F. Sensenbrenner

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5228) to require representatives of governments designated as State Sponsors of Terrorism to disclose to the Attorney General lobbying contacts with legislative branch officials, and for other purposes.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 5228 currently under consideration.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5228, legislation to enhance lobbying disclosure requirements for lobbyists who represent foreign nations designated as state sponsors of terrorism. Lobbyists who represent foreign governments must register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which also requires that they file a semiannual report with the Attorney General detailing lobbying contacts. H.R. 5228 would require additional disclosure of the lobbying activities of foreign agents who lobby on behalf of countries that the Secretary of State has designated as state sponsors of terrorism, namely Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. In addition to the semiannual statements, this legislation would require that agents who represent governments deemed state sponsors of terrorism also file a detailed statement with the Attorney General of every lobbying contact with a covered legislative branch official within 45 days of the contact. The Attorney General in turn must make that disclosure available to the public in an electronic format within 90 days. If an agent of a state sponsor of terrorism failed to make these disclosures, they would be subject to the penalties of FARA, including fines of up to $10,000 and imprisonment of up to 5 years. In addition, the legislation provides that diplomatic and consular officers of a state sponsor of terrorism, who are not otherwise required to report their activities under FARA, cannot be recognized by the Secretary of State as accredited unless the diplomatic or consular officer agrees to provide the Attorney General with a detailed statement of every lobbying contact they have had with a covered legislative branch official within 45 days of the contact. Mr. Speaker, at a time when American forces are engaged in the global war on terror, it is both right and necessary that agents of state sponsors of terrorism be required to more fully disclose their lobbying contacts with U.S. Government officials. I commend the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart) for introducing this bill and urge all of my colleagues to join me in supporting this measure. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart), the author of the bill.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1285) to amend the Nursing Relief for Disadvantaged Areas Act of 1999 to remove the limitation for nonimmigrant classification for nurses in health professional shortage areas, as amended.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 1285 currently under consideration.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1285, to extend for 3 years the Nursing Relief For Disadvantaged Areas Act of 1999 which provides nonimmigrant visas for nurses in health professionals shortage areas. A number of hospitals are experiencing great difficulty in attracting American nurses, particularly hospitals serving mostly poor patients in inner-city neighborhoods and those serving rural areas. For example, St. Bernard Hospital in Chicago is the only remaining hospital in an area of over 100,000 people and has a patient base composed entirely of individuals in poverty. St. Bernard almost closed its doors in 1992, primarily because of its inability to attract registered nurses. In 1999, Congress passed the Nursing Relief for Disadvantaged Areas Act to help precisely these kinds of hospitals. This legislation created a new H-1C temporary registered nurse visa program with 500 visas available a year. To be eligible to petition for an alien nurse, the employer must, one, be located in a health professional shortage area as designated by the Department of Health and Human Services; two, have at least 190 acute care beds; three, have a certain percentage of Medicare patients; and, four, have a certain percentage of Medicaid patients. The H-1C program adopted protections for American nurses contained in the expired H-1A nursing visa program. For instance, for a hospital to be eligible for H-1C nurses, it has to agree to take timely and significant steps to recruit American nurses, then H-1C nurses have to be paid the prevailing wage. The program also contained new protections such as the requirement that H-1C nurses cannot comprise more than 33 percent of the hospital's workforce of registered nurses, and that a hospital cannot contract out H-1C nurses to work at other facilities. This bill would reauthorize the H-1C program for an additional 3 years. Our goal in creating the H-1C program was set out in the Immigration Nursing Relief Advisory Committee which recognized the necessity to ``balance both the continuing need for foreign nurses in certain specialties and localities for which there are not adequate domestic registered nurses, and then the need to continue to lessen employers dependence on foreign registered nurses and protect the wages and working condition of U.S. registered nurses.'' The H-1C program reflects this balance. I urge my colleagues to support this reauthorizing legislation. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time and am prepared to yield back if the gentlewoman from Texas will do the same.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I said I had no further requests for time. Is the gentlewoman from Texas prepared to yield back to allow me to close?

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, this bill is not even close to the outer parameters of the Constitution. What it does is it allows the sharing of fingerprint data identification that has all been constitutionally collected with school districts who are hiring new personnel to find out if they have something in their background that would disqualify them from a job working with children. And that is all there is to it. The fingerprints were valid. It is merely sharing the fingerprints with somebody who has got a legitimate use for them. Now, there are criminal penalties involved for those who use those fingerprints for other than verifying somebody who is applying for a job at a school or volunteering there, for any other purpose whatsoever. What has been said in the debate, using the Michigan cases and the two California cases, shows that there are loopholes in the present system that allow people who wish to molest children to get jobs undetected of their past record. And what the gentleman from Nevada is doing is making sure that those people are identified before they can wreck another young life. What's wrong with that? This doesn't need perfection. It is simple; it is straightforward. And it ought to pass.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished Chair of the Republican Conference, the gentlewoman from Ohio, and a former judge, Ms. Pryce.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fitzpatrick).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 4894 currently under consideration.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4894) to provide for certain access to national crime information databases by schools and educational agencies for employment purposes, with respect to individuals who work with children.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4894 sponsored by the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Porter). This legislation provides our Nation's schools with an additional tool to ensure the safety of our schoolchildren when hiring teachers, staff and volunteers. Children are our Nation's greatest resource. Parents trust that when they send their children off to school they will be provided a safe environment in which to learn. Teachers are vested with a tremendous responsibility of preparing kids for a successful future, and the overwhelming majority of our educators conduct themselves as consummate professionals. Unfortunately, we sometimes hear about teachers who engage in criminal conduct involving students. These few bad apples not only jeopardize our children's safety, but tarnish the reputation of those in the educational community. While all incidents of this nature are an outrage, the tragedy of some is compounded when these deplorable actions are perpetrated by individuals whose past criminal record should have identified them as potential threats. Today all States require some type of background check for school employees. Unfortunately, some individuals with alarming records of criminal conduct slip through the cracks. Last year police in Charlevoix, Michigan, discovered that a convicted sex offender was volunteering as the director of the AmeriCorp program for the local school district. The man had an arrest record dating back to 1964, including sex offenses involving children. School officials submitted the man's date of birth, Social Security number and driver's license number for a background check through the State system. However, his criminal record did not show up because the man had legally changed his name some 20 years earlier. Authorities learned of his criminal history only after he underwent a fingerprint check for a weapons permit. In May, a California teacher was convicted on 17 counts of molesting nine students. Just last week, a second California teacher was arrested on charges that he molested a third-grade student. Even more disturbing is that this man had been suspected of a similar incident in 1990 and arrested for attempted rape in 1994. This bill gives States direct access to Federal fingerprint databases to make sure that convicted sex offenders never work in a school again. Many school districts are experiencing a surge in growth that in turn increases the demand for qualified teachers and staff. Schools are under added pressure to expedite the hiring process to meet this demand. H.R. 4894 streamlines access to the Federal fingerprint databases so schools can be confident that they are hiring upstanding teachers and staff. The bill authorizes the Attorney General to provide States with accurate fingerprint-based background checks for current school employees and prospective faculty, staff and volunteers who work with children. Either the Attorney General or the State may charge a fee for the check. The background information may be released only to the appropriate school official or State education agency, and any person who exceeds this authority or misuses the background information may be fined or imprisoned for up to 10 years. I commend the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Porter) for his work on this issue, and urge my colleagues to support this bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Porter), the principal author of the bill.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, the leader on the Democratic side has given two speeches. The speeches are supposedly in support of the bill, but then there is a whole long list of problems with it. Now we cannot make the perfect the enemy of the good when we are trying to protect children. This is a bill that gives school districts the tool to get additional information on people who might try to harm children. So I think our committee has done a very good job in considering this legislation and making it not maybe a perfect bill but a very, very good one. We do not need a conference. We ought to pass it today, and then the other body ought to pass it and let's get on with it. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Keller).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing a bill to codify and enact certain general and permanent laws, related to public contracts, as Title 41 of the United States Code. This bill has been prepared by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives as the successor to H.R. 4320, introduced in the 108th Congress on May 10, 2004. This bill reflects changes resulting from the review and comment process that was provided after H.R. 4320 was introduced. All issues raised during that process have been resolved to the satisfaction of the parties involved. The bill, along with a detailed section-by-section explanation of the bill, can be accessed on the Office's website at http:// uscode.house.gov. Anyone interested in obtaining a printed copy of the bill and explanation, and persons interested in submitting comments on the bill, should contact Ken Paretzky, Senior Counsel, Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives, H2-304 Ford House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515-6711. The telephone number is (202) 226-9061. Comments on the bill should be submitted to the Office of the Law Revision Counsel no later than July 16, 2006.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, through the following statement, I am making my financial net worth as of March 31, 2006, a matter of public record. I have filed similar statements for each of the 27 preceding years I have served in the Congress.