S.J. Res. 54

Floor Speech

He is absolutely right. My friend and distinguished colleague from Illinois is correct in noting that I have had conversations and negotiations with Republicans, and I have also had conversations and negotiations with Democrats. I have been working on this for nearly 9 years. At every moment, we have made concessions to people on both sides of the aisle.

I wish the solution he is offering today were something that could allow us to pass the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. Alas, it is not.

I would note that it is not as though this is something new or objectionable or even something that the passage of which would amount to a concession on his part. For one thing, the Fairness for High- Skilled Immigrants Act is a bill that he was an original cosponsor of in a previous Congress. This is his bill. You might ask what is different about the bill he championed a few years ago and the substitute amendment I put forward earlier today. The answer is that, aside from a short subsection that temporarily alleviates nursing shortages in parts of this country, the only thing we have changed is that we have added a variety of new provisions to combat some abuse in the H-1B program.

As I have said, these provisions are drawn almost verbatim from the Durbin-Grassley H-1B reform bill, of which my colleague from Illinois has long been the lead Democratic cosponsor.

The only other thing that has changed from the time when the Senator from Illinois would have stood by my side instead of in opposition and helped to pass this bill is the problem that he sought to solve when he supported this bill. That very same problem still exists and has gotten worse.

As I indicated earlier, there are 40,000 green card applicants in Illinois alone, plus there are thousands of children stuck in this awful backlog. These are individuals whose children are aging out of their temporary visas, and they are forced to return to a country they left behind long ago--a country that, in many cases, their children don't know and have never known.

To repeat, the amendment that I offer today and that has been the subject of some of my colleague's remarks this afternoon in his unanimous consent request consists of nothing more than the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, of which my colleague from Illinois was once a leading sponsor, and a series of H-1B reforms that he himself has long sought to enact. If passed, it would provide relief to many hard-working families from both his State and for mine. Yet he objects. As he objects, he offers up something else that he knows cannot possibly get close to passing this body by unanimous consent. Yet we can do that today. We can do that right now if he would lift his objection. He knows that I cannot, and I will not, and on that basis, I object.

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for his constructive observations there. With respect to the Gang of 8 legislation, yes, it passed through this body, and, yes, I voted against that, as did a number of my colleagues. My view is, that was a piece of legislation that while it entailed a lot of work by a lot of people who were trying to make things better, it was doomed at the outset for failure because the message of that bill and of those who were pushing it was essentially you either pass all of this bill and all of its reforms--a large number of which and the majority of which I agreed with--or you pass nothing. We were literally told that. It is either this entire package or it is nothing. We spent weeks in the Committee on the Judiciary debating it and discussing it. I personally proposed dozens of amendments to that.

What emerged at the end of that from the committee was a--this has been 6 years, so my colleague will forgive me if I don't remember the exact numbers. It was about a 700-page bill. When we got to the floor, what we debated and discussed was substituted out at the last minute. What we ended up getting was another bill that was, as I recall, 1,200 pages long. It was a different bill.

The message was the same with both of them. This is a package deal. You either reform all of what this bill reforms and do it at once or you get none of it. Many of the sponsors of that legislation made clear that they would oppose any smaller effort.

I believe this is exactly the opposite of the type of solution that will work. What is going to work here is if we start with incremental, step-by-step legislation. If we start with something the Senator from Illinois has himself in the past sponsored, both as to the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act itself and as to the substance, the nuts and bolts of the Grassley amendment--he has been on the cutting edge of supporting both of those things. If not here, where? If not us, who? If not now, when? This is what we need to do. I am going to continue to come to the floor. I am going to continue to seek unanimous consent and to pass this every way I can.

As to my colleague's suggestion with regard to a committee hearing. This hasn't, of course, been the topic of committee hearings in the past, and it has been fully discussed. I would, of course, welcome any further committee action that the chairman might choose to hold, and I would be happy to have any committee action that, of course, isn't mine to offer or give, but I would always prefer more consideration of the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act than less. So if that is what we have to do, great, but I don't believe any further factual development is necessary here.

Just for the record, I want to state this bill is ready to pass right now. This bill has 365 votes on the House floor right now. This bill would become law right now, would pass out of the Senate and would pass out of the Senate in a form that would be passed out of the House of Representatives, ultimately, right now but for this objection.

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I thank my friend, the Senator from Illinois, and I appreciate his dedication to detail and to the hard work he has put into the area of immigration and reform.

Yes, you are right. That was a difficult process. It went through 6 years ago, and I commend you, even though you and I reached different conclusions as to the ultimate outcome of that legislation.

My point there is simply to say: It is, and properly should and always is, going to be the case that it can be easier to get something done that is more narrowly focused. In this case, we have a bill the Senator from Illinois has himself cosponsored in the past. It has been modified by another provision that he has also sponsored in the past. We should be able to do this one.

It is not my place to commit on behalf of the Committee on the Judiciary or its chairman whether we are going to have hearings. I reiterate my view that no further factual development of this is necessary. I don't believe a hearing is necessary.

I am never going to object to simply holding more hearings on it, and if that is what the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary is inclined to do, I am certainly not going to interfere with that. In the meantime, I am going to continue to do everything I can to get this thing passed. It is ready to pass. It is ready to pass right now. I am going to continue to find every way possible to get this the consideration it deserves.

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