[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 20 (Thursday, February 5, 2015)] [Senate] [Pages S823-S826] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY FUNDING Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I am disappointed that earlier today once [[Page S824]] again our Democratic colleagues have--like the palace guard protecting the White House--blocked and filibustered moving to the Homeland Security bill--a bill that the House has passed and that would fully fund every lawful program of Homeland Security. The House has passed a bill that funds Homeland Security, they have sent it to the Senate, and the Democrats are refusing to let it come to the floor to even be debated. They are filibustering a motion to proceed to the bill, where amendments can be offered. Senator McConnell has said we will have amendments. Senator Collins has already reached out with amendments she thinks have bipartisan support. That is the way the process in the Senate is supposed to work. That is what we should do. Amazingly and incredibly, our Democratic colleagues say that the Republicans want to shut down Homeland Security and that the Democrats are trying to keep that from happening. They claim Republicans have put riders on the bill. But I would say that I think, if there is any logic left in this body, that the riders were put on Homeland Security unilaterally and unlawfully by the President of the United States. He put those riders on Homeland Security when--after Congress refused to pass his amnesty bill that had in it the right to work for people who are illegally in the country--he gave legal status to people illegally in the country; he gave them a Social Security card with a photo ID--he wants to provide all of them with that and let them participate in Social Security and Medicare. That is what the President wants to do. All of those things fall outside the law governing Homeland Security and all of the items and programs that are involved in that homeland security process. This amnesty is outside of it. In fact, amnesty is not pro-homeland security, it is anti-homeland security. It is anti- law. It rewards people who have violated the law. It is going to create a mechanism where these people who get these photo IDs will have the ability to take any job in America, and nobody is going to check them in any effective way. In fact, it is quite clear that the Administration doesn't even intend to have personal interviews with them because the Administration doesn't have the time or the people. But they are spending money out of the lawful part of Homeland Security to create an office across the river in Crystal City, and they are hiring 1,000 people to process these individuals. So Congress simply said: Mr. President, we oppose that. We won't approve that process. You said 20 times it is not lawful for you to grant amnesty, but you have changed your mind and you are going to do it anyway. So we are going to fund all the programs of Homeland Security just like last year--with some increase, I suppose--but we are not going to fund this office across the river to make people lawful who, under the law, are unlawful. That is what the bill is. So my Democratic colleagues say that somehow this doesn't fund Homeland Security and that Congress has no right to decide what it funds and doesn't fund. But it is a fundamental power of the people's elected representatives to control the purse strings, to decide what gets funded and what does not get funded. Congress can fund programs that it doesn't like as a matter of policy or it could defund those programs, and it could defund programs it believes are illegal. As a matter of fact, I would say Congress has an absolute duty to refuse to fund programs set up by the President of the United States that he would like to carry out if Congress believes those programs are unlawful. So that is where we are. It is beyond my comprehension that our friends on the other side--at least seven have said in clear statements that they oppose the President's Executive amnesty, and they are now voting unanimously to not go to the bill and even allow it to be considered. Now, one thing is not being considered enough. This amnesty is more than prosecutorial discretion. The President of the United States is giving work authorizations to more than 4 million people, and for the most part they are adults. Almost all of them are adults. Even the so- called DACA proportion--many of them are in their thirties. So this is an adult job legalization program. And we talked about why Congress didn't approve and it didn't pass, and why the President shouldn't carry out on his own that which Congress has rejected and for which he has no lawful basis. But let's go further. Let's ask on behalf of the American people, the American working people, is this a good idea? Is it a good idea at this time of low wages--a time when the percentage of Americans in the working population who are actually working and have jobs is at the lowest it has been since the 1970s? Is this the right time to advance another 5 million people into the job market--a time when we admit 1 million lawful immigrants to the United States a year? I believe we have 700,000 guest workers from abroad working in America on top of that, and we're adding another 5 million who can take any job in the economy? Frankly, the problem, colleagues, is not that we have a shortage of workers in America; the problem is we have a shortage of jobs and we have the lowest workforce participation that we have had in a long time. Gallup recently noted that if someone works just a few hours a week, they are counted as an employee. People used to work 40 hours--overtime maybe--now they work 10 hours a week, and they are counted as an employee. If you are an engineer working at a fast food restaurant, you are counted as employed. So there are a whole bunch of factors that they know are out there that are causing the American people to be very concerned about their futures, even though politicians in Washington are saying things are so great. Wages fell in December--I think the last full month for which we have the data--5 cents an hour. So it is not getting much better. That is not disputable data. We want wages to go up, not down. So I think this is all important, and it is time for Congress to understand whom we represent and whom our focus should be on. We want to treat people who come to America well. We want to give them every lawful benefit when they immigrate to America properly. And people who enter unlawfully need to be treated humanely and processed properly, and the laws need to be enforced. We don't want to mistreat those people. But what is it that is critical? What is critical is that we know whom we represent. We represent lawful immigrants and citizens of the United States of America. Our duty is to them. We should establish an immigration policy that serves their interests. Years ago a witness before the Judiciary Committee told that committee--and I was a member--that, `well, if your policy is to do what is best for poor people around the world, it is almost always the right thing to let them come to America. If they get in trouble health- wise, the hospitals will take care of them. Their children get a free education. If they get in trouble otherwise, this country helps them.' But what we have to decide is what is a good policy for the United States of America and how to execute the national interests, not special interests. Let me point this out. The numbers are stunning, colleagues, and we are going to have to learn these numbers. I am going to insist that we know what we are doing as we go forward with the ever-expanding programs to bring in more workers from abroad. One of the more remarkable but least-reported trends in our economy is the disproportionate share of jobs being filled by foreign workers. Most people do not understand this. The following is new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics--not my opinion; these numbers come straight from BLS tables. I challenge my colleagues, if these numbers are wrong, tell us they are wrong. It comes right off the BLS table. I don't think they are disputable. I don't think anybody is disputing them. The total number of persons employed in the United States has increased by 1 million since 2007. Frankly, that is not many jobs at all over that number of years. It sounds like a lot, but it is not many. So we have had a total increase of 1 million jobs since 2007, but during this same time the number of jobs for U.S.-born workers-- citizens--declined by 1 million. How is that possible? During this same time the number of foreign workers with jobs increased by 2 million. So [[Page S825]] that is where the net gain occurred. This means that all net employment gains since the recession have gone to workers brought in from abroad. How many workers should we be bringing into America? Shouldn't we ask how the economy is doing? We are having the slowest recovery since the Great Depression 80 years ago. Shouldn't we ask questions about that? How many people are on food stamps and welfare and all kinds of aid programs? How many people have claimed disability? During this same time--get this, colleagues--the population of Americans 16 and older increased by 11 million, but one-fifth of a million fewer Americans are employed. Here is a chart that will reflect some of this data. This reflects that natives--people born in the country--accounted for two-thirds of the increase in the working-age population. It is a myth we are having declining birth rates to the extent we have fewer people coming into the working ages. That is not so. Since 2000 we have added increases of 16.8 million working age people, but all the employment gains went to immigrants from 2000 to 2014. I was surprised at this. I knew we were having issues with this, and people have shared that with me, but I did not realize the numbers were this stark. Let's look at this. This is the change in the working age on these two parts of the chart. We have an increase in immigrants from 2000 to 2014 by 8.8 million people, while the native population in their working ages increased by 16.8 million people--twice the number of working age immigrants, basically. But where did the jobs go, the few jobs we have been creating as we are recovering from the recession? We created 5.7 million jobs since 2000 that went to the immigrant population--this 8.8 million--and the native population showed a decline of 100,000 jobs. So even though we had a 16.8 million increase in that working-age group, we had a decline in native-born workers actually working. I would say those are stunning numbers, and it calls on us to reevaluate our policies. We are not against immigration. I am not saying we should end immigration, I am saying it is time for us to review our immigration policies, as any sensible, sane nation would do. It is time to do that. The President's policy goes in exactly the opposite direction. By overwhelming polling data, Americans--including Hispanics--agree that amnesty has created more of an illegal immigration flow, and yet this amnesty rewards 5 million people for what they did illegally. Let's look at a little more of the reality of how this plays out in the world. Here is a dramatic article in Computerworld about the big power company in California--Southern California Edison. What have they done recently? Information technology workers at Southern California Edison are being laid off and replaced by workers from India. Some employees are training their H-1B visa-holding replacements, and many have already lost their jobs. The employees are upset and they say they can't understand how H-1B guest workers can be used to replace them since they are already doing the job now. Apparently, Southern California Edison--a power company rooted in the United States of America--is converting, laying off, and terminating the employment of people who have been with them for a number of years. Southern California Edison is transitioning those positions to foreign employees who have come in under the H-1B visa program for the sole purpose of taking a job. They are not coming under the immigration policy where they would move from green card into permanent residence and into citizenship. They come solely for a limited period of time to take a job, and they work for less pay too often. This is what one person said: ``They are bringing in people with a couple of years' experience to replace us and then we have to train them,'' said one long-time IT worker. ``It's demoralizing and in a way I kind of felt betrayed by the company.'' I bet he did. Continuing to quote from the article: SCE, Southern California's largest utility-- Which is a quasi-almost-government entity under the regulatory powers of the State-- has confirmed the layoffs and the hiring of Infosys, based in Bangalore, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in Mumbai. They are two of the largest users of H-1B visas. Apparently what happens is these companies sign up workers in--in this case--India, and they call up the big power company and say: Look, we have all these young people who have an education, and your salaries are real generous to them, they like your salaries, and we will just send them over on H-1B visas. They can stay 3 years and then return to their country and you can get rid of all those American workers. Maybe you will not have to pay such high retirement or health care benefits. The article goes on to say: Computerworld interviewed, separately, four affected SCE IT employees. They agreed to talk on the condition that their names not be used. The IT employees at SCE are ``beyond furious,'' said a second IT worker. The H-1B program ``was supposed to be for projects and jobs that American workers could not fill,'' this worker said, ``But we're doing our job. It's not like they are bringing in these guys for new positions that nobody can fill.'' It goes on to say: ``Not one of these jobs being filled by India was a job that an Edison employee wasn't already performing,'' he said. It goes on to talk about this. Professor Ron Hira, who studied this in great depth and has written about this problem for some time, made some comments on it too: The SCE outsourcing ``is one more case, in a long line of them, of injustice where American workers are being replaced by H-1B's,'' said Ron Hira, a public policy professor at Howard University, and a researcher on offshore outsourcing. Adding to the injustice, American workers are being forced to do `knowledge transfer,' an ugly euphemism for being forced to train their foreign replacements.'' He goes on to say: ``Americans should be outraged that most of our politicians have sat idly by while outsourcing firms have hijacked the guest worker programs.'' So the guest worker program is supposed to help businesses. If they can't get people to work, then they can apply to this program, which has some limits. Yet the President proposes doubling the number of people who can come in with H-1B visas to work. He wants to double that number. He has been demanding that. But Mr. Hira said: The majority of the H-1B program is now being used to replace Americans and to facilitate offshoring of high wage jobs. So this is a pretty thorough article in Computerworld, and it is a growing problem in the high-tech industry. Professor Hal Salzman, who is a sociologist and public policy professor at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, wrote about this last September. This is not something new. This has been understood for some time. This is what he says in U.S. News and World Report: All credible research finds the same evidence about the STEM workforce: ample supply, stagnant wages and, by industry accounts, thousands of applicants for any advertised job. The real concern should be about the dim employment prospects for our best STEM graduates. Who are STEM graduates? Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We have been telling our children they can have good jobs. Parents have borrowed money, invested in the college savings plans; students have borrowed money themselves to get degrees in STEM fields, and now we find STEM salaries are flat since 2000--that only 40 percent of STEM graduates are actually working in STEM jobs. This is what Professor Salzman and five others said in an op-ed in USA Today, condemning what we are doing in America today: Average wages in the IT industry are the same as those that prevailed when Bill Clinton was President, despite industry cries of a shortage. Overall, U.S. colleges produced twice the number of STEM graduates than annually find jobs in those fields. We have to think about how to get our people, our children, our constituents into good-paying jobs. I wish there were more of them. I wish there weren't enough jobs and we had to import workers, but it is not so. The Salzman article goes on: . . . the growth of STEM shortage claims is driven by heavy industry funding for lobbyists and think tanks. Their goal is government intervention in the market under the guise of solving national economic problems. The highly profitable IT industry, for example, is devoting millions to convince Congress and the White House to provide it with [[Page S826]] more low-cost, foreign guest workers instead of trying to attract and retain employees from an ample domestic labor pool of native and immigrant citizens and permanent residents. Guest workers currently make up two-thirds of all new IT hires, but employers are demanding further increases. If such lobbying efforts succeed, firms will have enough guest workers to last for at least 100 percent of their new hiring and can continue to legally substitute these younger workers for current employees holding down wages for both them and new hires. . . . the Census Bureau reports that only about one in four STEM bachelor's degree holders has a STEM job, and Microsoft plans to downsize by 18,000 workers over the next year. Microsoft signed a letter to the President and Congress just a few months ago demanding more foreign workers in the same week they announced laying off 18,000 workers, and this is a pattern throughout the industry. They are lobbying for more and more while they are laying off workers. Here is a statement our office obtained from a union representative at IBM: On January 28, 2015, IBM embarked on another of its regular ``resource actions'' or job cuts at sites and divisions around the US. Although IBM won't say how many employees were notified that their employment was being terminated, the Alliance@IBM estimates the number at around 5,000. I continue to read from their statement: This has been almost a quarterly experience for IBM employees. One of the biggest drivers of the job cuts is off shoring and bringing in guest workers from other countries. So they are laying off Americans and bringing in people from abroad. The statement goes on to say: The terminating of regular IBM U.S. employees while keeping H-1b visa or L1 visa workers on the payroll has been ongoing at IBM for years. As one worker stated in an email to the Alliance just this past week: ``Received `RA' notice (termination notice) yesterday. . . . I was told last October that I was being replaced by an IBM India Landed Resource. . . . '' That is a guest worker. Another employee e-mailed: ``I would estimate that of the 20 people in my IBM department, at least 80% were immigrants on Visa's working on a so called government contract.'' They were working on a government contract. They were bringing foreign workers. And it goes on. Here is an article in the Engineering Journal about IBM: ``Massive Worldwide Layoff Underway At IBM.'' Look, I am not saying a company can't lay off and be more efficient. The business market changes, and they are just not able to stay in business if they are paying people to do work that doesn't exist. I understand that. What I am saying is that at the same time they are laying off people, they are demanding the right to bring in more foreign workers, further driving down wages. Here is what this article says: Project Chrome, a massive layoff that IBM is pretending is not a massive layoff, is under way. First reported by Robert X. Cringely in Forbes, about 26 percent of the company's global workforce is being shown the door. At more than 100,000 people, that makes it the largest mass layoff at any U.S. corporation in at least 20 years. So these groups have all come together in a lobbying group, Compete America, the Alliance for a Competitive Workforce. IBM is one of them. I think Hewlett-Packard laid off 12,000 not too long ago; they are part of it. Microsoft, laying off 18,000, is part of it--demanding more guest workers. Cringely wrote that notices have started going out, and most of the hundred thousand-plus will likely be gone by the end of February. How does it impact us? Does it impact Americans? Alliance@IBM, the IBM employees' union, says it has so far collected reports of 5,000 jobs eliminated, including 250 in Boulder, Colo., 150 in Columbia, Missouri, and 202 in Dubuque, Iowa. Layoffs in Littleton, Mass., are reportedly ``massive,'' but no specific numbers have been published. Here is a story in timesunion.com about Governor Cuomo in New York. His program of IT work in New York is being outsourced by IBM. . . . IBM has brought hundreds of workers from India to fill jobs in Albany for which--in theory--plenty of Americans are qualified. Walt Disney World's information technology department laid off 500 workers, while Disney's profit margin has gone up and the stock price is rising. We are going to be talking about this for some time. We need to ask ourselves: What is in the interest of American workers at a time when we are laying off large numbers of workers--skilled and unskilled? I have been talking about skilled. Do we really need massive increases in foreign workers? Do we need to pass legislation that would double the number of guest workers that come into the country at this time? I think not. I appreciate the opportunity to share these thoughts. I see my colleague. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland. Mr. CARDIN. I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with Senator Collins not to exceed 20 minutes. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________