[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 54 (Thursday, April 3, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2152-S2157]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PROTECTING VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTERS AND EMERGENCY RESPONDERS ACT OF
2014--Continued
Mrs. MURRAY. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum
call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Rodriguez Nomination
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the Judiciary Committee, of which I am a
member, voted out the nomination of Leon Rodriguez to be Director of
the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, also known as USCIS.
This agency has been at the center of the collapse of immigration
enforcement in America, and Mr. Rodriguez, if confirmed, will--it seems
certain--continue to accelerate that collapse. I think it is an
important issue for all of us to talk about. It is not so much about
him personally, but it is what he is going to be asked to do.
This is about what has been happening at Homeland Security--and USCIS
is an important part of that--and how it is impacting the rule of law
in America and immigration enforcement in America--or nonenforcement.
It is a very serious matter. What I am going to say today is based on
my best judgment of how and why it is happening and why this Congress
needs to speak up about it.
I have an article from the Washington Post, which is dated December
18, a few months ago. The article in the Washington Post is headlined
``Federal Workers' Job Satisfaction Falls, with Homeland Security
Depart. Ranking Lowest Again.''
It goes on to say:
Federal employees who deal with homeland security matters
remain some of the government's least-satisfied, as overall
workforce morale hit its lowest point in a decade, according
to a report that began ranking agencies on such issues in
2003.
It goes on to say:
The Department of Homeland Security, a perennial bottom-
dweller in the ``Best Places to Work in the Federal
Government'' rankings, marked its third consecutive year of
decline and its second straight year of being last among the
19 largest agencies. This is not acceptable, and I raised
that issue with Secretary Napolitano repeatedly at the
hearings.
I will remind my colleagues that the officers association of another
one of the three core immigration agencies--the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement Service--unanimously voted no confidence in their then-
Director John Norton mainly because he refused to allow them to comply
with their duty under the law to enforce immigration laws in America.
We had the Director of ICE and--you will learn--the Director of USCIS,
and I suggest the Homeland Security Director, investing their time and
effort in seeing that the laws of the United States were not enforced
rather than being enforced.
This gentleman is not prepared to lead this job if he were to be
supported in his activity, but, in fact, he was sent here because he
will not rock the boat. He will be given this position to continue this
policy of nonenforcement, even against the will of the officers who
serve under him.
The last thing we should do is put someone in a critical law
enforcement position, as these are, who doesn't know anything about it,
No. 1, and who is going to carry out President Obama's policies, which
is fundamentally not to enforce the law. I know there are people who
think that is an exaggeration, but I am going to talk about it, and we
are going to keep talking about it, and we are going to show what the
facts are. This is a serious matter.
Mr. Rodriguez is not a trained administrator. He has never led a
police department. He has never led and managed a real law enforcement
agency. He has been a prosecutor of white-collar crime cases. He served
for several years in the civil rights part of Homeland Security, but he
has not managed the officers out there on the ground who are trying to
deal with violent criminal aliens and get them deported and all the
gimmicks that they use to get around that. He was a chief of staff to
Mr. Perez, the head of the civil rights division in the Department of
Justice. Mr. Perez is nearly a radical pro-amnesty nonenforcement
leader himself. They were both members of CASA de Maryland, which is
very much a pro-amnesty activist group that proposes ideas that are
outside the mainstream.
I assume Majority Leader Reid will bring this nomination up for a
vote in
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the Senate, and it will be an important moment. Will the Senators vote
to defend the integrity of the immigration laws we passed or will they
help install someone to one of the most important positions in
government who will further erode and undermine those laws? This is the
question we are dealing with. We need to be honest about it. I don't
think there is any mystery here.
First, Mr. Rodriguez lacks the normal background and experience for a
position such as this. He doesn't have it. I am not saying he is not a
good civil rights lawyer or white-collar crime lawyer, but he doesn't
have the leadership experience to lead an agency such as this. His only
apparent encounter with immigration was his service on the board of
CASA de Maryland, which encourages illegal immigrants to defy law
enforcement. It has been a very active group.
Tellingly, Mr. Rodriguez refused to answer questions regarding
whether he believes an illegal immigrant who is ordered deported or
convicted of a felony criminal offense or convicted of multiple
misdemeanors or convicted of a single sex-related offense or convicted
of a single drunk driving offense or known to be a gang member should
be eligible for legal status in America. That is a pretty fair question
to ask a nominee to this important position because USCIS evaluates
people as to whether they have the requisites to be given legal status
and a pathway to citizenship in America.
Mr. Rodriguez would not even say whether someone who has been denied
legal status should be deported. So they come in and ask for legal
status, and it is turned down, and he was asked: Should that person get
to stay in the country or should that person be deported? There is only
one answer to that question. If you are not eligible to be in the
country and you had your hearing and you have been denied legal status,
there is only one answer, and that is you should be deported. These
should not be difficult questions for someone who wants to head an
agency that is charged with ensuring the integrity of our system.
The President has summarily suspended entire portions of immigration
law, granting unilateral reprieve to people based on everything from
family connection to age of illegal entry, and criminal record. He just
issues an order.
The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this week on the collapse of
interior enforcement. They reported that ``immigrants living illegally
in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today
than before Obama came into office.'' Boy, that is an understatement.
That is an absolute fact. It went on to state:
Expulsions of people who are settled and working in the
United States have fallen steadily since his first year in
office, and are down more than 40% since 2009.
It is really a lot more than 40 percent. They went on to quote the
former Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
John Sandweg, who left a little over a month ago. He was a top official
in the Obama administration. He said: ``If you are a run-of-the-mill
immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to
zero.'' This is a guy who held an important position in the Department
of Homeland Security. His duty was to identify people who are here
illegally.
In effect, the administration's policy is that unless you commit a
felony or other serious crime, you are free to illegally work here,
claim certain tax benefits, and obtain fraudulent documents so you can
get a job. Apparently having a fraudulent document to get a job you are
not lawfully entitled to get is not something that gets you deported in
this administration. Not apparently, that is the policy if truth be
known.
It is an open invitation to every would-be illegal immigrant to come
to the United States unlawfully and to every visa holder who is here
lawfully on a visa for a limited time to ignore the expiration date of
their visa and remain unlawfully in the country. That is the law the
President has set.
If the immigration laws are not enforceable by virtue of the plain
fact that they are duly passed laws by the Congress of the United
States, then there is no real immigration law. Anyone who wishes is
free to come on visa, let the visa expire and never leave. If you can
get past the border in some fashion unlawfully, they can stay and
nobody is going to impact you.
Yet, on March 13, after meeting with representatives of various
amnesty groups, the Homeland Security Secretary--the top man, Mr.
Johnson--reaffirmed that he is working to fulfill the President's
request to reduce enforcement even further. It is astonishing that the
President would order a review of enforcement policies, not for the
purpose of repairing enforcement flaws but to weaken it even more.
According to a March 14, 2014, Los Angeles Times article quoting
administrative officials:
The changes under review would effectively stop most
deportations of [illegal immigrants] with no criminal
convictions other than violations.
So any fraudulent documents that are used to come here and violate
immigration laws or get a job or get into the country unlawfully don't
count. You can do this all day. Come on down. This means that even
fugitive aliens, and those who have committed immigration felonies
would now be exempt from enforcement. It would represent a total
evisceration of immigration law, including those laws designed to
protect the wages and jobs of working Americans.
I will say parenthetically--we just had a vote on unemployment
insurance because we continue to have a very high unemployment rate. We
extended the normal limit on unemployment benefits to people who don't
have a job, and now we are doing nothing to protect American workers
from people who are illegally here and taking jobs they need for their
families.
In addition to that, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration
bill that would double the number of guest workers--the people who come
here just to work--at a time of high unemployment.
We have a bill that will be coming up soon, I suppose, to raise the
minimum wage. Why? Because wages have not risen sufficiently. We are
not happy about that. In fact, wages have been declining for over a
decade. This is a serious trend.
Dr. Borjas at Harvard attributes a good deal of that to the large
flow of immigration, particularly in lower income Americans who are
being hammered by this large flow of lower skilled foreign workers. It
is supply and demand.
Why are wages not going up, colleagues? Do you believe in the free
market? They are not going up because we have more workers than we have
jobs.
Mr. Sperling, the President's former top economic adviser, admitted a
few weeks ago that there are three applicants for every job in America.
The last thing we need to be doing is doubling the number of foreign
workers brought into the country and not enforcing the law with regard
to people who have entered illegally, isn't that correct? I mean, can't
we agree on issues such as that?
In 2012--go back to this, the problems--and people need to know this.
The mainstream media does not want to talk about it. They don't tend to
report it, but it has been out there for months--years. It is the
reality. This is what a 2012 inspector general report of the Department
of Homeland Security--this is their own inspector general, who serves
at the pleasure of the Homeland Security Secretary. They issued a
report which found that senior officials at USCIS--that is the
Citizenship and Immigration Services, where this individual will be the
head--they found that senior officials at USCIS have been pressuring
employees to rubberstamp applications for immigration benefits despite
obvious signs of fraud.
Kenneth Palinkas, president of the National Citizenship and
Immigration Services Council--the union representing 12,000
adjudicators, officers, and staff--issued a statement in May of 2013
that echoed the findings of the report. This is what Mr. Palinkas's
group said:
USCIS adjudications officers are pressured to rubberstamp
applications instead of conducting diligent case review and
investigations. The culture at USCIS encourages all
applications to be approved, discouraging proper
investigation into red flags and discouraging denial of
applications. USCIS has been turned into an approval machine.
This is not acceptable. What are we paying 18,000 officers to do?
Don't the
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American people expect that they are supposed to be reviewing
applications, not rubberstamping them; identifying people who may be
terrorists or criminals or have no likelihood of producing anything
worthwhile in America, who are not going to be successful in America,
and who may be otherwise unlawfully eligible to enter, while we turn
people down who have the lawful right to enter and put them on a
backlog? It doesn't make any sense.
According to Mr. Palinkas:
USCIS has created an almost insurmountable bureaucracy
which often prevents USCIS adjudications officers from
contacting and coordinating with ICE agents and officers in
cases that should have their involvement.
Look, the ICE officers are kind of like the criminal investigators.
They deal with people who are apprehended inside the country. They deal
with people who have been arrested or in jail on one cause or another--
assaults, drugs, violence, criminality. So USCIS is evaluating
paperwork to see if somebody is qualified, and they have some red flag,
and they would like to call the ICE officers to see if this is the same
guy who committed an assault or an armed robbery a few years ago, and
they are being discouraged from doing that. What is this? It is exactly
the opposite of what we are paying them to do.
Mr. Palinkas continues:
USCIS officers are pressured to approve visa applications
for individuals that ICE agents have determined should be
placed into deportation proceedings.
So they are pressuring them to approve these individuals who have not
been approved.
I see Senator Warren is here, and I will wrap up. I didn't realize
she had been approved to speak at this time, and I will wrap up
briefly.
We need to put an end to this lawlessness, and the next Director of
USCIS must ensure the integrity of our immigration system--it is just
that simple--as his mission statement calls for him to do. They must be
independent and able to stand up for the rule of law under what
undoubtedly will be tremendous political pressure from an
administration and pro-amnesty activist groups who seem to be
dominating the agenda and who have little interest in seeing the great
classical American rule of law enforced.
Mr. Rodriguez, unfortunately, I am convinced is not that person. He
would not be the right person if he really had the support of his
leadership. He just doesn't have the background. He has never managed a
major agency with 18,000 employees or anything like it. He does not
have any experience on the frontlines of what they do every day and how
they do it. But it is even worse because--look, why didn't they choose
somebody who is experienced in DHS? Why didn't they choose a police
chief or a military officer, someone who knows how to lead and manage a
big agency such as this one, somebody with independence and integrity?
Why? Because they don't want somebody with independence and integrity
committed to the enforcement of law. They have already decided they are
not enforcing the law, and they want somebody such as this Casa de
Maryland protege to go into that agency who is not going to enforce the
law.
It is a serious statement I make, and I think it is fundamentally
accurate. I am just buffaloed that this is the fact.
Mr. Jonathan Turley, a constitutional lawyer who has written about
government issues and constitutional issues for quite a number of
years--Professor Turley has written recently and participated in a
discussion where he said that what the President is doing with regard
to immigration is beyond any justifiable utilization of prosecutorial
discretion, that it amounts to a nullification of law by the President,
who takes an oath and is constitutionally required to see that the laws
of this country are faithfully carried out.
This is a very serious matter. We need to talk about it. This
nomination sort of provides us an opportunity to recognize what is
happening, and the American people are going to need to speak up. We
need to be able to change what is happening to restore the great
American heritage of law.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Minimum Wage
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, it has taken us 4 months, but we are
finally on the verge of passing a long-overdue emergency extension of
unemployment benefits. So I come to the floor this afternoon to urge my
colleagues to continue supporting America's working families by raising
the minimum wage.
Over the past 50 years the value of the minimum wage has sharply
declined. In 1968 the minimum wage was high enough to keep a working
parent with a family of three out of poverty. In 1980 the minimum wage
was at least high enough to keep a working parent with a family of two
out of poverty. Today the minimum wage isn't even high enough to keep a
fully employed mother and a baby out of poverty. This is fundamentally
wrong. Anyone who works full time should not live in poverty.
For nearly half a century, as we came out of the Great Depression, we
lived by the basic principle that we all do better when we work
together and build opportunities for everyone. For nearly half a
century, as our country got richer our workers got richer, and as our
workers got richer our country got richer. As the pie got bigger, we
all got a little bit more. That is how it was, and that is how we built
America's great middle class.
But that is not how it works now for low-income workers. Dr. Arin
Dube of the University of Massachusetts has explained that if the
minimum wage had kept up with increases in productivity, it would be
$22 an hour today. But it didn't keep up. So today, while corporate
profits soar, millions of hard-working moms and dads are left behind,
working full time and still living in poverty.
Democrats aren't proposing to increase the minimum wage to $22 an
hour. Our proposal is much more modest--a raise to $10.10 an hour. That
is modest by comparison, but for at least 14 million children who
depend on a parent whose wages would go up as a result of this
legislation, this increase will make their lives a whole lot more
secure.
This bill is about the lives of minimum-wage workers, but it is also
about every taxpayer in America and about the corporate welfare
taxpayers are forced to dole out when these companies pay poverty-level
wages.
More than half of low-wage working families participate in government
assistance programs for food, for health care, and for other expenses.
A study by researchers at UC Berkeley and the University of Illinois
show that we spend about $240 billion a year providing benefits to
working families through food stamps, Medicaid, and other antipoverty
programs.
When big companies pay poverty-level wages and then count on the
government to cover basic expenses for their employees, they get a
boost from every American taxpayer who helps pick up the ticket for
food stamps and Medicaid. Taxpayer dollars are being used to boost the
profits of private companies that don't want to pay their employees
enough to keep them out of poverty. That is corporate welfare, plain
and simple.
I understand why some businesses might like to keep it that way, but
American taxpayers have had enough of this corporate welfare. American
workers have had enough of this corporate welfare. America has had
enough of this corporate welfare.
This is an uphill fight. Those big corporations that pay poverty-
level wages want to keep wages the way they are. And why not? It is
more money for corporate dividends and CEO bonuses. So those companies
hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers who lean on Washington politicians
to keep things exactly the way they are. Minimum-wage workers don't
have an army of lobbyists and lawyers, and American taxpayers don't
either. But Congress doesn't work for those big companies. We work for
the workers and the taxpayers and the voters who sent us here.
It is time to call out this corporate welfare for what it is, and it
is time to fight back. It has been 7 years since Congress last
increased the minimum wage. Senator Ted Kennedy led that fight, and I
am proud to carry that fight forward today. It is time to honor work
again, time to honor people who get up every day and bust their tails
to try to build a life for themselves and their children. It is time to
increase the minimum wage.
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Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor, and I suggest the
absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
allowed to speak and that Senators Murkowski, Begich, and Wicker be
allowed to join me in a colloquy as they come to the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, thank you very much.
Pirate Fishing
Mr. President, we are coming to the floor today because the four of
us serve as the cochairs of the Senate Oceans Caucus. I know the
Presiding Officer from Delaware has a keen interest in oceans issues as
well, and we appreciate his support for the caucus.
We have worked very hard in this caucus to find bipartisan common
ground on issues that relate to the seas and to our oceans, and one of
the areas we have worked on is the area that is described in the jargon
as IUU fishing, which means illegal, unreported, and unregulated
fishing. The better word for it, the clearer word for it, the more
accurate word for it is pirate fishing.
These are fishermen around the world who go to sea and they fish
above legal limits, they fish out of season, they fish for catches they
are not allowed to catch, they fish in waters they are not allowed to
fish in, and then they come to shore and market their illicit product.
When they do that, they hurt legitimate fishermen and they hurt
American fishermen in two ways. First of all, fish migrate around the
globe. If they are knocked down, damaged, and caught illegally in other
areas, then the American fishery for that same species is hurt. The
second is that depresses the global price for fish. These people can
flood the market with illegal fish. That drops the price through the
law of supply and demand, and now our American fishermen--who are
fishing lawfully, who are abiding by the catch limits, who are fishing
in the right seasons and places--suffer a disadvantage in the pricing
when their fish get to market.
So this is an important issue for our States, and it is not for
nothing that we are all coastal State Senators who are here to express
our support for action on these treaties.
In the United States, commercial fish landings are over $5 billion in
revenue a year. Recreational anglers spend more than $25 billion a
year. So this is big business, and pirate fishing is a big hit to our
big business. Pirate fishing losses have been estimated at between $10
billion and $24 billion every year. When you consider that our whole
recreational fishing industry is only roughly $26 billion--and this is
a $24 billion raid, basically, on the international fisheries--it is
important that we can do this.
So there is a package of treaties that has come out of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee. There are four of them. Three of them are
traditional fishing treaties covering the South Pacific, the North
Pacific, and the Northwest Atlantic fisheries. You can only imagine
what the North Pacific fishery means for Alaskan fishermen and what the
Northwest Atlantic fishery means for our northeastern fishermen. It is
very important that we get these treaties cleared through the Senate.
I am delighted that Chairman Menendez and his ranking member Senator
Corker have passed these bills through the Foreign Relations Committee
with very strong bipartisan support. I think we have a really good
chance to get something done in a bipartisan fashion that is good for
our industry and also the right thing to do.
It is simply unfair when international pirate fishers are able to
knock down the fisheries market internationally and take away product
that we would otherwise catch.
I see the senior Senator from Alaska has joined me on the floor. I
just mentioned the North Pacific treaty, which I know has specific
relevance to her State.
We are in a parliamentary position where we have unanimous consent to
engage in a colloquy--Senator Murkowski and I and Senator Wicker and
Senator Begich as they arrive. So I now yield the floor to Senator
Murkowski. Let me say how much I appreciate her leadership. She has
been the cochair of the Oceans Caucus. It was significantly her
initiative that we should focus on pirate fishing, and I applaud all
the work she has done, together with Senator Wicker, who has now joined
us.
I yield to the Senator from Alaska.
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I thank my friend and my colleague from
Rhode Island, who also is my cochair on the Senate Oceans Caucus. As he
has noted, this is an issue of IUU fishing--illegal, unreported, and
unregulated fishing--and, really, that is too polite a term for it. It
is really piracy--piracy of our fisheries.
Senator Whitehouse has been very engaged in working on so many of
these key issues. I think this is quite important what we are
discussing today--the positive step forward, not only for fishermen in
my State but for fishermen around the Nation.
I would like to thank those who have been involved in this effort in
addition to Senator Whitehouse--Senator Wicker, as well as Senator
Begich, for their efforts to help advance these treaties. I would also
like to recognize Senator Menendez and Senator Corker for their support
through the Foreign Relations Committee process.
It should come as no surprise to any of my colleagues here in terms
of Alaska's role with our fisheries. Alaska leads all States in terms
of both volume and value of commercial fisheries, with approximately
1.84 million metric tons, worth $1.3 billion. The seafood coming out of
Alaska accounts for over 52 percent of our Nation's commercial seafood
harvest. Our commercial, sport, and subsistence fisheries are really at
the heart of coastal Alaska. They are the source of economic livelihood
for more than 80,000 Alaskans who are directly or indirectly employed
in the industry. I count my family as part of Alaska's fishing families
who support very well managed, sustainable fisheries.
But what we have seen from these acts of piracy--this illegal
fishing--let's take, for instance, the crab fisheries, is very serious.
Illegally harvested Russian king crab has been a real problem for us in
Alaska since the early 1990s. In 2011 NOAA law enforcement seized 112
metric tons of illegally harvested Russian king crab that was being
shipped to U.S. markets through the Port of Seattle. So what happens
here is you have the Russians, who are taking too many of the king
crab, illegally harvesting them and then effectively dumping them on
the U.S. markets. Well, what do you think that does, then, to the price
of the crab we are catching here lawfully in the United States? It is
depressing the price of crab. Now, I know this. I mentioned that my
family is in the fishing business. My cousin is involved in the crab
industry. They have seen the prices of crab go down between 20 and 25
percent because of this illegal harvesting by the Russians.
This is not just a small problem. This is not something that is just
happening right now. This has been happening for decades now, and it
needs to be stopped. I do want to take a moment to express my
appreciation for the amazing work our U.S. Coast Guard does, as well as
the other agencies, NOAA and the State Department, their combined
efforts they are making to combat pirate fishing. It is greatly
appreciated by me and my constituents.
We have four treaties in front of us that will help to level this
playing field and ensure that our coastal fishing communities will face
less unfair competition from pirate fishing vessels that simply have
not been held to the high fisheries management standards we have here
in the United States.
Two of the treaties we are looking at are particularly important for
my State. One is the Port State Measures Agreement. This sets global
standards to combat IUU fishing, and it helps to protect our U.S.
fishermen by keeping the foreign, illegally caught fish from entering
the global stream of commerce. It is hugely important for us.
The other one I would like to highlight is the Convention on the
Conservation and Management of High Seas Fisheries Resources in the
North
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Pacific Ocean. This will ensure that the North Pacific Fisheries
Commission is established and also helps to ensure that there is a
fisheries management regime in place to deter this IUU fishing within
the region adjacent to Alaska. So it is critically important when it
comes to our fisheries and the sustainability of our fisheries and how
we manage our fisheries.
We are trying to play by the rules. We expect others to be doing the
same.
So, again, I appreciate the work so many have done to help advance
these treaties that are before us.
I see my colleague from Mississippi on the floor, and I would like to
hear again from him in terms of support for these treaties.
With that, I yield to my friend from Mississippi.
Mr. WICKER. I thank my colleague.
Mr. President, I do not know if I need to seek recognition to be in a
colloquy, but I do appreciate the remarks of the Senator from Rhode
Island and the Senator from Alaska.
I rise this afternoon to join them in wholehearted support of these
four important measures. They are an important step in combating--the
term we use, as the Senator from Alaska said--is illegal, unreported,
and unregulated fishing, IUU fishing, but I will also join my
colleagues in saying that it is nothing short of pirate fishing.
It has broad economic, social, and ecological consequences. I am glad
to join in support of these four measures. They have been hotlined. For
those within the sound of our voices today that do not understand that,
it is an expedited way to move things on a unanimous basis. I have
every reason to believe that it will only be a matter of time before we
have these hotline requests cleared on both sides of the aisle.
Alaska and Rhode Island have their interests in this. I can assure
you that Mississippi does too. Mississippi is home to many hard-working
fishing communities. They depend on the oceans for their livelihoods.
We are the sixth largest seafood-producing State in the country. Many
people might not realize that. We are second in the Gulf of Mexico to
the State of Louisiana.
Pirate fishing hurts our fishermen. Our fishermen abide by the law.
Pirate fishing puts them at a competitive disadvantage, as the Senator
said. These fishermen who are small business owners, for the most part,
should not be penalized for playing by the rules. International
cooperation and standards are needed to protect local commerce and the
environment. That is what the Agreement on Port State Measures would
do.
Under the agreement, vessels carrying illegally harvested fish would
not be allowed to enter our ports and thereby dilute the market with
fraudulent product. In this way, the agreement would protect U.S.
fishermen, seafood buyers, and consumers, while also supporting marine
habitat, coastal economies, and coastal communities.
Estimates show that pirate fishing costs as much as $23 billion per
year globally and poses a serious threat to the sustainability of
marine habitat. In parts of the world it accounts for up to 40 percent
of the wild marine fish caught.
Other treaties under consideration address high seas fisheries
resources. As the Senator from Alaska said, one in the North Pacific,
yet another in the South Pacific, as well as amendments to the 1978
Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization Convention. These amendments
simply update the conventions with standards similar to those that we
in the United States use for our domestic waters.
These treaties can serve as powerful tools for showing that the
United States is committed to enforcing fisheries laws and encouraging
other countries to follow suit. Like other fisheries treaties that the
Senate has ratified, they would protect America's interests, and they
would protect American workers.
Our commercial and recreational fishing industries are responsible
for 1.7 million American jobs and countless more at docks and
facilities for processing and distribution. In summary, these four
measures are good for the economy, they are good for the seafood
industry, they are good for consumers, they are good for small business
people, and they are good for our commercial fishermen.
It is an opportunity for us to strike a blow for bipartisanship and
internationalism. I am glad to see the widespread support. I look
forward to the measures being cleared on both sides of the aisle. I see
my other distinguished colleague from Alaska here.
I yield the floor.
Mr. BEGICH. Mr. President, what you will find with these issues is
that they are bipartisan. Fish know no boundaries of political
persuasion. They look at what is important to them. We like to catch
them and eat them. So it does not matter where they come from, whether
from the seas of Alaska or from the gulf. So I thank the Senator for
the opportunity to say a few words.
To Senator Whitehouse, my thanks for organizing and allowing this
opportunity. I will tell you, we do not mean to outnumber you, having
two Alaskans here. We are so dedicated to this issue. I can tell you
having this opportunity to have these four treaties ratified is
incredibly important for us.
I know lots of times we talk about illegal, unreported, unregulated
fishing. I like to simply call it pirate fishing. These are people who
steal our fish out of our waters and then try to sell them back to us.
Clearly it is what it is: stealing our stock and packing our fisheries
and passing, as was just mentioned, the cost to our markets of $23
billion a year nationwide--worldwide--because of these pirate fishermen
and fisherwomen.
Alaskan crab fishermen, for example--for people who like to watch a
reality show, ``The Deadliest Catch'' is one of those. ``The Deadliest
Catch'' guys tell me that there is over a half a billion dollars in
lost crab because of illegal imports that are coming in. They may be
stolen or labeled incorrectly.
The human impact is even more appalling, when you think about it. The
working conditions on those boats are deplorable. They do not call them
``rust buckets'' for nothing. They are. They are dangerous. They are
unsafe. There is forced labor, human trafficking, slavery. You name the
list; it is everything you can imagine in these ships.
Again, you can call it what you want, but at the end of the day, what
is happening is pirate fishing. They are stealing the fish. Again,
illegal fishing is a stateless criminal enterprise. There are no flags.
They steal fish with impunity. They victimize their workers. We need to
fight back. These treaties help do it.
The Coast Guard--we love our coasties. It does not matter if they are
in Alaska or around the country. They do an incredible job. They track
down these criminals on the high seas and chase them down. You can see
in this picture where they have caught one of the ships--our Coast
Guard cutters in the North Pacific a few years back.
There is no question when they catch these ships what should happen
to them, from my perspective. I am a little more radical on this. I
know we will have these treaties, which are important. But you know, in
my view, if they catch a ship like this, they should take the crew off,
take the hazardous waste off, and sink it to the bottom of the ocean.
Then we are done. The people will get a clear message.
I know some lawyers object to my idea. I recognize that. But let me
tell you, we had some ships--this one, for example. As you can see, it
is not only a rust bucket; you can see the rust bleeding off of it.
This is one of these ships that was washed into our waters from the
tsunami in Japan. You can see a well-placed artillery shell hit it in
the middle because they decided to sink it.
So after the Coast Guard's lawyers thought it was not a good idea, we
had a piece of equipment that they then went ahead and sunk. I will
tell you, you do this kind of activity, and I guarantee you the pirates
of this country who are trying to steal our fish will get a clear and
simple message.
But it is important to go after these pirates. The Coast Guard--in
this case it was an old rust bucket they sunk to the bottom. I have
taken to the floor many times to say they need better tools, more
cutters, more patrol aircraft to do their job and increase their
capacity in going after these pirates--not only pirates on fishing, but
also smuggling drugs and all the other work that these illegal ships
are doing that they need to go after. We need to have tougher laws.
That is what these treaties do. They strengthen the laws. They
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are bipartisan. The Port State Measures Agreement tightens rules on
seafood imports, provides for better inspection, and lists the pirate
boats so we know who to keep out of our waters.
Others deal with protecting high seamounts and other needed
provisions specific to the North Pacific, the South Pacific, and the
Atlantic. They have been in years of negotiations. I applaud our teams
at the State Department and NOAA and the many Senators who have engaged
in this issue to solve this problem, to create more tools for us to
enforce.
We need to do our part. We need to support these treaties. Again, it
is a bipartisan effort. We need to support these treaties because it
will support our fishermen, support our economies throughout the ocean
States and the Gulf States and throughout the States that impact with
fisheries. We also need to do it because of the rule of law and
protecting and respecting the rule of law and human dignity that we
insist on.
When we think of the impact of these individuals who are trapped on
these boats--literally, the human trafficking, slavery, and forced work
that these guys are taken to on these pirate ships is appalling. We
should be appalled just by that fact alone, besides the billions they
steal from the waters and try to resell from their harvest in our
oceans illegally.
So let me just sum up by saying again that I know my idea of sinking
a pirate ship may be a little radical. But the Coast Guard did it on
one ship. My view is, why not more? But at least we will have some
treaties, maybe with this work on the floor tonight. Again, to Senator
Whitehouse, I thank him for organizing all of us who care so deeply
about the fishing industry and these treaties that will make a
difference. When you put more tools in the toolbox, it will have an
impact.
You can rest assured I will do everything I can to gather the support
necessary to make sure these treaties pass. I will stop at this point.
I appreciate the effort. Thank you for allowing me to have visual aids.
Sometimes words are great, but visual aids make impact. Hopefully,
people can see. Hopefully, these pirates will see we are serious and
this is not some movie that Johnny Depp is in either. We are going
after those pirate ships.
Thank you for the opportunity to say a few words.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Mississippi
and the two Senators from Alaska for participating in this bipartisan
effort. Let me conclude by reading something that Chris Lischewski, who
is the CEO and President of Bumble Bee Foods, wrote to me:
Everybody loves a tuna fish sandwich. And Bumble Bee has
been in that industry for a long time. They are a proud
American company. But tuna travel great distances. They are a
fish, that if foreign pirates go after them and fish them
illegally, and fish them unsustainably and knock that
population down, that comes home to roost for good old Bumble
Bee Foods.
Here is what the CEO of that company said:
IUU fishing is a multi-billion dollar industry that
undermines our global conservation and sustainability
efforts.
By that he means his company.
Illegal fishing penalizes legitimate fishermen and
processors and it must be stopped. While the United States
has done a good job at developing laws to detect and deter
IUU fishing, other nations have not. We strongly support the
agreement on Port State Measures to prevent, deter and
eliminate the illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing,
because it creates an obligation for other nations to take
action against IUU fishing.
I yield the floor. If any of my colleague wish to speak, let me just
say that they do so with my gratitude for this bipartisan moment in the
Senate and in support of the jobs that the fishing industry provides
for our constituents.
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I think we are waiting here for a
couple of minutes. I will use a couple of minutes to speak again to
those who come to our assistance when it comes to the enforcement of
our fisheries laws--the men and women of our Coast Guard, NOAA, and our
other enforcement agencies.
Senator Begich has somewhat dramatically shown some of the scenes.
This is not easy stuff out there. When you have somebody who we have
reason to believe has been operating illegally in violation of our
agreed fisheries laws, more likely than not they are not just going to
stand by and let you board and take a peek. They are going to take
chase.
As we are hearing, as we are trying to find some evidence of the
missing Malaysian jetliner, the oceans out there are pretty darn big.
Usually, the conditions are not ones in which you would want to go out
on a pleasure cruise.
Our men and women who are engaged in those enforcement efforts are
truly heroes to us in terms of the efforts that they make, the energy
that they expend, and the risk that they place themselves at.
So day after day, as they cover our waters, as they work to ensure
that there is a effective management of our fisheries, their efforts to
enforce these laws, their efforts to provide for a level of protection
and safety, their efforts to bring the pirates to justice are truly to
be applauded.
I thank the Senator for the opportunity to make that brief statement.
I see my friend and colleague is at the ready, hopefully to announce
that we will be able to move to passage of these significant treaties.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. It appears that we will shortly be able to do that.
This is a happy coincidence in which four Senators in bipartisan
fashion have come to the floor to support action on four treaties that
will help protect our fishing industry, and it turns out that at this
moment the treaties have been cleared for ratification on both sides of
the aisle. In a moment I will be able to take us through those
parliamentary steps, but on behalf of all four of us, I should express
my appreciation to Chairman Menendez and to his ranking member Senator
Corker for the leadership they have shown in getting these treaties
through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I know it was in a
strongly bipartisan fashion. I think it was in a unanimously bipartisan
fashion.
The Presiding Officer is a member of that distinguished committee,
and I want to express my appreciation to the Presiding Officer, Senator
Coons of Delaware.
It is good to be able to do these kinds of things in a bipartisan
fashion. It reminds me a little bit of our friend Senator Enzi's 80/20
rule: We get 80 percent done in the Senate without incident, but then,
of course, nobody notices. The other 20 percent we fight over, and the
fight gets 80 percent of the attention.
So it is a happy moment when we can do something good for our
industry, good for our fisheries, do it in a bipartisan fashion, and do
it smoothly.
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