The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“IMMIGRATION” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Senate section on pages S10650-S10653 on Sept. 17, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
IMMIGRATION
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, just a few moments ago the Democratic conferees that had intended to meet in conference between the House and the Senate to consider the immigration bill were notified that conference was indefinitely postponed. No time was established when there might be a follow-up conference.
The issues of illegal immigration are of enormous importance to this country. There are a number of States that are directly impacted by illegal immigration, but the problems of illegal immigration also affect just about every State in this country in one form or another. There has been considerable discussion and debate about what policies we ought to follow to address the issues of illegal immigration.
For a number of years, we have had special commissions that were set up by the Congress to look at various immigration issues. We had the Hesburgh Commission. The commission was bipartisan in nature and made a series of recommendations both with regard to legal and illegal immigration. The Congress acted on both of the recommendations.
Subsequently, because of the enormous flow of illegal immigrants coming to the United States, the Hesburgh Commission called for the United States to respond to the problem. After all, it is a function of our National Government to deal with protection of the borders, and also to guard the borders themselves. This area of public policy presented an extremely important responsibility for national policymakers.
Beginning just about 2 years ago my colleague and friend, the Senator from Wyoming became the Chair of the Immigration Subcommittee. I have enjoyed working with him on immigration--we have agreed on many, many different items; we differ on some issues, and some we have had the good opportunity to debate on the floor of the Senate on various occasions.
In fact, we agreed on many of the provisions in the Senate immigration bill. I welcomed the opportunity to support the legislation which passed overwhelmingly--97 to 3. Although the legislation was not perfect, it represented a bipartisan effort to try to deal with the problem of illegal immigration. I can remember how Chairman Simpson dealt with the issues over a year ago when the Jordan Commission was winding up their consideration of illegal immigration issues. There were many who felt we ought to rush to judgment. That we ought to provide amendments on different pieces of legislation. Senator Simpson said, ``No; we are going to follow a process and a procedure.'' He spoke as a senior legislator and as someone who has provided important leadership on the issues of immigration.
So we consulted the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and later the full Judiciary Committee, and we consulted with the Jordan Commission. We had extensive hearings. We moved through the process of markup. In the markup itself Senator Simpson took the time to visit the members of the committee, Republican and Democrat alike, to find their principal areas of concern--to see if we could find common ground. Then, in the best traditions of legislating, we had a series of days of markups. I daresay the participation of Republican and Democrat alike in those markups was enormously impressive. I do not think there is a member of that committee on any side of any issue who does not feel they were given a full opportunity to make the presentation of their concerns and to engage in a dialog, discussion and debate. We had a fair hearing of every issue--conducted under the chairmanship of Senator Hatch. I believe the entire process took 9 days. They were full days. We did it section by section of the legislation, with notification so members would have an idea which areas were going to be addressed each day. This was really in the best traditions of legislating.
We moved forward, passed the bill out of the Judiciary Committee, and had extensive debate here on the floor of the Senate. It took a number of days, I believe 7 or 8 days. Sometimes the debate was tied up on the issues of minimum wage. By and large, the discussion focused on the issues of illegal immigration. Then we had the rollcall vote. As I mentioned earlier, rarely do we have a matter of this importance pass by a margin of 97 to 3 in the U.S. Senate. Especially involving an issue on which Senators have many different opinions.
Then something happened, Mr. President. We had the appointment of conferees in the Senate, Republican and Democrat, but the Democratic conferees were never invited to participate in pre-conference negotiations with our Republican colleagues. There were only negotiations between the Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Republicans in the Senate. It has only been in the last few days that the House Democrats were actually appointed. It was only in the last few days that they were able to obtain the legislation itself. And before the Democrats could find out what was in the bill the Republicans drafted, the Democrats had to threaten parliamentary maneuvers in the House.
Nonetheless, we were notified we were going to have the conference meeting today at noon; that we were going to have a conference, break for the leadership meetings and then go back and resume the conference. There was a clear anticipation that action would occur on the conference report. I had hoped we would be able to revisit some of the items. We had tried to work together with members of the conference who were interested in some of these issues that were not necessarily partisan to see if we would at least have an opportunity for a brief debate on some of those. I think we were prepared to have that discussion and debate and to raise those issues. The most important of all of the issues, of course, is the Gallegly amendment, and whether we, as a public policy, are going to dismiss from the public schools of this country those children who may be the sons and daughters of illegal immigrants. The Gallegly provision is strongly opposed by the law enforcement officials and by teachers, who do not become teachers only to be turned into a truant officer who turns in names of suspected illegal immigrant children to INS. There were a number of other important issues in the Republican conference report, which I will mention in a few moments.
Then we were notified just a few moments ago that our Republican friends are in disarray about what their position is with regard to the Gallegly amendment, and that there is no consensus. Even right now, since we have been notified that this conference is postponed, there is no effort to try to include Democrats in the conference, or to talk about issues of concern to us. There is still no effort, even at this late date, to craft legislation that would deal with a central concern of the people of this country, and that is the growth of illegal immigration. The Republican conferees still have not allowed us to address in a bipartisan way what this conference report means in terms of job loss for American workers, what it means in terms of crowded schools, and what it means for the challenges that we are facing on the borders, with all of the complex social and economic criminal elements associated with it. These are complex issues that the Democratic Members want to address and come to some conclusion on.
Now we are notified that we still do not have an opportunity to resolve these issues in a bipartisan way. The conference is postponed again, but the Republicans say they somehow going to get together again. I now understand the power of the majority in being able to push legislation through. Certainly, they do in the House of Representatives. They are able to have the power to jam legislation through there. It is more difficult in the Senate. Although a conference report is a privileged item, nonetheless, what we find is, rather than just sitting down and discussing it in an open kind of forum, where the public would be invited to at least observe and to understand the public policy issues that are being debated, there are negotiations taking place not with the Members of the Congress and Senate that have to vote on the legislation, not with the Members of the House and Senate who have worked to try to be constructive and who have supported the legislation here in the U.S. Senate the last time that we came--oh, no, the negotiation is taking place with the Dole campaign officials--the Dole campaign officials. They are the ones that are negotiating with the Republican leadership on the shape of the immigration bill.
The stories have been out there of the meetings that took place last week and the positions of candidate Dole, who wants, evidently, the Gallegly amendment included in the final immigration bill, and others within the Republican Party do not want to have that. It is tied up, I dare suggest. It is always a concern to speculate on what the motivations of other people are. But, it is increasingly apparent to many of us that the Republicans want to make very difficult for the Members to deal in a bipartisan way with the issue of illegal immigration. It seems they either want the President to veto the legislation, or let it die in the Senate in the final hours of the Congress while Republicans and Democrats alike express their dislike of the Gallegly provisions.
So then there might be the opportunity for those to say, look what has happened on the important issue of illegal immigration; we were not able to get the bill to the President. The Republican side says that if they take the Gallegly amendment out, the bill may well go through the Senate of the United States and House of Representatives, and the President might sign it and get some credit for it. He might get some credit for the bill in California in an important election year.
Now, Mr. President, I don't think I am far off from the facts with that kind of a speculation, particularly when we find that about the inability of Republican leadership to try and bring forth a conference report that reflects agreement among Republicans. The American people can say, well, if we can get a good bill, why don't we do it? Do we always have to include the Democrats in it? The fact of the matter is, we have supported illegal immigration proposals. We are interested in this issue of illegal immigration. It is an issue for the Nation to deal with, but it is also a matter which has a dramatic impact on the lives of workers in this country, because when they find out that unscrupulous employers are going to hire illegals and pay them less than their American counterparts, it has a dampening affect on wages for American workers. That has been debated and discussed, and we have various studies in the Record. But it is pretty self-evident that one of the principal factors of holding down wages in our country is the fact of illegal immigrants taking jobs here in the United States.
Was it so unworthy that we would try, in dealing with the problems of illegals. We must recognize that of the million and a half people that come into the United States illegally each year, about 350,000 remain in the United States. Get this: Of the workers that come here and remain here as illegal workers, half of them came to the United States legally, and overstayed their visas. No amount of border enforcement can deal with them. But they are still taking American jobs, and they are continuing to depress the wages of American workers. The only way you are going to get to these illegal workers is in the workplace. As the Jordan Commission pointed out, the most likely employers that hire illegals are also the ones that do not respect the fair standards for workers and the working conditions for American workers.
We find that in regions of the country where you have the exploitation of workers, you find, by and large, the greatest numbers of those employers that hire the illegals. Now, in the Senate bill we added 350 labor inspectors to find employers who violate our labor laws by hiring illegal immigrants. That is a 50-percent increase in the amount of inspectors the Department of Labor currently has. What happened to that provision? It has been eliminated by the Republicans. It has been cut out of the conference. It has been absolutely cut out of the conference report.
One of the important provisions that we debated in the Senate was the development of various pilot programs to verify the eligibility of people to work in the United States. We had Senate provisions crafted to test what pilot program would work most effectively, so we can help employers make sure they are able to hire without the fear of discriminating against American workers. Well, what happened with that language? We had good pilot programs. But they were dropped. And a different series of programs--and many of us question the effectiveness of their results--are authorized. Many would say that the Republican conferees eliminated the Senate pilot programs under the weight and pressure of the business community and unscrupulous employers, so they do not have to face the problems of dealing with hiring illegals.
And then, of course, there are the provisions in the law that undermine, in a very dramatic way, provisions placed in the Senate bill by Senator Simpson dealing with breeder documents--the birth certificates and drivers licenses. This was controversial issue on the Senate floor. But, we debated it in a bipartisan way. Now, they too have been changed.
One of the principal reasons breeder documents are so essential to the control of illegal immigration is that the breeder document is the fundamental document to establish eligibility to work in the United States. We need to cut back on the forgery taking place. What do we find out from that? That provision has been emasculated. It says tamper-resistant birth certificates will only be required for future births, which means that we are going to have this problem for 30 or 40 years, while the next generation begins to grow up and go into the job market. The conference report has made a sham out of true reform on this issue.
It effectively emasculated those very, very important provisions that had been included with the leadership of Senator Simpson. And I think those were tough, difficult provisions for him to adopt and accept. But, nonetheless, it was a very, very key element to controlling illegal immigration.
We also understand from the Republican conference report, that for the first time in the history of American immigration law, if you are a worker working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks of the year, you have a very good chance you will not make enough income to bring in your wife, or your husband, or your child. For first time in American immigration, they set a standard of what your income is going to have to be in order to bring in a spouse, or a small child. The standard is even higher for other members of the family.
So the conference report says, if you have the resources, if you are wealthy, you are going to have the open opportunity to bring in your wife, your kids, your brothers, or your sisters, or your grandparents, but not if you are a member of the working class.
This conference report is three strikes and you are out in terms of protecting American workers. They lose protection in the workplace because the Republicans struck the provisions to provide protection for American jobs. They lose the protections that would come out of the pilot programs to protect American workers--and we are talking about American workers--that may trace their ancestry to different parts of the world. But because of the color of their skin, or their accent, or their appearance, they are the subjects of discrimination. Discrimination which we know exists because GAO has documented it in the past. We are interested in trying to deal with illegal immigration; those who are going to be a burden on the American taxpayer. But we are also interested in trying to protect American workers. And these are the provisions that would have helped to protect American workers, and these are the provisions which have been changed or removed altogether.
Mr. President, we had an excellent meeting just a short while ago with a number of our Democratic colleagues from the House and the Senate. We reviewed some of the problems we have with this legislation. I will try and include as part of a general statement their comments. Congressman Becerra talked about the additional kinds of burdens needy legal immigrants are going to face under this legislation. Senator Leahy's excellent presentation on summary exclusion pointed out that summary exclusion was a good name for his amendment because so many of the Members of the House and Senate have been summarily excluded from any of the conference considerations. But he has reminded us of what would happen to those that have a very legitimate fear of persecution and death coming here under the procedures which have been accepted into this legislation despite the fact that the Justice Department in this administration has doubled the number of deportations. Congressman Frank and Senator Simon talked about the changes in the test for following proving discrimination in the workplace. Under the conference report, you must prove discrimination by an intent test rather than the effects test. They talked about how that will complicate enforcement and make it exceedingly more difficult to hold any employer liable even if they had a pattern or practice of discrimination; Congressman Richardson, Howard Berman, Zoe Lofgren of California; and others, including Congressman Bryant--the ranking member of the House Immigration Subcommittee.
They talked about the different aspects of this conference. Most, if not all, supported the original legislation. We are deeply disappointed in the process and the conference report. It has been four months since we passed the immigration bill in both the House and the Senate. In the Senate we voted in early May, and now it is going into the backside of September. We voted on this issue. And we have the cancellation of the conference. The Senate conferees were appointed right away in May. Now 4 months later, nothing.
Now we hear they are cooking up yet another version of the Gallegly amendment.
Mr. President, this demonstrates that the Republicans really are not serious about dealing with illegal immigration. They want a campaign issue, not a bill. If they were serious, the conference would be meeting now with bipartisan input. And with the challenge to all of the Members of the House and the Senate--Republicans and Democrats--can we get a bill that is going to deal with the problems of illegal immigration?
Illegal immigration is a problem. We are committed, as the vote in the U.S. Senate showed, to trying to do something about it. It is not too late to do something about illegal immigration. But as long as our Republican friends are going to continue to meet behind the closed doors, refusing to let the sunshine in, I fear for what eventually will come out of it.
It is a real, great disservice to the American people and to this institution that we are in this situation. But we will be resolute. We still are strongly committed to trying to get legislation that is responsible and that will be effective. We still await any opportunity that might come up to try to offer whatever judgments that we might have that can move this process forward in a way which would deserve strong bipartisan support for this legislation.
It is a complex and a difficult issue. But there is no reason in the world that we can't do it, and do it before the end of this session. But to do so, we have to have the doors and windows opened up for the public's involvement.
Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. GORTON. 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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