Speech #1010249374

Mr. Speaker. let me say to my colleagues that this bill is. indeed. a turning point. It says that our immigration policy is in need of revision. given the new world we are in and that we have stepped up to the plate and met the challenge. The bill says that immigrants are good for America as they have been for 200 years. adding their vitality. their skills. their energy. and their plain ordinary desire to be Americans and be free and participate in our system to our wealth and to our strength. Every study has shown that immigrants give far more to America than they take. Every study has shown that areas of our country that have many immigrants are vital and strong and important. This bill adds immigrants in three ways. First. it increases the number. We are a growing country. and we need more immigrants in general. Second. it says for the first time that immigrants should be admitted in large numbers because we need their skills. There are many companies in this country which. try as they might. who are stymied and stifled because they cannot find aeronautical engineers. hospitals that cannot find nurses. companies that cannot find specific kinds of skills whether they be low. medium. or high. and they need them. Third. what this says is that there are parts of the world that should be able to contribute to American immigration. places like Ireland and Italy and Poland and Nigeria who have been denied simply because the people from those areas came to America not 30 years ago but 50 and 100 and 200 years ago. This bill. under the diversity provision that I have authored. allows those people to come into this country. Overall. Mr. Speaker. this is a bill that meets the needs of this country in the 21st century. We are not doing this for the immigrants. We are doing this for America. The Immigration Nursing Relief Act of 1989 amended the INA section 101(a)(15)(H)(i) by establishing a new nonimmigrant classification for registered nurses who meet certain qualifications. To obtain a nurse pursuant to the new (H)(i)(a) program. a facility for which the alien nurse will perform services must file an attestation. The purpose of the attestation is. in part. to assure that the employment of the foreign nurse is critical to the facilitys delivery of health services. that it would not adversely affect the employment of U.S. citizen and permanent resident alien nurses. and that steps would be taken by the facility to reduce its reliance on foreign nurses. Since the passage of the Immigration Nursing Relief Act. questions have arisen about the meaning of the term "facility." Specifically. the 1989 act did not clearly address the attestation responsibilities of firms or agencies in the business of hiring nurses and contracting out their services. as well as the hospitals or nursing homes that contract for these nurses. This legislation specifically places the responsibility for filing an attestation both on the employer. namely. the employing agency. and its customer. the independent hospital or nursing home worksite. The clarification of the responsibilities does not compel the filing for each worksite where the employer is the worksite or controls the worksite. such as in the case of a municipal hospital system that employs the nurses in its constituent hospital worksltes that are under the control of the system.