is why this bill has received the support of the entire Senate.
We know that keeping our borders safe from dangerous gang members,
drug dealers, and human traffickers is critical to restoring the
public's confidence that the entirety of our focus with regard to
immigration policy is geared toward restoring the rule of law to what
has been a lawless system in the past.
That is why I commend the President and Secretary Napolitano for
their tireless work in advocating for the passage of this package to
give our people on the ground the tools they need to secure the border.
Here are all of the vital resources our border security package will
provide:
First, we provide over $250 million to hire 1,000 new Border Patrol
agents and 500 CBP officers to permanently patrol our southern border.
These new agents will form a ``strike force'' that will be deployed in
different areas of the southwest border depending on where the need is
greatest at any particular moment. We will finally have the capability
to deploy our manpower in a way where we can continuously and
immediately change our tactics to respond to changes in the tactics of
smugglers and traffickers.
Second, we will provide funding to deploy more unmanned drones to fly
along our southern border to provide our agents on the ground with
real-time information on unlawful border crossings.
We are currently deploying seven of these unmanned drones on our
border. They have been proven to be very effective because they provide
our border patrol agents with vast force multiplication through their
ability to identify the exact locations of larger groups that disperse
into smaller groups upon encountering border patrol agents on the
ground.
These additional drones will help us gain operational control over a
much larger segment of our southern border than we otherwise would have
controlled because they provide miles of surveillance capability that
is technologically impossible to achieve through other means.
Third, we will provide funds to improve communications capabilities
between Federal border enforcement agents and state and local officers
along the border. The issue here is crime. Officers with different
areas of expertise and jurisdiction need to be able to communicate in
order to have the best information possible to break up smuggling and
trafficking rings that are embedded in local communities. These
improved communication capabilities will lead to countless more
apprehensions and prosecutions of big-time smugglers and traffickers.
As an example, if our border patrol suddenly begins encountering a
surge of illegal border crossers from El Salvador with identical
tattoos on their arms, it is important that they provide this
information to State and local law enforcement on the ground so that we
can immediately begin sharing intelligence to determine whether
individuals with this description have recently been arrested. This
coordination will help us determine the exact criminal intent of this
group and their methods of operation so that they can be effectively
combated.
Fourth, we will provide funds to construct forward operating bases
for the border patrol to use that are actually located on the border
itself rather than hundreds of miles away.
It is extremely inefficient for border patrol to apprehend
individuals along the border and then have to drive hours to place that
person in detention in a far-away base. These forward operating bases
provide locations much closer to the border where detainees can be
brought for processing so that patrol agents on the ground can spend
much more time combating illegal activity on the border.
Fifth, we will provide funds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement
to conduct investigations of drug-runners, money-launderers, and human
traffickers along our border. It is almost impossible to find out the
sources and uses of smuggling and trafficking funds without strong
intelligence and investigation capabilities. This bill will provide ICE
with the resources it needs to hunt down the major players in these
cartels who are responsible for the majority of the illegality on the
southern border.
Finally, we will provide over $200 million to increase the number of
ATF, DEA, and FBI agents on our border and to bolster the number of
prosecutors and court resources along our border so that wrongdoers can
be immediately brought to justice.
We will dramatically reduce the incidences of illegal smuggling of
guns, drugs, and currency along our borders so that the American people
can feel far safer living in many of our border communities than they
do today.
The best part of this border package is that it is fully paid for and
does not increase the deficit by a single penny. In actuality, the
Congressional Budget Office--the CBO--has determined that the bill will
yield a direct savings to taxpayers of $50 million.
The emergency border funds we are passing today are fully paid for by
assessing fees on certain types of companies who hire foreign workers
using certain types of visas in a way that Congress did not intend.
I want to take a moment to explain exactly what we are doing in the
bill a little further because I want everyone to clearly understand how
these offsets
[[Page S6998]]
have been designed. There has been some discussion about this proposal,
and I think we ought to lay it on the table and explain it clearly.
In 1990, the Congress realized the world was changing rapidly and
that technological innovations, such as the Internet, were creating a
high demand in the United States for high-tech workers to create new
technologies and products. Consequently, Congress created the H-1B visa
program to allow U.S. employers to hire foreign tech workers in special
circumstances when they could not find an American citizen who was
qualified.
Many of the companies that use this program today are using the
program in exactly the way Congress intended; that is, these companies,
such as Microsoft, IBM, and Intel, are hiring bright foreign students
educated in our American universities to work in the United States for
6 or 7 years to invent new product lines and technologies so that
Microsoft, IBM, and Intel can sell more products to the American public
and hire more American workers. Then at the expiration of the H-1B visa
period, these companies apply for these talented workers to earn green
cards and stay with the company.
When the H-1B visa program is used in this manner, it is a good
program for everyone involved. It is good for the company, it is good
for the worker, and it is good for the American people who benefit from
the products and jobs created by the innovation of the H-1B visa
holder.
Every day companies such as Oracle, Cisco, Apple, and others use the
H-1B visa program in the exact way I have described, and their use of
the program has greatly benefited the country.
But recently some companies have decided to exploit an unintended
loophole in the H-1B visa program to use the program in a manner that
many in Congress, including myself, do not believe is consistent with
the program's intent.
Rather than being a company that makes something or provides a
service and simply needs to bring in a talented foreign worker to help
innovate and create new technologies, these other companies are
essentially creating multinational temp agencies that were never
contemplated when the H-1B program was created.
The business model of these newer companies is not to make any new
products or technologies such as Microsoft or Apple does. Instead,
their business model is to, first, bring foreign tech workers into the
United States who are willing to accept less pay than their American
counterparts; two, place these workers into other companies in exchange
for a consulting fee; and, three, transfer these workers from company
to company in order to maximize profits from placement fees.
In other words, these companies are petitioning for foreign workers
simply to then turn around and provide these same workers to other
companies who need cheap labor for various short-term projects.
Don't take my word for it. If you look at the marketing materials of
some of these companies that fall within the scope covered by today's
legislation, their materials boast about their ``outsourcing
expertise'' and say their advantage is their ability to conduct what
they call ``labor arbitrage''--labor arbitrage; they say it--which is,
in their own words, ``transferring work functions to a lower cost
environment for increased savings.''
The business model used by these companies within the United States
is creating three major negative side effects. First, it is ruining the
reputation of the H-1B program, which is overwhelmingly used by good
actors for beneficial purposes. Some of our colleagues have legislation
to curtail H-1B because of these types of abuses.
Second, according to the Economic Policy Institute, it is lowering
the wages for American tech workers already in the marketplace. And,
third, it is also discouraging many of our smartest students from
entering the technology industry in the first place. Students can see
that paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for advanced schooling is
not worth the cost when the market is being flooded with foreign
temporary workers willing to do tech work for far less pay because
their foreign education was cheaper and they intend to move back home
when their visa expires to a country where the cost of living is far
less expensive.
This type of use of the H-1B visa program will be addressed as part
of comprehensive reform, and it is likely going to be dramatically
restricted--certainly, if I have something to do about it. We will be
reforming the legal immigration system to encourage the world's best
and brightest to come to the United States to create new technologies
and businesses that will employ countless American workers but will
discourage businesses from using our immigration laws as a means to
obtain temporary and less expensive foreign labor to replace capable
American workers.
Let me say, in our proposal, the extra duty only goes on companies
that are more than 50 percent foreign workers and 50 percent H-1B
workers. The only companies that are 50 percent H-1B workers are those
that are just doing the policy that I proposed--far, far from what we
envisioned when H-1B was passed.
I say to those companies: If you do not change your ways--you should
not be doing what you are doing, and this duty is appropriate for that
purpose.
I do want to clarify a previous remark which mischaracterized these
firms where I labeled them as ``chop shops.'' That statement was
incorrect, and I wish to acknowledge that. In the tech industry, these
firms are known as ``body shops.'' That is what I should have said, and
that is what they are.
While I wholly oppose the manner in which these firms are using H-1B
to accomplish objectives that Congress never intended, it would be
unfortunate if anyone concluded from my remarks that these firms are
engaging in illegal behavior.
But I also want to make clear that the purpose of this fee is not to
target businesses from any particular country. Many news articles have
reported that the only companies affected by this fee are companies
based in India and that ipso facto the purpose of this legislation is
to target Indian IT companies. It is simply untrue that the purpose of
this legislation is to target Indian companies. We are simply raising
fees for businesses that use the H-1B visa to do things that are
contrary to the program's original intent, and that will be on any
company from any country that does it.
Visa fees will only increase for companies with more than 50 workers
who continue to employ more than 50 percent of their employees through
the H-1B program. That was never even close to anyone's thought when H-
1B was passed. Congress does not want the H-1B program to be a vehicle
for creating multinational temp agencies where workers do not know what
projects they will be working on or what cities they will be working in
when they enter the country. The fee is solely based upon the business
model of the company, not the location of the company.
If they are using the H-1B visa to innovate new products and
technologies, that is a good thing, regardless of whether the company
was originally founded in India, Ireland, or Indiana. But if they are
using the H-1B visa to run a glorified international temp agency for
tech workers in contravention of the spirit of this program, I and my
colleagues believe they should have to pay a higher fee to ensure that
American workers are not losing their jobs because of the unintended
uses of the visa program that were never contemplated when the program
was created. This belief is consistent regardless of whether the
company using these staffing practices was founded in Bangalore,
Beijing, or Boston.
Raising the fees for companies hiring more than 50 percent of their
workforce through foreign visas accomplishes two important goals:
First, it will provide the necessary funds to secure our borders
without raising taxes or adding to the deficit. Second, it will level
the playing field for American workers so they do not lose out on good
jobs in America because it is cheaper to bring in a foreign worker than
hire an American worker.
Let me tell my colleagues what objective folks around the world are
saying about the impact of this fee increase.
In an August 6, 2010, Wall Street Journal article, Avinash Vashistha,
the CEO of a Bangalore-based offshoring advisory consulting firm, told
the Journal the new fee in the bill ``would accelerate Indian firms''
plans to hire
[[Page S6999]]
more American-born workers in the U.S.'' What is wrong with that?
In an August 7, 2010, Economic Times article, Jeya Kumar, a CEO of a
top IT company, said this bill would ``erode cost arbitrage and cause a
change in the operational model of Indian offshore providers.''
Exactly. That is what we want.
The leaders of this business model are agreeing that our bill will
make it more expensive to bring in foreign tech workers to compete with
American tech workers for jobs in America. That means these companies
are going to have to start to hire U.S. tech workers again.
This bill is not only a responsible border security bill, it has the
dual advantage of creating more high-paying American jobs.
Finally, I want to be clear about one other thing. Even though
passing this bill will secure our borders, I again say the only way to
fully restore the rule of law to our entire immigration system is by
passing comprehensive immigration reform.
In my many meetings with folks on the other side of the aisle to try
to gain their support for comprehensive reform, I repeatedly heard them
say that once we show we are serious about passing border security
legislation, they would be able to begin working with us to fix all of
the other aspects of our broken immigration system.
Make no mistake about it, our entire immigration system is broken. It
is a patient that needs quadruple bypass surgery. A single bypass
surgery of border security alone is important but not enough to cure
the patient of its ailment. We also need to enact tough and smart
immigration reform that will, A, end the jobs magnet to the United
States by requiring that all legal workers show a secure Social
Security card prior to obtaining a job; B, end visa overstays through
robust interior enforcement; and, C, require that all persons here
unlawfully make their presence known to us by registering with the
Federal Government and then either getting right with the law or
leaving the country.
It is my hope that the bill we are passing today will break the
deadlock that has existed in Congress and will clear the path for us to
finally resume bipartisan negotiations in good faith on reforming our
broken immigration system. I intend to do everything I can to make that
happen.
But negotiations cannot happen out of thin air. It will take serious
Republicans working with serious Democrats to get this done. I urge my
colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join in this very important
task.
With this bill's passage today, we will clearly show we are serious
about securing our Nation's borders. It is time for our colleagues on
both sides of the aisle to join in fixing our entire broken immigration
system.
The urgency for immigration reform cannot be overstated because it is
so overdue. The time for excuses is now over. The time to get to work
is now.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three
times, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and
that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
The bill (H.R. 6080) was ordered to a third reading, was read the
third time, and passed.
____________________