John Conyers

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. No, Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, tell me why? No lectures.

Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, well, forget that we just passed an amendment dealing with this very same subject, the employment verification system. As a matter of fact, the name of that amendment, I would say to the gentleman from California [Mr. Gallegly], was the voluntary worker verification system. Fast forward. A year later we come to the floor and make it permanent. Well, why wait for a year? Let us vote a temporary system, and then come right back and vote a permanent system, the same system. So, to quote my good friend from California, an imminently qualified member of the Committee on the Judiciary, who said in the name of truth and reason, [Mr. Gallegly] in the name of truth and reason, why are you offering this amendment, when we just passed the employment verification system minutes ago?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I seek time in opposition to the amendment. I would also like permission to yield half of my time to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Chabot] and ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to control said time.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I will throw up my hands, then. It is all over; we have had it. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I would like the Chair to know that I would like to share the duties of managing this measure with the distinguished ranking minority member on the subcommittee, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Bryant]. Mr. Chairman, immigration policy is an important subject to African- Americans. We know much about the lack of immigration policy and the consequences, and I am happy to hear that somebody somewhere consulted African-Americans about immigration policy. I am not sure what it was they found out, but I would be happy to explain this in detail as we go throughout the debate. I have been in touch with these Americans for many years. It is funny how we get these dichotomies. Some people that do not think much of our civil rights laws, who oppose the minimum wage, who do not have much concern about redlining, heaven forbid affirmative action be raised in dialogue. All of these kinds of questions that involve fair and equal opportunity seem to not apply when it comes to African-Americans, who were brought to this country against their will, but we have these great outpourings of sympathy along some of these similar lines when we are talking about bringing immigrants in. It is a curious set of beliefs that seem to dominate some of the people that are very anxious about this bill. Mr. Chairman, I would like to begin our discussion by raising an issue about ID cards, which is an amendment that will be brought forward by the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] which requires, as I understand it, every single individual in the country to obtain a tamper-proof Social Security card. I guess it is a form of a national ID card, which raises a lot of questions. This card is brought on by the need of tracking people that are in the country illegally, and so we are talking about a one or two percentile of the American public that would be required to carry this kind of Social Security card. It might be called an internal passport, which is used in some countries, in some regimes. Although there will be denials that this is not a national ID card, it is hard to figure out what it really is if everybody is going to be carrying it. There is no limitation on the use to which documents can be obtained such as a Social Security card, and there is little evidence, as I remember the hearings, to show that there would be any reduction of document fraud. As a matter of fact, the Social Security Deputy Commissioner testified that an improved Social Security card is only as good as the documents brought in to prove who they are in the first place. In other words, if a person gets a phony birth certificate, they can get a good Social Security card. So I am not sure what the logic is. Now, Mr. Chairman, I know balancing the budget is still first in the hearts of the Members of the Congress, and I am here to suggest that the cost for this Social Security card has been costed out at around $6 billion. The annual personnel costs to administer the new system are estimated to be an additional $3.5 million annually. The business sector would be forced to incur significant cost to acquire machinery and software capable of reading the new cards, and there would be many hours required to operate the machinery and iron out the errors. This is to get 1 or 2 percent of the people in this country that are illegal. I suggest that this may be prohibitive and that perhaps we can find a more reasonable way to deal with this very serious problem. Mr. Chairman, may I turn the Members' attention now to the part that has caused quite a bit of attention in this bill, and that is how we would deal with the welfare provisions of people who come in to the country, what the requirements might be to become sponsors. In one part of this bill, there is a requirement that a sponsor earn more than 200 percent of the Federal poverty income guideline to be able to execute an affidavit for a family member. The 200-percent income requirement is discriminatory class action and would announce that immigration is only for those that can afford immigration. It would require a sponsor with a family of four to maintain an income in excess of $35,000 to qualify as a sponsor. That means that 91 million people in America would not be able to be a sponsor of a family member for immigration. We may want to consider that a little bit more carefully. Mr. Chairman, I would also like Members to know about the verification system again. The employee verification system was discussed by the Social Security and the Immigration and Naturalization Service representatives who conceded that their computers do not have the capacity to read each other's data, which would completely foil their worthwhile objective. A recent study by the Immigration Service found a 28-percent error rate in the Social Security Administration's database. This verification requirement, therefore, creates huge possibilities for flawed information reaching employers, which would then deny American citizens and lawful permanent residents the opportunity to work. I hope that we examine this in the course of the time allotted us for this important program. Mr. Chairman, there is another provision that I should bring to Members' minds. It is known as immigration for the rich. I do not know if Malcolm Forbes had anything to do with this or not, but it reserves 10,000 spots for those who are rich enough to spend, to start a multimillion-dollar business in the United States. In other words, if someone is rich enough, they would be able to get a place in line ahead of other immigrants who are waiting, that may not be able to cough up that kind of money. There is a problem that we will need to go into about what about drug pushers and cartel kingpins, people escaping prosecution for their home country; in other words, overseas criminals who might have a million bucks and would like the idea of getting out of wherever it is they are coming from. I think we need to think through this very, very carefully. Mr. Chairman, now comes one of my most unfavorite parts of this bill, and that is the notion that we could bring in foreign workers to displace American workers for any reason. Case in point, there is a newspaper strike in its 8th month in the city of Detroit. Knight- Ridder-Gannett have decided to bust the unions in the newspaper industry. They picked the wrong city, but that was their decision. The fact of the matter is that at the Canadian-Detroit border, they have begun picking up people coming in to work for Knight-Ridder and Gannett who are not American citizens, nor are they legal immigrants. We are trying to find out, there is an investigation going on where they are hearing about they can get jobs by coming across international borders to gain employment in a company whose own employees are out on strike. I find that objectionable. I hope that we do not continue the practice. We also have a situation in the H-1B employers in which we find that they are bringing in even skilled workers. Example: Computer graduates from India who are displacing American- trained computer people. Serious problem, serious problem. I find this when unemployment is still outrageously high in the United States, particularly in urban centers where there are areas in which there is 40 percent unemployment easily. So I would like to discuss and look more carefully at the instances in which American businesses have brought in foreign skilled workers after having laid off skilled American workers simply because the foreign workers are more inexpensively available. So this program that I refer to as the H-1B program has become a major means of circumventing the costs of paying skilled American workers or the costs of training them. That is in the bill; it is objectionable. While we are on this subject, I would like to point out, too, there are a number of people on the Committee on the Judiciary who believe bringing people into this country has no effect on the employment rates of people in this country; like, for instance, the more people you bring in that take up jobs, the fewer jobs there are for people inside this country. Mr. Chairman, it is almost like arithmetic. Bring more in, lose more jobs. Bring fewer in, more jobs are available. That is an immutable law of arithmetic that does not turn on policy about U.S. immigration reform. I would like to make it clear that this particular measure, which has been pointed out by the Secretary of Labor, who has urged that the displacement of American workers through the use of the H-1B program must be faced, and to do this that program must be returned to its original purpose, to provide temporary assistance to domestic businesses to fill short-term, high-skill needs. There must be a flat prohibition against laying off American workers and replacing them with foreign workers. Is that provision in this bill? Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. I wan to commend the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Smith] for alleviating many of my concerns. I find we have some areas in agreement, and I am delighted to know about them as well. But I would say that the gentleman is the first person that I have heard in a long time cite as a reason for supporting an amendment is that the other body approved of it. That usually gets the amendment in much deeper trouble than it might otherwise be in. Now the commission, we are trying to check, and I know Barbara Jordan perhaps more intimately as a colleague than anyone here since I served with her on the Committee on the Judiciary, and I do not know if she would have supported a notion that we had to means test one's family member to bring them in and that they had to make 200 percent of the poverty level to get in. In other words, I do not think Barbara Jordan or myself would want to tell somebody that is making 1\1/2\ times the poverty level that they cannot bring their children in because they do not make enough money. That does not sound like Barbara Jordan to me. Finally, the voluntary program that the gentleman referred to is voluntary to employers. It is not voluntary if someone is seeking a job in the place that the employer may decide to use it. So it is voluntary to some and involuntary to others.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, contrary to the practices and precedents of the House, the majority of the Committee on the Judiciary filed the report to accompany H.R. 2937 without allowing the minority to opportunity to file additional views. Unfortunately, it comes as no surprise that the majority did not want the minority to file additional views. This breach of the traditional comity of the House is consistent with the partisan tone that has characterized the majority's investigation into the Travel Office firings from the beginnings. The majority's report weaves a web of conspiracy that would make even Oliver Stone blanche. To hear the majority tell it, the conspiracy to frame Travel Office director Billy Dale and drag him through a political show trial includes the FBI investigators and career prosecutors who tried his case, not to mention the private citizens on the grand jury who voted to indict him. Cases where Congress considers providing funds to meet the legal expenses of defendants should meet a threshold of prosecutorial misconduct or the compromising of the criminal justice system. There is no evidence of such misconduct in the case of Mr. Dale. This case was investigated by career FBI agents and prosecuted by career attorneys. No one has suggested misconduct on their parts as they pursued this case. The fact is that Mr. Dale deposited $50,000 of Travel Office funds into his personal bank account, and that became the basis for the criminal charges of embezzlement. Mr. Dale admitted that he deposited these funds into his account, but denied that his intent was fraudulent, and he was acquitted. However, even Mr.. Dale, in sworn testimony before the Government Reform Committee, acknowledged that there was no misconduct on the part of the prosecutors or investigators who pursued the criminal case. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kanjorski] asked Mr. Dale: When the allegation of criminal conduct was referred to the Justice Department and the public integrity section of the Justice Department; are you suggesting in any way that either those attorneys in the Justice Department, the people in the grand jury, the judge that tried the case or the people that made up the jury were in some way compromised? Mr. Dale responded: ``Absolutely not.'' There is no dispute that White House officials erred in the firings of the five lower level Travel Office employees. The White House admitted as much in its 1993 internal review, and four officials were subsequently reprimanded. It is because of this that I have not opposed H.R. 2937. To the extent that these individuals have legal expenses not covered by previous appropriated sums, it may be appropriate to provide this additional authorization. However, as the majority's report points out, the bulk of the expenses of the Travel Office employees were incurred by Mr. Dale for his defense to the criminal charges brought against him. I do not believe this legislation provides reimbursement for those expenses. Because H.R. 2937 is limited to costs associated with the employees' termination. Mr. Dale was indicted and acquitted for activities that took place prior to this administration, and therefore could not be related to the termination as required by the legislation. In fact, an examination of the facts which are conveniently ignored by the majority suggest, first improprieties in Billy Dale's running of the Travel Office had been rumored for years, and the Clinton White House had plenty of reasons to be suspicious of him; second, the Peat Marwick review provided ample evidence of financial mismanagement on Dale's part; and third, there were significant grounds to suspect that he may have been embezzling funds from the Travel Office. reasons to be suspicious about the Travel Office Rumors about improprieties by the Travel Office staff have been circulating since at least 1988, when allegations were made that included Travel Office staff accepting gifts from one airline doing business with the office, which in turn received the Travel Office business on a noncompetitive business. When the Reagan White House questioned Dale about these charges, he admitted that the Travel Office staff regularly accepted gifts of tickets to sporting events and invitations to elaborate fishing parties from contractors. Accepting gifts from contractors doing business with the office was against Federal regulations and may have been a Federal criminal violation. The Reagan White House, faced with this admission to impropriety, did not refer the evidence to the Justice Department for further investigation as required when any evidence of a crime is uncovered. It never took any disciplinary action against the employees for improperly accepting gifts. And it never instructed that a competitive bidding process be implemented. Instead, it swept the allegations under the rug. When asked about the lack of competitive bidding, Dale stated that no one else was interested in the business. Yet, during the course of the FBI investigation into the Travel Office, officials of a competing airline charter company told the FBI that it ``had concern as to why the Travel Office did not have competitive bidding and why a charter company would have an exclusive contract with the Travel Office. So when Darnell Martens, whose firm TRM had provided some services for the Clinton campaign, contacted Dale in early 1993 to discuss his firm's bidding on Travel Office business, it should have come as no surprise when Dale told him, according to Martens' notes of the conversation, that he had no chance of obtaining any business. Dale gave two reasons for his response to Martens. The first, that Martens would not be able to offer better price than Dale was already getting, cannot be taken seriously because Dale never even allowed Martens to make a bid. How could Dale possibly know Martens' price if he was not given a chance to bid? The second added even more to the suspicions about the Travel Office under Billy Dale. According to Martens' notes, Dale said, ``I have been here 31 years and no one has seen fit to replace me with commercial operations yet. So until they do, I will continue to handle this without your help.'' Does the majority, which professes to be the prophet of privatization, see the irony in defending a career bureaucrat fighting desperately for his job against a competitive bid from the private sector? Nevertheless, the 1988 allegations were known within the Clinton White House, and coupled with Martens' rebuke at the hands of Dale, there was plenty of reason to suspect that something was amiss in the Travel Office. peat marwick finds financial mismanagement The Majority, in the midst of its lengthy tale of intrigue of the Travel Office, conveniently fails to note the findings of the Peat Marwick review, while in the same breath discounting its conclusions. In fact, the Peat Marwick review uncovered significant evidence of mismanagement in the Travel Office, evidence that was communicated both to David Watkins before he made the decision to fire the employees, and to the FBI. The Peat Marwick findings, under the heading of ``Lack of Accountability,'' included a lack of financial control consciousness, no formal financial reporting process, no reconciliations of financial information other than reconciliations of bank statements, and no documented system of checks and balances on transactions and accounting decisions within the office. When asked to explain these findings at the Government Reform Committee hearing, Mr. Dale denied that the findings amounted to financial weaknesses. However, that same day, Larry Herman, the Peat Marwick senior partner who led the Travel Office review, told the Associated Press that he did in fact find clear evidence of financial mismanagement which may have warranted the firing of Mr. Dale. ``My personal assessment is that most companies today would question his management and would include questioning whether to remove that person from that position.'' Mr. Herman was even more direct in an interview he gave to the General Accounting Office in September 1993. According to the GAO: In Mr. Herman's professional judgment, the Travel Office's accounting records were, the messiest, most illegible bookkeeping, he had ever seen. He stated he was, barely able to read the writing, very sloppy and inconsistent, with no explanation of differences. He was also frustrated that he couldn't obtain appropriate responses from Mr. Dale. Mr. Dale seemed to not understand the significance of items such as lack of reconciliations, missing pages, and lack of followup on open billings. Mr. Herman had orally briefed Mr. Dale on Peat's findings and repeatedly asked for his assistance in locating records. Mr. Herman believed that Mr. Dale had no concern for record keeping of other people's money. Further, Mr. Herman told GAO that ``most of his clients would react the same way as the White House did. Mr. Herman's personal opinion is that it was a wise course of action to start over with [a] clean slate . . .'' the fbi's criminal investigation Information obtained during the course of the Peat Marwick review also provided sufficient evidence for the FBI of its own volition to initiate a criminal investigation of Mr. Dale. According to a memorandum from David Watkins to Mack McLarty attached to the White House management review, when FBI officials were briefed on the Peat Marwick findings, they believed there was sufficient cause for them to conduct a criminal investigation. Some of that evidence is contained in the Peat Marwick report's findings that of eight checks written against the Travel Office's Riggs Bank account totaling $23,000 made out to cash and signed by Mr. Dale, only $2,000 was reflected in the petty cash fund. Of the $2,000 entry to the petty cash fund, the corresponding check from the Riggs account was for $5,000. The Peat Marwick team's suspicions are further described in later interviews they gave to the GAO and the FBI. For example, Mr. Herman's interview with the GAO provides more detail about the missing cash: On Saturday, during the Peat Marwick review, Billy Dale was asked at least twice more about the missing $3,000. Mr. Herman stated that Billy Dale suddenly seemed to recall something, then turned and opened his desk drawer or credenza and found the envelope with $2,800. This raised another red flag to Mr. Herman. We, the GAO, questioned whether Mr. Dale had the opportunity to place the funds in the drawer between Friday and Saturday. Mr. Herman stated that he did. The FBI later learned that late on the previous Friday, after being confronted with the discrepancies in the petty cash log, Mr. Dale had withdrawn $2,500 in cash from his White House Credit Union account, and another $400 from an automated teller machine. Mr. Herman provided a progress report of the Peat Marwick review to two FBI officials that Saturday evening. According to the GAO interview with Herman, The FBI agents were specifically concerned with first, the eight incomplete transactions; second, the weak controls; and third, the $2,800 in Billy Dale's credenza. mr. dale never disclosed his secret deposits The FBI found this evidence to be sufficient to initiate a criminal investigation against Mr. Dale. However, it should be noted that during the Peat Marwick review, despite being interviewed for more than 2 hours about his financial management of the Travel Office, Mr. Dale never informed the Peat Marwick reviewers that he had been depositing Travel Office funds into his personal checking account. The discovery that Mr. Dale deposited $50,000 of Travel Office funds into his personal bank account became the basis for the criminal charges against him. When asked at the Government Reform Committee hearing why he never told his colleagues or even his wife about this unusual and ultimately disastrous, if not criminal, practice, he stated that no one ever asked him. Of course, it would never cross most people's mind to ask the director of a Federal office if he was depositing office funds into his personal bank account. Yet, the Peat Marwick auditors, during their review, spent a considerable amount of time with Mr. Dale to understand his accounting practices. According to Mr. Herman's interview with GAO, Mr. Herman interviewed Mr. Dale to learn how the office worked and the flow of financial activities occurring in the office, such as, files, ledgers, details of advancing, and reimbursement by the press. This was the perfect opportunity for Mr. Dale to explain to an obviously suspicious team of reviewers a management practice that was the very least unusual. In any case, it was key to understanding the financial management of the Travel Office, and Mr. Dale purposely withheld that information from the Peat Marwick reviewers, Regardless of his ultimate intent, it is not in dispute that Mr. Dale never told anyone about this practice until the FBI discovered it on its own after subpoenaing his personal bank account records. Thus, based on the information provided by Peat Marwick and obtained during the course of its own investigation, the FBI had many reasons to suspect that Mr. Dale may have been embezzling funds. During the course of its investigation, the FBI found that he had secretly been depositing Travel Office funds into his personal bank account. That evidence was reviewed by career attorneys in the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice, and presented to a Federal Grand Jury who voted to indict Mr. Dale. As I stated earlier, there is no evidence of either prosecutorial misconduct or political interference with the criminal case. For these reasons, I do not believe that Mr. Dale under this legislation is entitled to be reimbursed for legal expenses stemming from the criminal charges filed against him. general leave

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder], the ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. CONYERS. Suicide bombers are afraid of sure and swift deterrence, right?

Mr. CONYERS. How will habeas corpus deter a single terrorist act? Tell me that.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder].

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Schumer], former chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime.

Mr. CONYERS. Who has not heard our debate. Maybe.

Mr. CONYERS. Well, will reform? Tell me how.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr. Berman], one of the gentlemen who helped develop the Conyers-Nadler substitute, and therefore this measure is entitled the Conyers-Nadler-Berman.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, briefly, I just wanted to accept as debatable the reasons that the gentleman has advanced, but to suggest that because the gentlewoman signed a Contract With America she was irrevocably bound in matters of this manner I think is taking the case too far.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, that means the gentleman will not be mentioning these other run-of-the-mill Attorneys General that----

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, still, and will be until the end of the year.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.