Ted Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I oppose the amendment of the Senator from Kentucky. The McConnell amendment would limit the ability of many American citizens to exercise the fundamental right to vote. It is nothing more than a 21st century poll tax. The 24th amendment states that ``The right of citizens of the United States to vote . . . shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.'' This amendment would force all citizens to obtain a government-issued photo ID in order to vote. Many citizens who have voted for years don't own the government-issued photo identification needed to meet the requirement. They would have to pay for the ID or at least for the underlying documents needed to get one. Among the persons who will be hardest hit are the elderly, minorities, and persons with disabilities. That is who this amendment is targeting. Many seniors don't have photo ID because they don't need a driver's license. But they should still have the right to vote. Many Americans who are blind or have other disabilities also don't have a photo ID because they don't have driver's licenses either. But they should still have the right to vote. Some religious minorities, such as the Amish, want to vote, but their faith does not allow them to have their pictures taken. We should never require citizens to violate their religious beliefs or to pay to cast a vote. Many African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans also lack photo ID. Under this amendment, these citizens would lose the right to vote if they don't get a government-issued photo ID. Some citizens in this country were never issued a birth certificate, particularly African-American seniors born in the South or rural areas and Native Americans. If we pass this amendment, we turn our backs on them. Many voters had their lives devastated by Hurricane Katrina. What about them? What about the elderly grandmother displaced by Hurricane Katrina who lost all of her possessions in the hurricane and now lives hundreds of miles from her birthplace and home? If she doesn't drive, how is she going to get the documents she needs to vote under this amendment? If she is retired or lost her job because of the storm, she may not be able to afford the documents. Separated from her family and neighbors, she may not have anyone to help her fill out the forms and get to the right government agencies to obtain the documents she needs. This country failed the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Are we going to disenfranchise them as well? Supporters of the amendment say, ``Don't worry. Under this amendment, States will give out free identification cards to those who can't afford them.'' That sounds good in theory, but what about in practice? Citizens will still have to deal with State and local bureaucracies to prove who they are. Poll taxes have a dark and notorious history in this country. When we considered a poll tax ban in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, poll taxes were a tried-and-true tactic to prevent African Americans and poor whites from voting. I introduced an amendment to the 1965 act to ban poll taxes in all elections--Federal, State, and local. We had days and days of debate on the Senate floor about poll taxes. Not everyone agreed on how to fix the problem. The final amendment made clear that poll taxes infringe the right to vote and directed the Attorney General to challenge them in court. A year later, in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, the Supreme Court held that poll taxes are unconstitutional. The Court declared that ``the right to vote is too precious, too fundamental to be so burdened or conditioned'' on the ability to pay. We thought that poll taxes and other blatant barriers to the right to vote were vestiges of a bygone era. But today, Republican-controlled State legislatures around the country are attempting to enact photo identification laws. Federal and State courts have already struck down State laws similar to the McConnell amendment. In Georgia, a Federal court has stopped two different attempts to impose a photo identification requirement. Judge Murphy ruled the first an unconstitutional poll tax because of the cost that hundreds of thousands of Georgians without photo identification would have to pay to obtain them. The State's second attempt made the IDs free, just as this amendment supposedly does, but it was still struck down as unconstitutional. The court held that Georgia's interest in combating nonexistent vote fraud didn't justify the ``severe burden'' on voters without photo identification who would have to get through several layers of bureaucracy to obtain the documents required. A State court also ruled that the Georgia law violated the State constitution because it disenfranchised citizens who were otherwise qualified to vote. A similar proposal recently was struck down in Missouri. The judge spelled out the problem loud and clear. For some, he said, the burden of a photo ID requirement may not seem great. But ``for the elderly, the poor, the undereducated, or otherwise disadvantaged, the burden can be great if not insurmountable, and it is those very people . . . who are the least equipped to bear the costs or navigate the many bureaucracies necessary to obtain the required documentation.'' Supporters of this modern-day poll tax claim it is just common sense. ``What's the big deal?'' they ask. After all, if you need a photo ID to get on a plane or rent a movie or drive a car, it is only reasonable to require such an ID to vote. But voting is a right in this country and not simply a privilege. We need to restrict who can get on a plane or drive a car, but we should never restrict the precious right to vote. As Judge Callahan put it in the Missouri case, ``While a license to drive may be just that--a license and not a right, the right to vote is also just that--a right and not a license.'' When proponents of this amendment stand up to explain why America needs this legislation, listen carefully. During the floor debate on a similar proposal in the House, the amendment's Republican supporters strained to convince us that we have a major problem because noncitizens and others are posing as eligible voters. But they couldn't give us any evidence. The fact is, voter fraud simply isn't a major problem. It certainly isn't a serious enough problem to justify disenfranchising Americans on a massive scale--which is exactly what this proposal would do. Proponents of this 21st century poll tax have no evidence that it is needed because all the facts show it is not needed. Here is what the hard evidence tells us about voter impersonation in this country: A recent article in the New York Times found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare. It found that, over a 5-year-period, the Justice Department, despite focusing its effort on prosecuting individuals for voter fraud, a top priority of Karl Rove, ``turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections'' through fraudulent voting. There have been only 86 convictions nationwide. That is less than 90 instances of anyone voting who wasn't supposed to vote in the entire country in 5 years. In addition, according to the article, many of these people, voted or registered to vote by mistake, without knowing they were not eligible. Statewide surveys in Ohio after the 2002 and 2004 elections found only four instances of ineligible persons voting or attempting to vote--four out of over 9 million votes cast during those elections. That is a rate of 0.00004 percent. In Georgia, where state legislators cited voting fraud as the need for a photo ID law, secretary of state Cathy Cox could recall only one case of voter fraud involving the impersonation of a registered voter during her 10 years of service. Out of nearly 200 million votes cast since 2002, only 86 individuals nationwide have been convicted of election fraud. And many of those offenses involved conduct that would not be remedied by a photo identification requirement. The evidence also makes very clear that this proposal would disenfranchise millions of citizens who are eligible to vote. A University of Wisconsin study found that in Milwaukee nearly 50 percent of African-American and Latino men did not have government- issued photo identification. According to AARP, 36 percent of voters in Georgia over the age of 75 don't have government-issued photo identification. Georgia Secretary of State Cox found that nearly 700,000, or 1 in 7, registered voters in Georgia do not have a driver's license or State- issued non-driver's license, which this amendment would require in order to vote. According to the Department of Transportation, 6 to 12 percent of eligible voters do not currently have the identification the amendment would require. The American Association of People with Disabilities estimates that nearly 4 million Americans with disabilities would be disenfranchised if this proposal takes effect. Native Americans living on tribal lands, often without street addresses and with traditions that don't permit the taking of their picture, would also be disenfranchised by this law. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 11 million U.S.-born citizens do not have a birth certificate or passport readily available to them and therefore could be disenfranchised under this amendment. The burden falls unequally on some geographic regions as well as on our most vulnerable populations: It hurts the elderly--some 2.3 million elderly Americans lack the required documents. It hurts rural residents, since approximately 4.5 million rural Americans lack the documents necessary to establish their citizenship. It hurts citizens living in the South and Midwest--8.4 million residents of Southern and Midwestern States don't have the documents this amendment would require to vote. It hurts the poor--nearly 3 million citizens making less than $25,000 a year lack a passport and birth certificate. It hurts African Americans--2 million African Americans lack a passport and birth certificate. Many elderly African Americans have no birth certificate because they were born at home at a time when hospitals were closed to African Americans because of racial discrimination. One study estimates that a fifth of all African Americans born in 1939 and 1940 were never issued birth certificates. Under the Bush administration we are running historic deficits and our debt is mounting. We can't afford the cost of a program designed to fight a nonexistent problem. At a time when Americans have serious concerns about the proper functioning and integrity of voting machines, the Republican Party responds with a solution in search of a problem. They want to pass a law that threatens to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. To those who were disenfranchised in the 2000 and 2004 elections by wrongful purges, erroneous registration lists, poll worker errors, uncounted provisional ballots, of long lines, this is our answer? If the Senator from Kentucky is serious about election reform, we stand ready to work together. But it is cynical to take such a serious and important issue, so fundamental to democracy, and use it for partisan politics. Last July, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act with broad bipartisan support. The reauthorization passed overwhelmingly in the House and by a unanimous vote in the Senate. Republicans and Democrats came together to tear down barriers to the ballot box. Now some on the other side of the aisle want to erect new barriers to voting by telling Americans they need a passport to vote. If we adopt this amendment, we undermine the Voting Rights Act's important protections. This amendment would disenfranchise many of the same voters we tried to protect with that historic legislation last year. Mr. President, that is unfair, undemocratic, and unconstitutional. I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join in correcting the Supreme Court's decision last week in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. That decision has undermined a core protection of title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark law against job discrimination based on gender, race, national origin, and religion. Title VII has made America a stronger, fairer, and better land. It embodies principles at the heart of our society--fairness and justice for all. Americans believe in fair treatment, equal pay, and an honest chance at success in the workplace. These values have made our country a beacon of hope and opportunity around the world. The Ledbetter decision undermined these bedrock principles by imposing unrealistically short time limits for employees seeking redress for wage discrimination. In the case before the Supreme Court, a jury had found that Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company had discriminated against Lily Ledbetter by downgrading her evaluations because she was a woman in a traditionally male job. Year after year, the company used these unfair evaluations to pay her less than her male coworkers who held the same job. The jury was outraged by Goodyear's misconduct and awarded back to Ms. Ledbetter to correct this basic injustice and hold the company accountable. The Supreme Court ruled against her, holding that she had waited too long to file her lawsuit. It ruled that she should have filed her lawsuit within a short time after Goodyear first decided to pay her less than her male colleagues. Never mind that she didn't know at the outset that male workers were paid more. Never mind that the company discriminated against her for decades and that the discrimination continued with each new paycheck she received. Requiring employees to file pay discrimination claims within a short time after the employer decides to discriminate makes no sense. Pay discrimination is different from other discriminatory actions because workers generally don't know what their colleagues earn. It is not a case of being told ``you're fired'' or ``you didn't get the job'' when workers at least knows they have been denied a job benefit. With pay discrimination, the paycheck comes in the mail, and workers usually have no idea if they are being paid fairly. Common sense and basic fairness require that they should be able to file a complaint within a reasonable time after getting a discriminatory paycheck instead of having to file the complaint soon after the company first decides to shortchange them for discriminatory reasons. The Court's decision in the Ledbetter case is not only unfair, it sets up a perverse incentive for workers to file lawsuits before they have investigated whether pay decisions are actually based on discrimination. Under the decision, workers who wait to get all the information before filing a complaint of discrimination could be out of time. As a result, the decision will create unnecessary litigation as workers rush to beat the clock on their equal pay claims. The Supreme Court's decision also breaks faith with the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which was enacted with overwhelming bipartisan support--a vote of 93 to 5 in the Senate and 381 to 38 in the House. The 1991 act had corrected this same problem in the context of seniority, overturning the Court's decision in a separate case. At the time, there was no need to clarify title VII for pay discrimination claims since the courts were interpreting title VII correctly. Obviously, Congress needs to act again to ensure that the law adequately protects workers against pay discrimination. It is unacceptable that victims of discrimination are unable to file a lawsuit against ongoing discrimination. Yet that is what happened to Lily Ledbetter. I hope that all of us, on both sides of the aisle, can join in correcting this obvious wrong. Unfortunately, in recent years, the Supreme Court also has undermined other bipartisan civil rights laws in ways Congress never intended. It has limited the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, made it harder to protect children who are harassed in our schools, and eliminated individuals' right to challenge practices that have a discriminatory impact on their access to public services. Congress needs to correct these problems as well. Let's not allow what happened to Lily Ledbetter to happen to any other victims of discrimination. As Justice Ginsburg wrote in her powerful dissent, the Court's decision is ``totally at odds with the robust protection against employment discrimination Congress intended Title VII to secure.'' I urge my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats alike, to restore the law as it was before the Ledbetter decision, so that victims of ongoing pay discrimination have a reasonable time to file their claims. The Lily Ledbetters of our Nation deserve no less.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Would the Senator yield on that point?

Mr. KENNEDY. I just wonder if the Senator would yield on this point because this is extremely important. This is about American citizens too. There are individuals who go to a hospital, people who take their children to school for vaccinations, and this has the language that if an official has probable cause to believe they are undocumented, they can question that individual. Suppose they question them before they treat them? The way I look at it and read that, this could be an American who goes in, an American citizen goes in, and for some reason, some attendant says: Well, I have reason to believe this is undocumented, let's see all of your papers, while the person is either trying to be attended to, with a serious injury, or trying to get their child immunized to protect not only that child but other children in the classroom. How in the world are they going to be able to do that without opening up a whole system of profiling in this country? I maintain that we have very strong border security and we have very strong provisions in here in terms of employment security, to try to make sure we are going to have the right people who are going to be able to work here and we are going to know who is going to be able to come into the United States. But this here really seems to me to be endangering American citizens in a very important way. I was just wondering if the Senator might comment on that.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from New Jersey for his comments, both on the Coleman amendment and the Cornyn amendment. To remind our colleagues, we intend to have votes starting at 12:15. Yesterday we had some success on a number of different amendments. We have a number here which we expect votes on through the afternoon. We will have a full morning and afternoon. With regard to the Coleman amendment, because the American people obviously are concerned about security, we are concerned about security from terrorism. We are concerned as well about security from bioterrorism or from the dangers of nuclear weapons. We have heard those words. We have taken action on many of them. We still have much to do. But we have in this legislation taken a number of very important steps with regard to security. It is important to understand what has been done in this legislation in terms of security and how the Coleman amendment fails to meet the test. In a number of areas, it probably endangers our security. It does so with regard to health care, education. It may even in other areas as well. In this legislation, we are doubling the Border Patrol. We are creating a new electronic eligibility verification system, increasing penalties on noncompliant employers by a factor of 20. We are increasing detention space and requiring more detention of undocumented immigrants, pending adjudication of their cases. We are expanding the definition of aggravated felony to encompass a wider array of offenses. We are increasing the penalties related to gang violence, illegal entry, and illegal reentry. We are increasing penalties related to document and passport fraud. The list goes on. The question is, does this amendment add to our security, or does it make us more vulnerable to a public health crisis, more vulnerable to crime, terrorist attack, and less competitive? What we are basically doing with the Coleman amendment is saying to any teacher, any doctor, any nurse, any public official, if they believe they have probable cause--and we have to understand what that means in terms of the individual, how they are going to know there is probable cause--then they can test the individual that is before them to find out whether they are undocumented, whether they are legal, or whether they are an American. Let's take an example. Tuberculosis, which we have seen grow dramatically over the last 3 years for a number of different reasons-- 71 percent of those who have tuberculosis are foreign. But in order to protect American children from tuberculosis, we need to screen and protect those who have tuberculosis; otherwise, we will find the tuberculosis is going to spread. Well, what are we going to do? What is important is that if we find out a person comes in and the family has tuberculosis and the individual says: Well, I am not sure I am going to treat you because I am not sure you are an American citizen or if you are undocumented or if your papers are right, so I am not sure we are going to treat you, and that family has tuberculosis, the child goes into a classroom with a communicable disease and infects a number of American children? This is the typical kind of challenge. On immunization: Immunization is down in this country dramatically. What happens? We know when we do not immunize the children, they become more vulnerable to disease. Maybe these children are going to go into the public school system and are going to spread that disease. Isn't it better to make sure they are going to get the immunization? Or are we going to say to the medical professionals: Well, I think that person is undocumented. I think they may be illegal. Sure, they have papers. They look OK. But I am not sure they are OK, so therefore I am not going to treat them. This is false security. We have tough security in the bill. What are we going to say in the situation where we have battered women--which is taking place today in too many communities across this country? It is a reality. We might not like it, but it is a reality, and many of the people who are being battered happen to be immigrants, undocumented individuals. What are they going to do after they are getting beaten and beaten and beaten and they go on in to try to get some medical care? Oh, no. Well, you are undocumented, so we are going to report you for deportation. Report to deport. That is the Coleman amendment: Report to deport--trying, in these situations, to meet the immediate needs. What is going to happen to the migrant, the undocumented, who sees a crime, knows the people, is prepared to make sure the gangs who are distributing drugs--they are a witness to a crime in the community and they go down to the police department and the first thing the police officer says is: Well, you look like you are undocumented. Let's see your papers, and they arrest the person, rather than solving the crime, rather than stopping the gang. So this is, I think, false security and unnecessary. We will have a chance to address that. As we mentioned earlier, the amendment would prevent the local governments from having the flexibility to reassure fearful immigrant communities it is safe to come forward for programs that are absolutely essential to public health and safety. If the immigrant families are afraid to access the key public health interventions, such as immunization or screening for communicable disease, the public health consequences for the entire community are severe. When the Nation is attempting to be prepared for the threat of biological terrorism or serious influenza epidemic, this is a dangerous policy. Local governments need the flexibility to keep the entire community safe. Public health workers should not be enforcers. Public health workers should not be enforcers of immigration law. This can create a massive fear of the health care system and upset the trust of a patient-doctor relationship that many public health workers have worked to build among the immigrant community for years. Further, social service and health care providers are unlikely to be familiar with the complex and constantly changing immigration laws, which would be needed to determine a patient's status and for which they would have to undergo extensive training. I have listened to the Members of the Senate talk about the 1986 immigration laws like they understood it and knew what they were talking about. How in the world are we going to expect the local policeman or the local nurse or the local doctor to understand it when on the floor of the Senate they do not even understand it? What are going to be the implications? The implications are going to be: There is going to be increased fear, increased discrimination, increased prejudice, and increased disruption--not only of people's lives but also of the public health system, the education system, and the law enforcement system. So this amendment does not make sense. At an appropriate time, we will comment further about it.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the proposal of the Senator from North Dakota. I appreciated over the period of these days the good exchanges we have had on the issues of the labor conditions in this country, which is what this legislation is all about. I am going to put a chart behind me that describes the circumstances of what is happening to undocumented workers and to American workers in New Bedford, MA. This is a picture of a company in New Bedford, MA. This was taken probably in the last 4 weeks. These were the undocumented workers in New Bedford. This sweatshop is replicated in city after city all over this country. One of the key issues is: Can we do something about it? We say yes, and we say our legislation makes a very important downpayment to making sure we do. Many of these individuals--not all--are undocumented workers. This is what happened to these workers. These workers were fined for going to the bathroom; denied overtime pay; docked 15 minutes pay for every minute they were late to work; fired for talking while on the clock; forced to ration toilet paper, which typically ran out before 9 a.m. So this is the condition in sweatshops in New Bedford, MA. These conditions exist in other parts of my State, regrettably, and other parts of this country. Why? Because we have, unfortunately, employers who are prepared to exploit the current condition of undocumented workers in this country--potentially, close to 12\1/2\ million are undocumented. Because they are undocumented, employers can have them in these kinds of conditions. If they don't like it, they tell them they will be reported to the immigration service and be deported. That is what is happening today. I yield to no one in terms of my commitment to working conditions or for fairness and decency in the workplace. That is happening today. The fact that we have those undocumented workers and they are being exploited and paid low wages has what kind of impact in terms of American workers? It depresses their wages. That should not be too hard to grasp. Those are the facts. Now what do we try to do with this legislation? We are trying to say: Look, the time of the undocumented is over. You are safe. You will not be deported. Therefore, you have labor protections. If the employer doesn't do that, you have the right to complain, a right to file something with the Labor Department, and we are going to have a thousand labor inspectors who are going to go through the plants in the country to make sure you are protected. That doesn't exist today. It will under this legislation. So what we are saying is that those who are coming in to work temporarily are going to be treated equally under the U.S. labor laws. Employers must provide them workers' compensation. So if something happens to them in the workplace, they will be compensated rather than thrown out on the street. Employers with histories of worker abuse cannot participate in the program. There are the penalties for employers who break the rules, which never existed before. Now, we say: Well, you may very well be taking jobs from American workers. That is the question. What do you have to do to show that you are not going to take jobs from American workers? Well, if the employer wants to hire a guest worker, the employer must advertise extensively before applying for a temporary worker. The employer must find out if any American responds to that. If they do, they get the job. So the employer has to advertise and the employer must hire any qualified American applicant. Temporary workers are restricted in areas with high unemployment, and employers cannot undercut American wages by paying temporary workers less. So we are saying the temporary workers are going to come in and be treated as American workers, and those who are undocumented are going to be treated as American workers. That is not the condition today. That is the condition in this legislation. How do we get there? Well, we get there with a comprehensive approach. What do you mean by a comprehensive approach? We are saying a comprehensive approach is that you are going to have border security. That is part of it. But you are also going to have the opportunity for people who are going to come in here through the front door--if you have a limited number of people coming in through the front door, and that number is down to 200,000 now, they will be able to come through the front door, and they will be able--in areas where American workers are not present, willing or able to work--to work in the American economy, with labor protections, which so many do not have today. But we are going to have to say you need a combination of things--the security at the border. You have a guest worker program which is part of the combination. Is that it? No, no, it is not it. You have to be able to show your employer that you have the biometric card to show that you are legally in the United States. Therefore, you have rights. If that employer hires other people who do not have that card, they are subject to severe penalties. That doesn't exist today. So when we hear all these voices about what is happening about the exploitation of workers, that happens to be true today. But those of us who have been working on this are avoiding that with the proposal we have on this particular issue. Included in this proposal--the Senator makes a very good point, although I never thought we sunsetted the Bankruptcy Act. I wish we had. In this legislation, we have the provisions which set up and establish a commission. The commission in the legislation does this: In section 412 we say: Standing commission on immigration and labor markets. The purpose of the commission is what? To study the nonimmigrant programs and the numerical limits imposed by law on admission of nonimmigrants; to study numerical limits imposed by law on immigrant visas, to study the limitations throughout the merit-based system, and to make recommendations to the President and the Congress with respect to these programs. So we have included in this legislation a very important provision to review the program we have. That panel is made up of representatives of the worker community, as well as the business community to make these annual reports to Congress about how this program is working so that we will then be able to take action: Not later than 18 months after date of enactment and every year thereafter, submit a report to the President and the Congress that contains the findings, the analysis conducted under paragraph 1; make recommendations regarding adjustments of the program so as to meet the labor market needs of the United States. What we have built into this is a proposal to constantly review this program and report back to the Congress, so if we want to make the judgment to change the numbers, the conditions, the various incentives, we have the opportunity to do so. We believe--and I think the Senator makes a valid point--that it is useful to have self-corrective opportunities. He would do it by ending the program, by finishing it, by sunsetting it. We do it by having a review by people who can make a judgment and a decision and give information to Congress so that we can do it. There is one final point I wish to make. We have a system, as the Senator from North Dakota pointed out, where people will work here, go back to their country of origin for a period of time, come back to work, go back to their country, and come back to work. Under our proposal, they get a certain number of points under the merit system which help move them on a pathway toward a green card and toward citizenship. I wish that merit system could be changed in a way that favored workers more extensively and provided a greater balance between low skill and high skill because the labor market demands both. If you read the reports of the Council of Economic Advisers, you find there is a need for high skill, but 8 out of the 10 critical occupations are also low skill. We have tried, during this process, to see if we couldn't find equal incentives for both. It is a fair enough criticism to say this merit system is more skewed toward the high skilled than it is toward the low skilled, but there are still very important provisions and protections in there for low skilled, and there are additional points added in case of family associations or if you are a member of an American family. I really do not see the need. We moved from 400,000 down to 200,000. This is a modest program at best. We have in the legislation the report that will be made available to the Congress on a variety of areas. We have been very careful to make sure that everyone who is going to participate in this program, who is going to come in legally, is going to have the protections for working families today. That doesn't exist today. This legislation does protects them. The amendment of the Senator from North Dakota would cut out those provisions with regard to the temporary worker program. The fact is, we need some workers in this country. All of us will battle and take great pride in being the champion of the increase in the minimum wage, and I commend my friend from North Dakota for his support over the years in increasing the minimum wage. We are very hopeful that we are going to finally get that increase in the next couple of days as part of this other legislation, the supplemental. We will be out here trying to get further increases in protections for American workers. This is a modest program. It has the self-corrective aspect to it. It is a program that ought to be tried, and it ought to be implemented. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield for a request?

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 12:15 p.m., the Senate proceed to a vote in relation to the Akaka amendment No. 1186, to be followed by a vote in relation to the Coleman amendment No. 1158; that no amendments be in order to either amendment prior to the vote; that there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled in the usual form prior to each vote and that the second vote in the sequence be 10 minutes in length; further, that at 2:15 p.m., the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Dorgan amendment No. 1181, with 5 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled in the usual form prior to the vote, with no amendment in order to the Dorgan amendment prior to the vote, all without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I understand the request, the time the Senator is getting is prior to his vote at 2:15.

Mr. KENNEDY. And there will be time prior to that available as well for the Senator from Illinois.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I am not going to object to the time. The Senator ought to have wrap-up on this. But if we can have the 5 minutes prior to the Senator's last 5 minutes, I would be agreeable.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator will yield the last minute and a half to the Senator from Colorado. Would he be willing to do that?

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I see the Senator from Hawaii. Could we delay the 1 minute? I ask unanimous consent we delay the 1 minute for 30 seconds. Mr. President, I yield myself 1 minute. I thank the Senator from Hawaii, Senator Akaka. He has brought to the Senate the fact that there are about 20,000 immediate relatives of courageous Filipino families who served with American forces in World War II. They would be entitled under the other provisions of the bill to come here to the United States. This particular proposal moves this in a more expeditious way. These are older men and women who have been members of families who served with American fighting forces in World War II. He offered this before. It was accepted unanimously. I hope the Senate will accept a very wise, humane, and decent amendment by the Senator from Hawaii.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I understand there is 2 minutes evenly divided. I yield our minute to the Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. KENNEDY. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KENNEDY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, reserving the right to object--and I do not intend to object--my friend from Connecticut has an amendment that deals with family reunification. We have several other amendments-- Senator Menendez and Senator Clinton have other amendments--dealing with family and family reunification. This is going to be a very important aspect in terms of our debate and the completion of this legislation. It is our intention to try to consider these amendments in relationship with each other at the appropriate time. We will work with the proponents of each of these amendments. So I will not object, but I would also put in the queue, so to speak, the other--I see Senator Menendez on the Senate floor. He will probably put his in. And we would then put in, I guess, Senator Clinton's amendment as well. That is for the general information about how we are going to proceed. But I have no objection.

Mr. KENNEDY. Yes.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, we thought we would try to take Senator Dodd's and yours, and then take two Republican amendments.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, just as an inquiry, I think we are scheduled for a vote at 2:15; is that correct?

Mr. KENNEDY. I see the Senator from North Dakota. How much time do I have?

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself 3\1/2\ minutes, and the Chair will let me know when I have \1/2\ minute remaining. Mr. President, just to summarize where we are, those of us who have studied this issue--and I respect all the Members of the Senate in giving this consideration--recognize we have to have a comprehensive approach. We don't rely on any one part in order to be successful with this recommendation in terms of immigration reform. We have the strong border security, but with the border security we do have some opportunity for people to come in the front door so they are not coming in the back door illegally. We have tough interior enforcement because we require that those individuals who are going to come in have a card. We treat them fairly, we treat them well, and we provide the same kinds of protections for those individuals that we give to the American workers. That doesn't exist today. It is an entirely different game. We have to understand at the outset that the guest worker doesn't get in here unless there is a refusal of any American to do that job. If there is any American anyplace that will do the job, they get it. Do we understand that? This is for jobs Americans will not do. We hear great stories about people being unemployed here and unemployed there. I agree with that. But the fact is, there are some jobs in the American economy which Americans just will not do. I don't think that needs to be debated. And there are those who will come here and will do those jobs with the idea that, hopefully, they will have an opportunity to be part of the American dream. So the advertising goes out for the job that is out there, and Americans can get the job. If no American wants it, then the opportunity is there for a guest worker. We have built in here a review of the guest worker program. The Senator from North Dakota says: Let's do a 5- year and then end it. We say: Let's take it to 18 months. I spoke earlier in the debate about what this commission does. It is made up of businessmen, it is made up of workers and of economists who will decide how this program is working. Is there exploitation? Is it functioning? If it is working, is it fair? It is 18 months, and then they have to give Congress the information. They do the study, they give the information, and we modify the program. Under the existing program, people will go out and work for a period of 5 years, and they may very well earn points to become part of the American dream. That doesn't exist in the European system. This is entirely different. These individuals, in 5 years, up to a million individuals, earn points to become part of the American dream, but then suddenly the Dorgan amendment pulls the strings right out from under them. Down they go. Down they go. The promise to them is if they work hard and play by the rules and work in very tough and menial jobs, they may have an opportunity--not guaranteed, but they may have the opportunity to be a part of the American dream, but not under the Dorgan amendment, under our amendment. This is the way to go. We have in here the review that is essential and necessary. This can provide the Congress with the information of whether this program is working. It has been established, and it will be set up. It will be functioning, and it will give Congress the best information. We will have continuing oversight, and we will be able to adjust that program in ways that serve humanity and serve our economy. I hope the Dorgan amendment will be defeated.