[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 183 (Wednesday, December 16, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8717-S8720]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
OMNIBUS SPENDING BILL
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I rise to address the 2,000-page,
trillion-dollar-plus, year-end omnibus spending bill--drafted behind
closed doors, away from public view, with only a limited number of
people involved. Members of the Senate and Members of the House were
unaware of what deals were being cut and what decisions were being
made. I believe it contains provisions that will cause material harm to
American workers--I just do--and to matters involving this legislation
that I have worked on for years. I am very disappointed. Actually, I am
deeply disappointed.
This bill contains dramatic changes to Federal immigration law that
would increase, by as much as four-fold, the number of low-wage foreign
workers provided to employers under the controversial H-2B visa
program. It has been a matter of controversy for a number of years. It
has been added to this bill without hearings and without an open
process in the Senate. These foreign workers are brought in exclusively
to fill blue-collar, low-wage, nonfarm jobs--not agricultural jobs--in
hotels and in restaurants and on construction sites, in amusement
parks, landscaping, truck driving, and in many other occupations--jobs
being sought by millions of Americans around this country. Millions are
taking those jobs every day.
When we go into hotels and restaurants, are not Americans doing those
jobs? H-2B workers are supposed to be here to fill seasonal jobs that
Americans allegedly ``won't do.'' That is what they say--those who want
more, cheaper labor.
Even those they are supposed to be temporary positions, foreign H-2B
workers are allowed to bring their spouses and their children with
them--which, of course, results in costs being incurred by local
communities, hospitals, and schools across the country. Although the
alien's spouse and children are not supposed to work in the United
States, I don't think anyone is under the illusion that this
administration has any intention--or previous ones, for that matter--to
do anything to stop them from working if they want to, nor will they be
deported if they violate the terms of their employment, nor will they
be removed if they overstay the visa they have been given.
Hotels have good jobs. Construction has good jobs. As to landscaping,
there is a group that does my lawn in Alabama. Three African-American
men come out and work on our lawn in a fairly short period of time,
using good equipment. The head person is in his 40s and had 20 years in
the Army. What do people mean that Americans won't do this work?
At a time of record immigration, we do not appreciate the scope of
it. We already have the highest number of foreign-born individuals in
American history. We are not against immigration. Immigration is a
positive thing--properly conducted. Good people come into
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America. But we are at record levels both in total numbers and, in a
few years, the highest percentage of foreign-born in America will be
reached, and it will continue thereafter. So is it any wonder that 83
percent of the electorate wants immigration either frozen or reduced?
The Republican-led Congress is about to deliver the President a
fourfold increase in one of the most controversial foreign worker
programs we have. In fact, it is a much larger version of a proposal
that was contained in the Gang of 8 comprehensive immigration bill that
was rejected by the American people and the House of Representatives
just 2 years ago. The result is higher unemployment and lower wages for
Americans. The free market controls--more labor, lower wage; more
labor, less job opportunity. It is indisputable.
The Economic Policy Institute has noted: ``Wages were stagnant or
declining for workers in all of the top 15 H-2B occupations between
2004 and 2014,'' and ``unemployment rates increased in all but one of
the top 15 H-2B occupations between 2004 and 2014, and all 15
occupations averaged a very high unemployment rate . . . Flat and
declining wages, coupled with such high unemployment rates over such a
long period of time, suggests a loose labor market and an over-supply
of workers rather than an under supply.''
I think that is a fact. Our free market friends ought to understand
that.
It is worth noting that the civilian labor force participation rate
is currently at around 62.5 percent, a low that we have not seen in
nearly four decades. Labor participation rate means the percentage of
workers in the working ages that actually have a job. It is the lowest
rate we have had in four decades.
Nevertheless, despite this low labor force participation rate, this
provision in the omnibus bill would exempt from the statutory limit,
which is now 66,000 H-2B workers a year--any worker who was present in
the United States during the three previous years. Thus, instead of
66,000 foreign workers, the bill would allow up to 264,000 foreign
workers to be present in the United States on H-2B visas. That is over
a quarter of a million low-wage, low-skilled workers brought in to
occupy blue-collar jobs. That may be good for certain businesses that
now have a large number of workers, because they don't have to raise
wages and change working conditions and raise benefits to attract and
keep workers. They can just bring in people from abroad who are
thankful to get any good cash-income job at lower wages.
This is bad for struggling American workers trying to get by and take
care of their families. It is particularly bad, as economist after
economist has shown, for minorities, including African Americans and
Hispanics, and recent immigrants who are here lawfully looking to try
to get a little better wage with a little better retirement and health
care benefits. This is going to help them? Give me a break.
On top of this provision, this omnibus bill approves, without any
conditions--the President's request for increased refugee admissions,
allowing him to bring in as many refugees as he wants. He can do that.
It is hard to believe, but he is allowed to do so. He simply has to
notify Congress of how many he intends to admit. He can bring them from
anywhere he wants and allow them access to unlimited welfare and
entitlements at the taxpayers' expense, which is not scored as a cost.
At the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest that I
chair, we had an official from Health and Human Services who testified
that 75 percent of the refugees are self-sustaining within 180 days.
But my staff helped me to ask the follow-up question. What we found was
that means Health and Human Services is no longer giving them refugee
money, but that other kinds of welfare don't count against them. But 93
percent, we know, of immigrants from the Middle East between 2009 and
2013 are on food stamps, and 73 percent are on Medicaid or health care
programs. And they may be there the rest of their lives.
This is not being scored. This is why a country that is smart seeks
to bring in people who have the greatest chance of being successful.
Sure, some will do well, and many are wonderful people, and we have a
tradition of that. I am just saying that we have a President with
unlimited powers who has an agenda, and he is passing on the costs that
are going to be to the detriment of working Americans for decades to
come.
So the risks associated with the refugee admissions program are
significant.
With respect to Syria, FBI Director James Comey repeatedly said that
we simply do not have the ability to vet refugees from Syria.
Testifying before the House Committee on Homeland Security in October,
he said:
We can only query against that which we have collected. So
if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a
way that would get their identity or their interests
reflected in our database, we can query our database until
the cows come home, but we are not going to. There will be
nothing to show up because we have no record on that person.
Well, that is absolutely correct. Of course, that is correct. But
they tried to tell us in Committee that we are going to do biometric
checks. So I proceeded to ask repeatedly, and finally, after the most
difficult time, they acknowledged they have no database in Syria to
check biometrics against. It is not like the United States: If you are
caught by the police, they take your fingerprints, and they can tell
whether you were convicted in Maine, Alabama, or California. It is in
the computer system. They don't have that in Syria. So that was a
misrepresentation, an attempt to mislead and create false confidence in
the American people that we have an ability to vet people coming here
from Syria--an ability we don't have. The FBI Director honestly and
directly stated that.
Any claims made by others that refugees in the United States never
engage in acts of terrorism are demonstrably false. Just a few weeks
ago, I identified a list of at least 12 individuals who were admitted
to the United States as refugees, but who have been implicated in
terrorism in the last year alone.
We found out there may be more, and probably they are under
investigation right now. In fact, the FBI has said there is a terrorism
investigation in every single State in America. These terrorists, for
example, are from Somalia, Bosnia, Kenya and Uzbekistan. They came in
different stages in their lives. Some were admitted as children, others
as adults. Yet they all turn their backs on this country after being
welcomed here as refugees.
This is not made up. It is a real problem. The American people want
some action. They would like to see Congress and this Administration
respond, especially, and they are rightly angered and upset with their
elected representatives and their President for not taking sufficient
action.
I, along with my colleague Senator Shelby and others in the House,
asked for inclusion of specific language in this omnibus bill that
would protect the interests of the American people, that would reassert
the constitutional role of Congress in establishing a uniform system of
immigration, that would require the identification of offsetting cuts
in Federal spending to pay for the refugee admission program. But none
of that was included in the omnibus bill.
I doubt they ever spent a minute looking at a letter from two
Senators. As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the
National Interest, I sent appropriators a list of several dozen
provisions for inclusion in our funding bills to improve immigration
enforcement and to block Presidential overreach and lawlessness,
including among other things, provisions to defund sanctuary cities.
Why should we be funding and providing Federal law enforcement money
to cities that won't cooperate with the Federal Government in its most
basic responsibility of respect and comity between these various
Federal and State agencies. It goes on every day. But we are being
blocked in sanctuary city after sanctuary city.
Also, I asked the appropriators to prevent visas from being issued to
nationals of countries that refuse to take back their criminals. This
is important. My former colleague Senator Specter offered a bill for a
number of things. It would bar admission for certain visas for
nationals of countries that won't take back their people who have been
in the United States. It is a fundamental principle of immigration
[[Page S8719]]
law worldwide that if you admit a person from a foreign country, when
their visa is up, they go home. Their visa is up if they commit a
crime, and they are to be sent back home; they are to be deported.
But country after country is refusing to take back their convicted
criminals. I guess they figure: ``Why don't you keep our criminals for
us?'' But that is not what the law is, and we are stuck with them in
jails. We have to pay for their housing. After 6 months, absent certain
circumstances, the Supreme Court says they generally have to be
released. It's possible that if an alien files a habeas petition that
the government will have to go to court and have hearing with a judge.
This is driving up costs, using incredible amounts of hours. We
shouldn't tolerate it one minute. There is no reason that this
government shouldn't act--which the law will now allow and directly
says they should do--to refuse to issue visas to a country that won't
take back their criminals. They refuse to do it. There is additional
legislation that would force that, and we could have done it in this
bill. It should have bipartisan support.
I also asked for language in the bill to defund the unlawful,
improper Executive amnesty. The President's actions are unlawful. We
don't have to fund his unlawful activity. There is no duty on behalf of
Congress to acquiesce and provide money to people to work in a big
building in Crystal City to process millions of people in the country
illegally for amnesty because the President now says: ``I am just going
to let them stay.'' It has been blocked for the most part by a Federal
court, but there is nothing in the bill to expressly defund it.
I asked for legislation to protect American workers against abuses in
the H-1B program. This is where Southern California Edison had a
program. They brought in 500 foreign workers from India in some sort of
contract deal, had the American workers who had been at Edison doing
computer work for years train the new workers, and then ended up
terminating the Americans and replacing them with those from abroad.
How can anyone say there was a shortage of workers? The same was done
by Disney. Senator Nelson of Florida and I introduced legislation to
fix that. I have introduced legislation with Senator Cruz and supported
legislation from Senator Grassley to fix this program. None of that has
been included in this bill. Why not?
I asked for an expansion of the 287(g) program that allows Federal
law enforcement officials and officers to assist with enforcing our
immigration law. This was a good program. It had been on the books.
President Bush finally began to expand it. They train local law
officers for weeks at a time, and they become extensions of Federal law
enforcement officers to help identify and process people who are
unlawfully in the country and who have been apprehended--a very good
program that had good results. This Obama Administration has
eviscerated it. It is less than half of what it was. It should have
been expanded all over America, if you actually want the law enforced
in this country. But if you don't want the law enforced in America, you
kill a program like 287(g). Did the appropriators put in the omnibus
bill anything to deal with that abuse? No.
We put in language that would prevent illegal aliens from receiving
tax credits. This is unbelievable. The Treasury Inspector General for
Tax Administration from President Obama's own Treasury Department has
done an analysis of this and urged that it be fixed. People come to
America illegally, with children somewhere around the world. They don't
have a Social Security number. They use an ITIN identification
document--which was intended for executives. They use that, and they
file a tax return. They don't pay taxes because their income is low,
but they get a tax credit based on children that are not even in the
country.
How abusive is that? I understand this was rejected and was not in
the omnibus bill because President Obama didn't want it. So he gets to
dictate what is in a congressional bill that I think would have 90-
percent support by the American people if they understood how
significant it was? That is a different figure, but it is an abusive,
improper tax credit.
So all of these provisions were rejected by the bill supporters.
But industry's request for more foreign workers was granted--
unconditionally approved. So I asked about this provision. I heard it
might be under consideration, so I asked about it. I said: ``The
American people don't want a fourfold increase in immigration. I know
there are some special interests pushing for this. I have heard that.
Tell me it is not so.'' I was told it wasn't so. But last night--this
morning at 2 a.m.--when the bill was produced, it was in there. So I am
not happy about it, colleagues. I don't see how we can operate around
here if we can't rely on representations.
Because of this bill, sanctuary cities will continue to get Federal
funds, the Obama Administration can continue issuing visas to countries
that refuse to repatriate their criminal aliens, and the President's
Executive amnesty continues.
Meanwhile, the tax bill that will be moved with the omnibus bill
makes permanent the Additional Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income
Tax Credit, but it does nothing to block their future distribution to
illegal aliens. A tax credit to a person who doesn't pay taxes is a
check from the government. It is not a tax deduction; it is a direct
payment. It scores as a welfare benefit. This means more illegal aliens
will continue to get tax credits. It should be stopped.
As I feared, the ultimate effect--and I have expressed concern about
this for some months now--is that this bill will fund the President's
entire lawless immigration agenda. The only real bill we have to
provide an opportunity to legislate and fix some of these things is a
big omnibus bill. And what does it do? It funds essentially the
President's entire agenda.
In fact, the omnibus spending bill will ensure that at least--for
example, we have had discussions about the Middle East. People argue
that we are not letting in enough people from the Middle East, and that
we shouldn't talk about a pause. But under this bill it would ensure
that at least 170,000 green cards--that means permanent residency with
a guaranteed path to citizenship--and refugee and asylee approvals will
be issued to migrants from Muslim countries just over the next 12
months. We are very generous about this, and it is very difficult to
know if we are managing this properly, except that we know it is not
being safely monitored, and the FBI Director has told us so.
This bill even fails to address substantial problems with the EB-5
investment visa program, problems that some of my colleagues have
worked for months to resolve. The problems with this program have been
documented by the Government Accountability Office and the Department
of Homeland Security Inspector General, not the least of which are
issues related to fraud and national security. We can fix that program.
We need to do it. This would have been a good opportunity.
For years the American people have suffered under the lawless,
dangerous, and wage-reducing immigration policies of this
administration. They sent us here to Washington to protect their
interests, to protect the people's interests, to ensure the defense of
their families, and to advance the common good--the public interest.
They did not send us here to bow down to the President's lawless
immigration policies, nor to line the pockets of special interests in
big business. That is not what we are here for.
Whom do we represent?
This bill explains why Republican and Democratic voters are in open
rebellion, as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said recently--
open rebellion. They elected people whom they believed were going to
take action to protect their security, their jobs, and their wages. And
what do they get? A bill that is worse than current law. It goes in the
opposite direction--no wonder people are upset.
This legislation represents a further disenfranchisement of the
American voter. What does a vote mean in this country? At a time when
hundreds of thousands of criminal aliens are on our streets, criminal
aliens are killing innocent Americans, numerous foreign-born
individuals are implicated in terrorism, tens of thousands of aliens
from Central America continue to stream across our southern border,
countless Americans are being replaced
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by foreign workers and forced to train their replacements, and millions
of Americans are just struggling to get by, this Congress has chosen to
make things worse.
We need to remember whom we represent and whom our duty is to. Our
duty is to voters, the American people, not the interests of
businesses, activist groups, and that kind of thing.
I appreciate the opportunity to share these remarks. I have been very
firm about my statements here, but I am very unhappy about this bill. I
do not believe this is the kind of legislation we should be moving. It
was not moved in the normal process on the floor of the Senate, where
amendments could be offered and a bill could be studied over months of
time before final passage, perhaps. So with regret and a good deal of
frustration, I urge my colleagues to oppose and reject this proposal.
I would also just mention one more thing, and then I will wrap up.
Senator Shelby and I wrote a letter to the Appropriations Committee on
November 16, asking for Congress to assume its constitutional duty
ensuring immigration laws are uniform by approving the number of
refugees who come to America, and not leave that as an open-ended power
given to the President, who can execute it in an arbitrary manner.
We also said that no benefits should be provided to future refugees
until the Congressional Budget Office submits a score--a simple report
on the cost of this program. How long would it take? Not that long.
Don't we need to have a score, a cost number?
We also asked that no refugees be admitted until the Department of
Homeland Security submits a report on terrorist and criminal refugees.
None of those provisions were included in any of the legislation
before us. I think all of those are logical.
I also previously wrote letters asking for other provisions, such as
prohibiting funds for lawsuits against States that are trying to help
enforce immigration laws, to bar funds for attorneys for illegal aliens
through these grant programs that are being utilized. Fundamentally, it
has never been the responsibility of the Federal Government to prepare
and provide free attorneys for people who have entered the country
illegally. It never has been the law.
I also asked that no funds be provided for sanctuary cities.
I asked for language that prohibited funds for Executive amnesty
policies; that prohibited funds for the DACA Program; that there would
be no spending of funds in the Immigration Examinations Fee Account for
anything other than naturalization and immigration benefits provided by
Congress.
I asked for language that would bar funds for salaries of political
appointees or other employees who direct employees to violate the law.
Why should we be paying people who direct their own subordinates to
violate fundamental provisions of immigration law?
I asked for language that would prevent funds from being used to
grant ``prosecutorial discretion'' to aliens in removal proceedings, no
funds for an extension of Temporary Protected Status unless approved by
Congress, and no funds to continue the Administration's abuse of the
parole authority. We shouldn't be funding these abusive practices that
undermine the certainty of immigration laws.
I asked for language to prohibit funds to grant H-1B visas to
companies that have replaced American workers. I asked for restrictions
on the issuance of Employment Authorization Documents, and that no
funds be used to add new countries to the Visa Waiver Program until
implementation of a biometric exit system.
This bill does direct some money to a biometric exit system, which,
if this Administration would act, would begin to do something
significant. But they have resisted what the 9/11 Commission has said
we must have. When people come into the country, they are checked in,
they are fingerprinted, and they are biometrically identified, but
nobody checks if they left. So you can come into America on a visa and
never go home. This is why almost half of the people illegally in
America today came lawfully on a visa. They just didn't return when
they were supposed to.
I asked for money to establish--notably, there has been an advocacy
unit in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the past to protect
illegal immigrants and give them all kinds of additional rights--an
advocacy unit for victims of immigrant crimes.
I asked for others, too.
I would just say that I, and others, have raised a series of
important issues that need to be fixed, and would receive, if
understood by the American people, 90 percent support. Senator
Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee--of which my Subcommittee
on Immigration and the National Interest, is a part--has also been
active in these things. It is a deep disappointment that this last
piece of legislation that could make some improvement in a number of
these issues will do nothing of significance, but it will increase by
four-fold the number of low-skilled, low-wage workers allowed to enter
this country from 66,000 to 264,000. They will pull down wages and
reduce the job prospects of struggling Americans.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. 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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