Speech #1050192221

One. in a global economy. we want our companies to be competitive. That includes making sure they are able to hire workers with the skills necessary for them to be as competitive as they can be. because it is our competitive edge which will help us in the future. I come from a very strong background of believing in immigration. believing immigration is good for this country. believing immigration based on family relationships and employer sponsorships are both important and that those immigrants contribute a great deal to our economy and to our social fabric and to our culture. I also accept the premise that probably at this particular time we need substantial additional visas for H1B. for temporary nonimmigrant workers who have specific skills. I just think that to say that huge numbers of the employers who will utilize these H1B workers do not have to go through a basic meaningful process of recruitment and do not have any meaningful constraints on their ability to displace a U.S. worker in order to bring in a temporary nonimmigrant visa is wrong fundamentally. and. moreover. will in the long term undermine Americas willingness to accept immigration under these grounds. So I think the substitute. which provides a meaningful attestation requirement. is a compelling help to this particular legislation. The way this is written. a company that employs 5.000 people but has only 600 H1B workers would not be obligated to provide any of the attestation requirements. because it would not meet the definition of an HlBdependent company. That makes no sense to me. This is not an amendment that simply excludes small employers. not that they should not have the same obligations. anyway. but we can talk about the Department of Labor. paperwork burdens. and things like this. We could be talking about some enormous employers with substantial numbers of HlB employees who will not be required to have enforceable obligations to recruit domestically first. or to agree not to displace U.S. workers with people filling these nonimmigrant visas. these H1B visas. I urge support for the substitute. I congratulate our ranking member for his preparing of this amendment. and I urge its adoption.