Speech #1050000932

What is more important for working families than making sure that their children are going to be able to continue in the areas of education? What is more important for working families than if they are going to be able to look to the future with some degree of hope and opportunities and some degree of security with the pension reforms? I just mention. finally. unfinished business as part of our immigration law last year. We are working to ensure protection for American workers. for American jobs that are being replaced by foreign workers who are displacing those American workers. not being paid the adequate kind of salary. given the decency in terms of benefits. They are replacing an American worker in the first place and then because they are doing that at much less of a wage. much less benefits. being able to be competitive to the disadvantage of other Americans with whom they might be competing in producing widgets. for example. and therefore seeing other Americans that are going to lose their jobs. There are two basic and fundamental concepts that underlie our basic problems with the issues of immigrationone is addressing the needs at the border in terms of halting illegal immigrants that are coming here and. second. addressing the magnet of jobsthe magnet of jobs. If you look at the Jordan study. if you look at the Hesburgh study on what is the key issue in terms of attracting immigrants. illegal immigrants. immigrants that are going to abuse the immigration system. you will find out it is jobs. Unless we are going to make sure that Americans are not going to have important jobs. and we are talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs a year in many instanceswe have really failed on the other extremely important effort in terms of immigration reform. We had important provisions in the immigration bill last year that Senator SIMPSON supported. many of us supported. Those were dropped in the conference. We will come back to that particular issue In this year.