Bob Graham

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Will the Senator from Pennsylvania yield for a question?

Mr. GRAHAM. It states that: Notwithstanding any other provision of law and except as provided in paragraph (2), an alien who is a qualified alien (as defined in section 2431) is not eligible for any specified Federal program (as defined in paragraph (3)). So thus we then have to go to section 2431 to determine what the definition is of a ``qualified alien.'' Subparagraph (b) of that section says: For purposes of this chapter, the term ``qualified alien'' means an alien who, at the time the alien applies for, receives, or attempts to receive a Federal public benefit, is-- Among other things-- (2) an alien who is granted asylum under section 208 . . . (3) a refugee who is admitted to the United States under section 207 . . . (4) an alien who is paroled into the United States under section 212(d)(5) . . . None of these people have a sponsor. If I have misread the language of this section, I will appreciate being corrected. But that is a very fundamental issue as to who is intended to be covered.

Mr. GRAHAM. The Senator said the only people this applied to were those who had a sponsor who could assume responsibility. I understood the Senator to say specifically, for instance, they did not apply to refugees who were admitted because they are fleeing legitimate persecution.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I think this question precisely underscores why I have offered this series of strikes. We spent a week- plus on this floor in April and May debating a comprehensive immigration bill. We came to a studied judgment as to how, for whom, for what time period benefits for legal aliens should be constrained. We came to a judgment that said over the next 7 years the restraint should have a dollar figure of $5.6 billion. Tonight we are debating a provision that purports to reduce the benefits of legal aliens by $23 billion, four times more than what we had purported to do just a few weeks ago. Yet there is not the opportunity for careful scrutiny and study. Therefore, fundamental misconceptions as to who this applies to are being presented on this legislation on which our colleagues are going to be asked to vote. I think the prudent thing to do is to adopt the motions to strike that I have offered and let these issues be resolved in the conference committee which is now in place to settle the immigration bill and not attempt to do these things at now 11 o'clock at night on a bill that has received not a scintilla of the kind of analysis insofar as it relates to the impact on legal aliens as did that immigration bill. That is the argument that I make in support of my motions to strike these provisions. This has very serious implications, not only to the individuals involved, but to the communities in which legal aliens elect to live. As an example, in a study by Los Angeles County of what this will mean in terms of health care in that community, there are estimates that they have 93,000 legal immigrants who would lose their SSI benefits, making them automatically eligible for county funded general assistance. That would cost Los Angeles County $236 million a year in additional costs. I do not think we ought to be imposing an unfunded mandate of $236 million on the citizens of Los Angeles County in the cavalier manner that I suggest we are about to do. We have a process. The conference committee focused on immigration with Senators and Members of the House who were selected because of their knowledge and background on that subject matter, several of whom have served on these important commissions on immigration. That is the form which these issues ought to be resolved, not in this welfare bill.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I would make a series of notions to strike provisions in S. 1956.

Mr. GRAHAM. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, to be clear, my argument is that this is a redundant and inappropriate piece of legislation to be considering the issue of the eligibility of legal aliens for Federal benefits. That is exactly what we did in the immigration bill. We spent days on the floor and weeks in the appropriate committee considering the nuances of that legislation, including its impact on the communities, which would now have to carry the cost that previously had been a partnership between the States, the communities, and the Federal Government. I am suggesting what we ought to do is let that process come to fruition. The House has passed an immigration bill. The Senate has passed the immigration bill. They are in conference. They have been in conference since mid-May. Let that forum decide what should be the benefits that the Federal Government would provide for legal aliens. Do not do it in this welfare bill. I think the very fact that we are proposing to reduce those benefits by $23 billion, when just a few weeks ago we thought the appropriate level of reduction was $5.6 billion, ought to raise in our minds whether we really know what we are doing here. The statement that this is not an unfunded mandate, how in the world is it not going to be an unfunded mandate when the Federal Government denies coverage to large groups of people and imposes that cost for the sick, the elderly, those who require special other assistance, is going to end up being a responsibility of States and local governments. If I could use one example, the U.S. Government has entered into an agreement with the Cuban Government which sets up a process by which 20,000 Cubans each year will come into the United States. Most of them, when they come into the United States, come under the category of parolees. Currently, the Federal Government, which is the government that signed this agreement, is responsible for the financial cost of that group of new arrivals if they, for instance, become eligible for health care because they are indigent and they are in need of health care. This is going to say that, for the first year, that group of people will not be eligible for any Federal assistance. Who is going to pick up those costs? Eighty percent plus of those people end up in Dade County, FL. I can tell you who is going to pick up the cost. Jackson Memorial Hospital and the other health care providers in the community are going to be paying for the costs, and it will become--in the classic definition of an unfunded mandate--an unfunded mandate to render services to a group of people who the Federal Government has determined shall enter the community without any Federal financial participation in paying those costs. We dealt with that issue specifically in the immigration bill, and we did not reach that, I think, quite unjust result. This would reverse a decision that we have previously made. So my argument, Mr. President, is a simple one--not that we should not face the issue and try to accomplish some of the objectives the Senator from Pennsylvania strives to do; but we ought to do it in the proper form with the proper consideration and with the proper level of respect to the communities that are going to be most affected by the ultimate decisions we will make. I believe striking these provisions out of this bill, which then turns to the more appropriate forum of the immigration conference committee as the means by which we would reach ultimate judgment, is the appropriate policy. I hope the Senate will concur when we vote on this issue tomorrow.

Mr. GRAHAM. Did the Senator from Pennsylvania state that these provisions that are not bars to eligibility only apply to those persons who come into the country with a sponsor who has assumed the financial obligation?

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time. Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, there are two other aspects of the policy shifts in this legislation. The immigration bill contained the shift in eligibility, the constriction of eligibility based on deeming for legal aliens in order to generate funds that would then be used to finance the programs that were authorized in the illegal immigration sections of that bill to better protect our borders. What we are about to do here is to take all the money that is in the immigration bill that is intended to be used for border enforcement and divert it for the purposes of this welfare reform bill. So all of the promises that we made, for instance, to the people along the Southwest border, that we are going to have more Border Patrol agents, fencing, and other steps to enforce our borders against illegal immigration are going to be ashen, because we, by this action, have taken all the money that we have provided to finance those enhancements to our borders. It is, in part, for that reason, I suspect, that Senator Feinstein, who has been such a leader in the efforts to protect our borders, is a cosponsor of this amendment. Finally, I suggest, Mr. President, that this is a very clear back- door way to accomplish the same objective that this Senate on several occasions rejected when we were debating the immigration bill, and that is a sharp reduction on the rights of legal immigration into this country which we know is primarily the right to reunify families. Why is this a back-door constraint on legal immigration and particularly family reunification? The reason is because we are making it so financially onerous for sponsors. We are raising the specter of their own impoverishment as a result of bringing a loved one, a child, a spouse, a parent into this country that we are going to effectively, through coercion, accomplish the same thing that this Senate, by direct action, refused to do, which was to make it more difficult for legal aliens to reunite with their families. So, Mr. President, this amendment, this series of motions to strike will eliminate those sections of the legislation that relate to the eligibility of legal aliens to a variety of Federal benefits. I underscore that this is not to say that we are not going to restrain those benefits, but we would do so through the immigration bill that we have passed, a bill that had the considered judgment of this Senate as opposed to doing it through a welfare reform bill where this matter is getting virtually no consideration. We are going to do it through the concept of deeming rather than the concept of a total prohibition. We are going to do it at a reasonable level of $5.6 billion which I personally think is, in itself, excessive, but pales in comparison to the $23 billion of reduction that is contained in this welfare bill. Amendment No. 4921 (Purpose: To strike the provisions restricting welfare and public benefits for aliens)

Mr. GRAHAM. Page 234 on my copy, but at a different page--

Mr. GRAHAM. Will the Senator please turn to section 2402, which is one of the sections that my motion would strike?

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, the purpose of the series of motions which I will make, which I hope will be considered as a single motion for purposes of our final vote, is to strike from this legislation those sections which relate to the eligibility of legal immigrants--legal immigrants--to receive various Federal needs-based benefits. I do this because to have this language in this welfare bill is both redundant and punitive in terms of those communities which have large numbers of legal immigrants and will have significant costs shifted to them as a result of this legislation. I am joined in this effort by Senators Simon, Murray and Feinstein, who also recognize it would be inappropriate, and a duplication, to consider matters which have already been resolved by this body. As we will all recall, it was only a few weeks ago, May 2, to be precise, that the Senate passed the Immigration Control and Financial Responsibility Act. This act, which had as its primary objective controlling illegal immigration into the United States, also contained provisions that restrict the rights of legal aliens to a variety of Federal needs-based programs. This legislation was the result of extensive hearings and markups in the Judiciary Committee. It was subjected to exhaustive floor debate which lasted well over a week in the Senate. The majority of the time spent on the immigration bill dealt with the public benefits for legal and illegal immigrants. The availability of Supplemental Social Security Income, Aid for Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid and Medicare for immigrants, was examined during several floor votes which resulted in a comprehensive Senate bill. I am going to say, I hope with not excessive arrogance, that this is a subject which I know something about. I was Governor of Florida in 1980 when over 125,000 immigrants in various legal categories came to my State in a period of a few weeks. Since that time, it has been estimated that the total unreimbursed cost of that incident to the State of Florida was in excess of $1.5 billion. Those were costs associated with health care, social services, education, housing, job training--a variety of activities which were necessary in order to facilitate the assimilation of that large population into the population of the State of Florida. The State of Florida has tried for the better part of 15 years to get recognition of those costs which were incurred because of Federal immigration decisions, but which ended up being an unreimbursed, unfunded mandate on the State of Florida. This case finally ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year. The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court: This is not a judicial issue. If the State of Florida, and other States which might be similarly affected, is to be dealt with, it has to be dealt with by a political judgment, not by a judicial remedy. What distresses me is after having spent weeks shaping the bill which was intended to provide that type of structured legal response by the Federal Government when such impositions are placed by Federal action on a particular community or State, we now, in a bill which is going to be subject to 20 hours of debate--here it is after 10:30 at night--we are about to substantially rewrite, discard the fundamental policy premise of our previous actions and almost quadruple the amount of the unfunded mandate we are going to impose on affected States. In addition to the inappropriateness of us rejecting our previous work, we are making some very significant policy decisions without the kind of attention that we afforded to our earlier action on immigration. What are some of those decisions we are about to make? In the previous bill, we used the concept of deeming. I wish the Senator from Wyoming were with us this evening, because he explained in great detail and on a repetitive basis what the theory of deeming is. It is that if a person sponsors a legal alien to come into this country, that that person should assume the financial obligations that will guarantee that their sponsored legal alien will not become a public charge. Therefore, in terms of evaluating whether that legal alien qualifies--for instance, for Medicaid--you would add the income of the sponsor to the income of the legal alien. And if the combination of those incomes exceeded the eligibility threshold, then the legal alien would no longer qualify for that particular needs-based service. That concept of deeming that we worked so carefully on in the immigration bill is largely replaced in this legislation by absolute prohibitions against legal aliens being able to access these Federal programs. Much of the legislation that we considered earlier and passed on May 2 was based on a recommendation of the U.S. Immigration Commission, which was established by act of Congress in 1990, and which issued a series of reports in the mid-1990's. This report, issued in 1994, entitled ``U.S. Immigration Policy: Restoring Credibility,'' while it spoke well of the concept of deeming as a means of assigning responsibility for legal aliens, went on to say: However, circumstances may arise after an immigrant's entry that create a pressing need for public health: unexpected illnesses, injuries sustained because of serious accident, loss of employment, death in the family. Under such circumstances, legal immigrants should be eligible for public benefits if they meet other eligibility criteria. We are not prepared to remove the safety net from under individuals who we hope will become full members of our polity. That is precisely what this legislation does. It removes the social net. This also will make a very significant difference in the dollar amount of unfunded costs shifted to the States. Under the bill we passed as immigration reform, the cost over 7 years was $5.6 billion. This bill will impose an unfunded mandate of $23 billion over the next 7 years on States. Mr. President, in deference to the limited time that we have and the lateness of the hour, I will not unduly burden the Senate with the reports which I have, but I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a statement from the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems which outlines what the costs are going to be just in the one sector of health care institutions which are going to be a principal target of these unfunded mandates.

Mr. GRAHAM. I would modify that. It will require more than a single motion in order to strike the sections which I intend to strike from title II, chapter C, of S. 1956. So could the reference to ``motions'' be placed in the plural?

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, 40 minutes, equally divided.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I have been informed that the first amendment has not been cleared on this side.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, has this amendment been cleared?

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk, and I ask unanimous consent that the time I have used thus far be counted against my time on the amendment.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, in my State of Florida, we are now receiving thousands of refugees and people seeking asylum from countries such as Cuba, generally under agreements that have been reached between the United States Federal Government and foreign governments, and now the Federal Government is going to take the position that it washes its hands of the financial responsibilities that flow from that. The second big difference is the impact on State and local governments. The bill that we passed would have had a cost transferred to State and local governments of approximately $5.6 billion over the next 7 years. This bill, if you would believe it, would have a cost transfer to State and local governments of up to $23 billion over the next 7 years. I suggest, Mr. President, in respect to the work that this Senate has already done on the immigration bill and the efforts that are currently being made in conference to reconcile the House and the Senate versions, that it is inappropriate for us at this hour under these constrained parliamentary procedures to take up a provision that would fundamentally change the decisions that we have already made, increase the cost to State and local governments by potentially three times or more than in the legislation that we have already passed, and place literally hundreds of communities and tens of thousands of people in serious jeopardy by our ill-considered actions. So at an appropriate time, Mr. President, I will ask, as will colleagues, including Senators Murray, Simon, and Feinstein, that those provisions that relate to the eligibility of legal aliens be deleted from this bill and rely upon the immigration bill to come to an appropriate policy resolution. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an editorial from today's Los Angeles Times on this subject, and other materials that relate to legal aliens.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I wish to speak to one section of this bill to which I will intend to offer an amendment, and that is the section that deals with the rights of legal aliens who are in the United States. As my colleagues will recall, this is not a new issue. In fact, we have spent weeks on the Senate floor debating the question of what should be the eligibility of legal aliens for a variety of Federal benefits. This Senate, by an overwhelming vote, passed on May 2 an immigration control bill, which laid out with great specifics what would be the rights of legal aliens--Mr. President, I underscore the word ``legal''--to various Federal benefit programs. That legislation passed after extensive hearings and markups in the Judiciary Committee and exhaustive floor debate that lasted well over a week. Similar actions were taken in the House of Representatives, and now this legislation is before a conference committee. While all of that has occurred, we now receive this welfare bill, which has a redundant, conflicting, and, I think, draconian set of provisions relative to the rights of the very same people who were the subject of our debate just a few weeks ago--legal aliens in the United States. Mr. President, I am going to propose that we should strike this section from the bill and leave the question of what should be the eligibility rights of legal aliens to the process of resolution in the conference committee and our final action on the results of that conference committee. There are extreme differences between the provisions in the immigration bill that the Senate passed in May and what we are now being asked to consider in July. Let me just mention two of those principal differences. The essential concept of eligibility in the immigration bill was the concept of ``deeming.'' Deeming is the responsibility of the sponsor who has made it possible for the legal alien who comes into the United States to have the sponsor's income added or deemed to be part of the income of the legal alien, in determining whether the legal alien is eligible for Federal needs-based programs. This bill uses a different concept, and that is a concept of a prohibition of legal aliens for a variety of Federal benefit programs. I might say, Mr. President, that much of the debate on the question of rights of legal aliens is a result of the report that was originally sanctioned by this Congress called ``U.S. Immigration Policy: Restoring Credibility,'' often referred to as the ``Barbara Jordan report,'' after our esteemed recently-passed colleague. In the report--the Jordan report--it states, ``The safety net provided by needs-tested programs should be available to those whom we have affirmatively accepted as legal immigrants into our communities.'' It points out that it is appropriate to look to the sponsor to be the primary caregiver for those they have sponsored into the United States. They endorse the concept of deeming. But they say that under circumstances where a sponsor is not available, the sponsor has died, the sponsor has suffered illness, or some other incapacitating condition that made them unable to meet their obligations, that immigrants should continue to be eligible. ``A policy that categorically denied legal immigrants access to such safety nets, based solely on alienage, would lead to a gross inequality between very similar individuals and undermine our immigration goals to reunite families and quickly integrate immigrants into American society.'' So that is one fundamental difference. This is a difference, Mr. President, which will have real impact on the lives of real residents of our country. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the circumstances of Polyna Novak, a legal immigrant who has come to the United States as a refugee from persecution in the Soviet Union and how the difference in the immigration bill's use of deeming and this bill's use of an absolute bar would have an impact on her life.

Mr. GRAHAM. I have not had an opportunity to talk to the floor manager, Senator Exon, but I will request time to speak. If Senator Frist is prepared to proceed, that is fine.

Mr. GRAHAM. The Senator from Nebraska has yielded to me the remainder of time under his control.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, with my colleague, Senator Reid, we introduce today legislation which will clarify the Fair Labor Standards Act and the issue of minimum wage, as it applies to prisoners incarcerated in State and local institutions. I send the legislation to the desk.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I request 15 minutes as in morning business, for purposes of introduction of the bill.

Mr. GRAHAM. I thank the Chair. (The remarks of Mr. Graham and Mr. Reid pertaining to the introduction of S. 1943 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'') Mr. STEVENS addressed the Chair.