[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 101 (Thursday, June 26, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4127-S4129]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMMIGRATION REFORM
Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, we say that America is a nation of
immigrants, and, of course, that is true. There is no other country in
the world for which immigration is so central to its history and its
identity. Let's take a moment to reflect on what that really means.
Here is a photo. I am afraid it is not a very good quality. I took it
myself. It is a photo that I took at a naturalization ceremony held for
Active Duty servicemembers in Fort Carson, CO. The 13 soldiers and
spouses who became U.S. citizens on that day represented 11 different
countries of origin even though they are wearing our uniform.
They came from all over the world: Colombia, Haiti, Malaysia, Mexico,
Nicaragua, China, the Philippines, South Korea, Togo, Ukraine, and the
United Kingdom. They all came for this pursuit of the American dream,
and they all came to serve this country. They are going to be the
people who help us determine our future.
The same is true with the refugees fleeing persecution from around
the world. The parents seeking opportunity for their children and those
stepping forward to serve and sacrifice for our shared values have made
this country the America we love. But our existing immigration policies
do not reflect this history or the values that shaped it. Instead, it
is a mess of unintended consequences that hurts our businesses, rips
families apart, and keeps us at a competitive disadvantage with the
rest of the world.
Tomorrow marks 365 days--1 year--since the Senate acted to fix these
problems and passed bipartisan immigration reform. Yet here we are
still waiting for the House of Representatives to do the same. The
House's inaction is costing our Nation. It has cost us, among other
things, $13.4 billion in lost revenue in this last year alone. With
each additional day that passes, we lose another $37 million of
revenue.
What is most frustrating about this to me is that we agree--on both
sides of the aisle--that our current immigration system is broken. We
agree that our immigration system is critical for our economy and for
our country.
In June of last year we passed a bill in this Chamber with strong
bipartisan support. It won the support of a broad coalition of
Republicans and Democrats. It also has the support of countless
organizations, from migrant workers to farmers and ranchers, from law
enforcement agencies to the faith community, Latino leaders across this
country, and the Chamber of Commerce to labor unions.
Often I tell those who despair about the lack of leadership in
Congress that there is a model we can learn from, and it is the
bipartisan work that was done on this bill. I cannot say enough about
the Republican Members of the Gang of 8 who negotiated a bill over
seven or eight months, knowing what the base of their party might say
about the fact that they were in that room but still willing to do it
because it was right to do for their country and it was right to do for
their party--in that order.
In this job I have had the opportunity to meet with a diverse cross
section of
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Coloradans throughout the State, each struggling beneath the weight of
a broken immigration system. I have spoken with peach growers on the
Western Slope, vegetable growers in Brighton, and melon farmers in the
San Luis Valley--farmers such as Philip Davis from Mesa Winds Farm and
Winery in Western Colorado who cannot get the seasonal workers he
needs. He will tell you how hard he and his family have had to work to
fill these gaps, and how every single day they have to keep fighting to
prevent their 36-acre farm from closing.
A legal, reliable, competent workforce for our Nation's farms and
ranches is essential for Colorado's $40 billion agricultural industry,
and it is essential for our agricultural industry across the country.
Maybe that is the reason why both the United Farm Workers union and the
growers all across the United States of America endorsed this bill.
I have heard from Colorado's high-tech companies such as Full
Contact, a tech startup in Boulder, CO, that acquired a company
overseas. They have been unable to hire the talented engineers they
need to grow their businesses and add jobs.
I have also heard from Colorado's dedicated teachers and
administrators who work tirelessly to teach the next generation of
entrepreneurs and innovators--teachers such as Mary Edwin from Colorado
Springs. Mary, a graduate of Johns Hopkins with a master's degree in
education, will likely be forced to return home to Nigeria, leaving
behind the children she works with at Turman Elementary School, all on
account of our broken, outdated visa system.
This year on April 7, approximately 6 months before the 2015 fiscal
year even begins, the government announced it had already reached its
statutory cap on H-1B petitions for H-1B visas. It has also reached its
exemption for 20,000 advanced-degree holders. These are exactly the
type of workers our State and the national economy require.
I will paint a picture of what our country would look like if the
Senate's immigration bill were actually enacted. First, millions of
people who came to this country for a better life, including young
people whose parents brought them here as children, would have the
opportunity to enter a tough but fair pathway to citizenship. With a
path in place, we would see higher wages, greater consumption of goods
and increased revenue. It would reduce our debt by nearly $1 trillion--
even in Washington that is real money--over 20 years, and increase our
economic growth by roughly 5.4 percent over that period of time.
Next, our bill would put in place an efficient and flexible visa
system that would enable us to compete in a changing 21st century
global economy. Talented entrepreneurs and innovators from around the
world would have the opportunity to stay here in order to create jobs
and fuel our economy. High-skilled workers in math and science, and
lower-skilled workers in industries such as hospitality and tourism
would come into the country to fill jobs where there are no available
U.S. workers.
We would provide stability for our agricultural industry with a new
streamlined program for agricultural workers--one that is more usable
for employers and protects our workers.
Our borders would be more secure. There is one border security bill
that has passed the Congress, and that is the bill passed by the
Senate. It allows for new fencing, doubling the number of border
agents, and increased spending on new technology. We would have full
situational awareness on the border in order to allow us to intercept
threats rapidly and successfully. And with the mandatory employment
verification system and more effective entry-exit system, we would
prevent future waves of illegal immigration.
A huge number of people who are here entered the country legally; we
just don't know where they are. We ought to have a system that tells us
that. These are all changes that our Nation urgently needs.
In the time since the Senate passed the bill, we heard a litany of
reasons why it can't pass the House. They say the Senate bill doesn't
have support in the House. If Speaker Boehner put the bill on the floor
tomorrow, it would pass. They say the Senate bill is too long, too big,
too comprehensive. I, for one, am willing to consider looking at this
bill in smaller pieces as long as all the problems with the system are
addressed. But the House has not produced--never mind voted--on a
single bill, much less a series of smaller bills.
They say they want more border security, but what do they know about
the border that our Republican colleagues from Arizona, John McCain and
Jeff Flake, don't know? What do they know about the border that Senator
Flake and Senator McCain don't know? We have 21,000 border agents, and
we are putting another 21,000 on the border if this bill were passed.
We spend more money on the border than we do on all other Federal law
enforcement combined, but they say there is not enough border
security--not that they passed a border security bill. The only folks
who have passed a border security bill are right here in the Senate. We
should ask them how many more agents they need, and how many more
billions of dollars we should spend.
If the House wants to secure the border first, which the Senate bill
does, let's see their legislation. We are waiting. I, for one, would
like to see them think about customs agents and trade instead of adding
more billions of dollars at the border.
The most common excuse we have heard is that the House has not had
time to pass a bill. The House was only scheduled to work 9 days last
September. Ultimately, they came back for a few extra days to shut the
government down.
In the year since the Senate passed the bill, the House has found the
time to vote 17 times to repeal, delay or dismantle the health care
bill--54 times in total in the last 4 years. They voted to name 20 post
offices and an assortment of 20 other government buildings. They have
held five separate House committee hearings. They produced three
different public reports and passed one resolution on the topic of
Benghazi--a topic that has never come up in most of our town hall
meetings.
What I hear in Colorado over and over is we have to stop excuses,
stop posturing, and pass a bill--a good bipartisan bill, and that is
what the House of Representatives ought to be doing now. Fixing our
broken immigration system is long overdue, and I believe that the
bipartisan solution crafted in our Senate bill will fix it just fine.
It is time for the House to act.
With that, I yield the floor, and I thank my colleague, again, for
his patience and kindness in allowing me to go first.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague. I would note
he didn't mention and wasn't mentioned in the effort to pass the Gang
of 8 bill, which was dead on arrival in the House, the American worker.
The numbers just came out yesterday, a revision of the economic
numbers--our gross domestic product showed a decline in the first
quarter of 2.9 percent, a GDP decline of 2.9 percent, which is the
largest we have seen since the recession hit--those dramatic days.
We are not creating jobs in this country. Wages are not going up. We
do not need to be surging the number of immigrants coming into the
country. We don't need to be passing a law such as the Gang of 8 bill
that would double the H-1B workers brought into America, increase by 50
percent the annual flow, add another 500,000 so-called backlog workers,
in addition to legalizing some 11 million-plus, at a time when
Americans are having wages fall and jobs are very difficult to find.
For example, I would note that workforce participation levels have
fallen to their lowest point since the 1970s. This is a dramatic
decline in the number of people working and the numbers continue to
slide. Since 2009, we have had a decline in median income for families
in America of $2,300.
They suggest repeatedly that this legislation we have brought to the
floor was focused primarily on melon harvesters, but that is not so.
About 80 percent of the people who would be given legal status and
would be allowed to come to America to work under the guest worker
program would not be on the farms. They would be taking jobs in plants
and factories all over America, reducing the need for businesses to
increase wages for a change and try to attract people into some of
these more
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difficult jobs. It is not that people won't do this work; it is that
the wages aren't sufficient to take care of them and their families.
We need wages to rise. We have a loose labor market, not a tight
labor market. People are having a hard time finding jobs. We are
talking about a dramatic increase in the number of workers at a time
when the economy is struggling, workers are hurting, wages are down,
and unemployment is up.
I just want to dispute that. I want to push back on it. That has been
my analysis from the beginning.
Oh, we need more high-tech workers, they say, and businesses say that
too. But what do the numbers show? Professor Harold Salzman at Rutgers
did a report that said we are actually graduating about 500,000 STEM
graduates--science, technology, engineering, mathematics--about 500,000
graduate a year, but we only have jobs for fewer than half of them.
Most STEM graduates are not working in their fields. They haven't been
able to find the kind of work for which they trained. One of the
reasons is that a substantial number of those jobs are taken by H-1B
workers who are brought in not to immigrate to America to create jobs,
I say to my colleagues; they come in on the H-1B visa, which is a
limited period of time, they work at lower wages, and they return to
their country. They are not on a path to be permanent citizens. But it
is a great asset to businesses that don't want to hire, perhaps--it
seems--people and put them on a career path where they might be
expected to get pay raises in the years to come.
So I will challenge even that fact. I talked to a business person
recently about a factory they have. The work sounded pretty good to me.
He wants to bring in foreign workers to Alabama. Well, we have
unemployment in Alabama. We have people on unemployment insurance. We
have people on welfare and food stamps and assistance who need to be
taking those jobs.
So the first responsibility of a congress, a senate, when they
consider an immigration bill is what is in the interests of the
American people. I don't believe it is wrong to discuss that. We have
to ask what is in our national interests, the interests of our people,
and this is not a time to be doubling the H-1B workers into America. It
is just not. And more and more scientific, peer-reviewed, excellent
studies are coming out on that.
I see my colleague, Senator Durbin. I know he is exceedingly busy. My
intention is to make a unanimous consent request that we actually do
something about the crisis we have on the border.
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