BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Madam President, we are in the midst of a debate about extending unemployment insurance for millions of Americans who are unemployed, some of whom have been out of work for some time. It is a problem for the country.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of Americans who want to work but who have stopped looking for a job is 3.1 million. Over 91 million Americans are outside the labor force entirely. According to a recent report in CNN Money:
Only about 63 percent of Americans over the age of 16 participate in the job market, meaning they either have a job or are just looking for one. That is nearly the lowest level since 1978, driven partly by baby boomers retiring but also by workers who had simply given up hope after long and fruitless job searches.
As a matter of fact, we saw at our budget hearing this morning a chart which showed the decline in workers by age group, and it was interesting. The younger workers had the biggest decline in percentage working, and the older, 62 and above, are working at a greater rate than they were in previous years. So that is an interesting statistic. But we do have a problem, particularly among a lot of our younger people finding work.
At the same time we are having these difficulties, this administration has engaged in a systematic dismantling of the protections our immigration laws provide for American workers, producing for them--our workers--lower wages and higher unemployment. That is just a fact. Why are wages down? And wages are down, as we heard from all witnesses, Republican and Democratic, in the Budget Committee this morning. Wages have declined significantly in the last 5 years. They have been declining, just at a lesser rate, since 1999.
In fact, our review of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement published statistics for 2013 reveals that under the guise of setting priorities for enforcement of our laws, this administration has determined that almost anyone in the world who can enter the United States then becomes free to illegally live, work, and claim benefits here as long as they are not caught committing some felony or serious crime.
Based on what the President has said, and what the Vice President has said, it would appear an individual could come to America on a work visa, and 1 day after the visa has expired just continue to stay in America and be able to work and could be confident that they will not be deported because the policy of this government is not to deport people unless they catch them at the border entering illegally or they have committed a serious crime.
A recent report this week shows that even the serious crime issue is cloudy. An independent report earlier this week said one-third of those--68,000--who had been involved in criminal activity in some way are not being deported. So this applies not only to those who unlawfully enter our borders but also those who enter on a legal visa and don't leave when that visa expires.
The President and Members of Congress are arguing, it appears, based on the bill that cleared the Senate, for a historic surge in the amount of legal immigration into our country at a time of high unemployment. The White House has preposterously claimed, amazingly, that an influx of new, mostly lower skilled workers will raise wages. This is a conclusion not supported by any credible academic evidence or even the Congressional Budget Office's own report analyzing the massive Senate immigration bill. The CBO concluded the bill would add 46 million mostly lesser skilled legal immigrants by 2033 and that average wages would fall for one dozen years if it were to become law and unemployment would increase and per capita GDP--growth in America--would decline, I think for 20 years.
And, apparently the House of Representatives is considering proposals to bring in hundreds of thousands of guest workers at a time when we are talking about extending unemployment for Americans who can't get jobs.
Dr. George Borjas at Harvard has found that high immigration levels from 1980 to 2000 resulted in an 8-percent drop in wages for American workers without a high school degree. Let me repeat that. This is Professor Borjas at Harvard, raised in Cuba and immigrated to America. He is perhaps the most authoritative academic in the world on immigration and its effect on wages and the labor force. He found that high immigration levels from 1980 to 2000--and he studied that carefully, using census and other data--resulted in an 8-percent drop in wages for American workers without a high school degree. Eight percent is a lot. It is several hundred dollars a month for a person who didn't graduate from high school. Actually, it is about $250 a month. So there is a reason workers who are earning $30,000 and less support a reduction in net immigration levels by a 3-to-1 margin. Working people know what is happening out there. They know their wages are going down. They know particularly lower skilled people, some young people who didn't get to graduate from high school or who got in trouble, are not having much success at all.
Average household income has fallen steadily since 1999, and only 59 percent of U.S. adults are now working. African-American youth looking for work cannot find jobs. We don't have a shortage of workers in this country--we do not have a shortage of workers in this country. We have a shortage of jobs. That is a fact.
Some might ask: How can you be so sure of that, Senator? I believe in the free market, and I tell the chamber of commerce and the big hotel magnates, if we have a shortage of workers, why aren't wages going up? Wages are going down. We don't have a tight labor market. We have a loose labor market, and it is impacting adversely American workers.
The idea that we ought to double the number of guest workers who come into the country legally when the President of the United States is not going to enforce immigration laws and we will not use comprehensively the
E-Verify system indicates we are going to see a decline in wages for average Americans out looking for jobs.
The President's own economic adviser, Gene Sperling, former Director of the National Economic Council, recognized this, saying recently that "our economy still has three people looking for every job,'' three people for every job. Majority Leader Reid has cited that statistic on the Senate floor as well.
So this Senate passes a comprehensive immigration bill that doubles the number of guest workers. Don't think these are workers who are going to work seasonal jobs in agriculture. They will be able to move throughout this country and take jobs from wherever, providing businesses with a ready source, a new source of additional labor that helps keep the labor market loose.
My amendment, the Accountability through Electronic Verification Act, is a proven way to help out-of-work Americans. This legislation was introduced in this Congress by Senator Grassley and cosponsored by myself and Senators BOOZMAN, CORKER, ENZI, FISCHER, HATCH, JOHANNS, LEE, VITTER, and WICKER. So we have offered legislation to deal with this, and I have offered it as an amendment to this unemployment insurance legislation, but I have been told it will be blocked. We will not get a vote. The leader has filled the tree.
What this proposal would do is it would create some jobs for Americans who are out of work. It absolutely would. It would work, and it would immediately help create jobs. That is why the establishment doesn't want to see it happen, if you want to know the truth.
The legislation would permanently authorize and expand the E-Verify Program. That is a simple Web-based tool that allows employers to maintain a legal workforce by verifying the work eligibility of employees. E-Verify works by checking data against records maintained by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. It is quick and easy. An employer simply puts in a Social Security number, it runs against the Social Security database, and an employer receives an answer as to whether this person is a lawful applicant for a job.
Although in 1986 Congress made it unlawful--in 1986--for an employer to knowingly hire or employ illegal aliens, these laws have never been effectively enforced. They just have not. They have gotten comfortable with this, not having it enforced. Under current law, if the documents provided by an applicant for a job to an employer reasonably appeared to be genuine, then the employer has met its obligation.
Incidentally, shortly after the 1986 amnesty law was passed, when it was promised amnesty would not be granted again, the now-assistant to President Obama and the Director of the Domestic Policy Council, Cecilia Munoz, who was then a senior policy analyst of La Raza, led the charge to undo these enforcement provisions. So the person chosen by President Obama to be the Director of the Domestic Policy Council and who has been given the responsibility to deal with immigration, use to work for La Raza where she sought to undo enforcement.
Ms. Munoz authored a report for La Raza entitled "Unfinished Business: The Immigration Reform & Control Act of 1986.'' In that report she argued that Congress had a moral obligation to "repeal employer sanctions'' and that workplace enforcement is "inherently discriminatory.''
Now think about that. The person the President has chosen, who is supposed to be helping us create a lawful system of immigration in the United States, has as her prior effort written a paper that says basically it is a moral requirement of America to repeal any employer sanctions. This is the mentality running our government today; that it is morally wrong to say to employers they should only hire people lawfully in our country. She went on to say that any kind of workplace enforcement--apparently in which our employers would be disciplined or punished if they violate the law--is inherently discriminatory.
Because identity theft and counterfeit documents became a thriving industry after the 1986 amnesty, Congress created an E-Verify program in 1996.
In 1996, after realizing this was turning into a joke--nobody was following the intent of Congress and anybody could produce false documents--Congress passed a law which said we would end this game and create a system that would work. Employers required to use E-Verify today include the Federal government, certain Federal contractors and employers of certain immigrant students. The program for other employers is voluntary and free for them to use, and it has been very successful throughout the country by any who use it.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, in fiscal year 2012, 98 percent of queries resulted in a confirmation of work eligibility immediately or within 24 hours. So most of them overwhelmingly immediately access the computer system, put in a Social Security number and other data they require, hit the computer button, and it quickly comes back. On a few occasions there is a question and it may take up to 24 hours.
It is not slowing down employment, it is not a big burden on employers, and it protects them from being accused of deliberately hiring illegal aliens if the report comes back that the Social Security number matches. According to a January 2013 USCIS customer satisfaction survey, E-Verify received an 86 out of 100 in the American customer satisfaction index scale--19 points higher than the customer satisfaction rating for the overall Federal Government.
There is no objection to this. The only objection to it is by certain business lobbyist groups and certain activist immigration groups who don't want it to work, and they want to keep other businesses from using it because it does in fact identify people in the country who are not allowed to take jobs and it would keep them from receiving these jobs.
This legislation would make the program mandatory for all employers within 1 year of enactment of the law. This legislation would also increase penalties for employers who do not use the system when it is mandated or continue to illegally hire undocumented workers.
Employers would be required to check the status of current employees--but within 3 years--and would be permitted to run a check prior to offering someone a job. In other words, they can run a check before they actually offered a job and determine whether the person was lawfully able to take the job. This could help them a lot.
Employers would also be required to recheck those workers whose authorization is about to expire, such as those who come to the United States on temporary work visas.
This legislation would require employers to terminate the employment of those found unauthorized to work due to a check through E-Verify, and would reduce employers' potential liability for wrongful terminations if they participated in E-Verify.
The legislation would establish a demonstration project in a rural area or an area without substantial Internet capabilities--although there are not many left--to assist small businesses in complying.
The legislation also addresses identify theft concerns by ensuring that the Social Security Administration catches multiple uses of Social Security numbers--different people using the same social number to get jobs with a fake document and a false Social Security number.
And for victims of identity theft, this legislation would amend the Federal criminal code to clarify that identity fraud is punishable regardless of whether the defendant had knowledge of the victim. So this provision addresses a 2009 Supreme Court decision holding that identity theft requires proof that the individual knew the number being used belonged to an actual person.
E-Verify has been proven to deter employers from hiring illegal workers and will help put Americans back on the payrolls.
Since I have seen legislation move through Congress--comprehensive reform legislation that is going to fix our immigration policies--one of the things I have observed is that whatever works is what gets objected to. If someone offers a bill which appears to work but doesn't work, that will pass. E-Verify has been proven and will work to deter employers from hiring illegal workers, and will help put Americans back to work. That is why we apparently don't have any ability to get it up for a vote. A number of States have enacted E-Verify laws, and it is working in those States with great results.
According to a 2013 Bloomberg government study entitled ``Early Evidence Suggests E-Verify Laws Deter Hiring of Unauthorized Workers'':
Soon after E-Verify laws were signed in Arizona, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, unauthorized workers in specific industries appeared to drop off employer payrolls. This prompted employers in many cases to fill positions with authorized workers, American workers who are here lawfully, maybe a young 22-year-old African American who needs a job, would like to get married, maybe raise a family.
With respect to my State of Alabama, the Bloomberg study says:
Employment trended lower immediately after the law was enacted. Employers then added more crop production workers in the months before [the law] took effect, when compared with the same period the year before. That growth in production jobs was among the largest in the nation. This study hypothesizes that authorized hires probably filled the jobs of unauthorized workers who had left the state.
Isn't that what we would like to see? Wouldn't we ask people to come to the country lawfully? We admit 1 million people a year for permanent residence on a guaranteed path to citizenship absent serious criminal activity. We are generous about immigration. Make no mistake about it. But we do need to make sure that people who don't follow the law, don't wait their turn, don't meet the requirements of American immigration law--they shouldn't be able to come unlawfully and take jobs when Americans are out of work in record numbers.
Regarding South Carolina's law, the study found this:
The number of crop production workers fell. ..... And then hiring surged as the law took effect in 2012. Farmers say they added workers because their normal labor supply vanished.
The study also found that:
[t]he state's commercial bakery industry had been losing workers, then gained them as E-Verify took effect.
So people who were unlawfully there couldn't get past E-Verify. It exposed them as being unlawful, and the businesses lost workers. But then they hired people back, and the people they hired back were lawful workers--either here as immigrants lawfully or native born.
The study, which is based on research from the Pew Hispanic Center, goes on to say this:
[t]he abrupt shifts in employment across multiple industries convey a similar narrative: soon after E-Verify laws are adopted, workers drop off employer payrolls and, in a number of industries, new hires fill those vacant positions. The robustness of this effect reinforces the likelihood that this phenomenon is due to something other than chance.
Our goal must be to help struggling Americans move from dependency to independence, to help them find steady jobs with rising pay, not falling pay. Making E-Verify permanent and requiring all employers to use it is one simple thing we can do to work towards that goal.
Let me just say, the E-Verify system is already established. The system is in place. It can accommodate the increase in inquiries. It is all a computer system. It is all done virtually instantly. It is not as if we have to create a new system or add tens of thousands of people to make it work. The system is already working and it can handle larger numbers.
Our policy cannot be to simply relegate more and more of our citizens to dependence on the government for assistance while importing a steady stream of foreign workers to fill available jobs. That is not in the interest of this country or our people.
I would just like to add that Senators GRASSLEY, LEE, VITTER, ENZI, BOOZMAN, and HATCH are cosponsors of this amendment. We know what is being said out there. We are being told that Americans won't work, they are not looking for jobs, and that businesses can't hire. The Bloomberg study on how the E-Verify system has been implemented indicates quite different.
According to a report on Syracuse.com on January 8, 2014:
In Syracuse [New York], thousands showed up for the Destiny USA job fair on June 14, 2012. More than 50 employers interviewed candidates for roughly 1,600 jobs.
On January 29, 2013, a Fox affiliate in Atlanta reported:
Northside Hospital held a job fair Wednesday, but had to call it off early due to the overwhelming number of people that showed up looking for work. The hospital was hoping to fill 500 jobs.
On May 17, 2013, news outlets in Philadelphia reported:
More than 3,700 job seekers overwhelmed the Municipal Services Building in Center City for a job fair Friday morning intended for ex-offenders. ..... The city anticipated a big crowd and therefore doubled the staff to handle the responses, but the crowd was still too big to handle, forcing the event to be cancelled and leaving hundreds on the plaza outside.
We need to help ex-offenders find jobs. I am aware of a major corporation in Alabama, in talking to a Federal judge recently, which said they will start taking a chance on former offenders. Properly examined and picking the right ones, they found out they are doing fine. We shouldn't be denying young people--particularly young men--who may have gotten in trouble at a younger age ever being able to have a job. One of the goals this country has to have is to help our ex-offenders in employment.
On May 20, 2013, the New York Times reported in an article entitled, ``Camping out for five days, in hopes of a union job,'' the following:
The men began arriving last Wednesday, first a trickle, then dozens. By Friday there were hundreds of them, along with a few women. They set up their tents and mattresses on the sidewalk in Long Island City, Queens ..... and settled in to wait as long as five days and nights for a slender chance at a union job as an elevator mechanic. ..... There were more than 800 by sun-up Monday. ..... The union accepts 750 applications for the 150 to 200 spots in its four-year apprenticeship program.
There are more examples, and I could go on. But I do believe this idea that Americans won't work is not correct. If we take a person who has been unemployed for a while and place them in a position where the labor is physical, it takes a while to get in shape. If you are going to play ball, it takes a while to get in physical condition. People going into the Army are not expected to meet the physical fitness test the first week. They build up to it.
Businesses have to participate in this effort, too. Businesses need to understand they are not entitled and cannot expect--for the government of the United States to produce perfectly fit, well-trained people for every single job they would like to fill. Sometimes they have to hire people, train them on the job, let them work into it and learn the skills on the job.
It is some new idea, apparently, that businesses have to have so much training. We certainly need to use the job-training programs in this country to more effectively train workers for real jobs out there. It is a valid criticism of our trade schools and some of our community colleges that they are not focusing on reality. But my State has done a great job--a far better job than in most States--and I saw a report recently about how Mississippi is doing an excellent job. I believe our program is at least as effective, if not better. So we are doing better. But businesses have always had to bring people into their workplaces and train them to handle the physical challenges that some jobs require.
Madam President, I thank the Chair for an opportunity to share these remarks. I am disappointed that when we are talking about unemployment in America, we have a Congress and a Senate refusing to even allow this amendment to come up for a vote. Without a doubt it would work, be fair, and would simply make it more difficult for people who are not here lawfully, who shouldn't be able to get jobs in America--would make it more difficult for them to get that job, freeing that position up for unemployed Americans who need to get in the workforce and off the welfare rolls. That is the goal.
We have a huge number of welfare programs. We spend $750 billion a year on means-tested programs to help people who are lower income, and that is 50 percent more than the defense budget, more than Social Security, and more than Medicare. Those programs are not working well. They need to come together in a coherent whole with a unified vision. The vision should be to help people who are in stressful circumstances; help them aggressively, in a practical, realistic way; put them in a job-training program that would allow them to take a job. We could easily do that with the money we are spending now. We would have more Americans working and off the welfare rolls. We would save billions of dollars at the same time. They would make more money, be more fulfilled, have more self-respect, and reduce the budget deficit at the same time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT