Paul Simon

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, over the past few days, more than 1,250 students from 50 States and the District of Columbia have been in Washington to compete in the national finals of the We the People * * * the Citizen and the Constitution Program. I am pleased to honor the advanced placement government class from Maine South High School in Park Ridge, IL, for representing Illinois and finishing in the top 10 in the national finals. The distinguished members of the team are: Jeni Aris, Laura Batt, Stephanie Chen, Wesley Crampton, Sarah Crawford, Bryan Dayton, Vic De Martino, Bill Doukas, Jonathan Dudlak, Thomas Falk, Graham Fisher, Mark Iwaszko, Jessica Jakubanis, Hellin Jang, Chris Kiepura, Denise Knipp, Antoine Mickiewicz, Timmy Paschke, Gregory Reuhs, Kate Rowland, Chris Ryan, Brian Shields, Tracy Stankiewicz, Laurie Strotman, Tom Tsilipetros, Erica Vassilos, Walter Walczak, Cyrus Wilson, Kara Wipf, and Brian Wolfe. I would also like to recognize Patton Feichter, their outstanding teacher, who can be credited with much of the team's success. The district coordinator, Alice Horstman, and the State coordinator, Carolyn Pereira, also devoted a great deal of time and were integral to the team's achievement. The We the People * * * the Citizen and the Constitution Program is the Nation's most comprehensive educational program, developed specifically to educate youth about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The 3- day national competition simulates a congressional hearing in which students' oral presentations are judged on the ability to apply constitutional principles to both historical and contemporary issues. Administered by the Center for Civic Education, the We the People * * * Program, now in its ninth academic year, has reached more than 70,400 teachers and 22.6 million students nationwide. Congressional members and staff enhance the program by discussing current constitutional issues with students and teachers. This extraordinary program is an excellent way for students to gain firsthand knowledge of the U.S. Constitution and assess its impact on both history and our lives. I commend these students and wish them success in their future endeavors.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I yield to my colleague from California temporarily. She wishes to introduce an amendment that will be held at the desk.

Mr. SIMON. How long does it take this to take place?

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, will my colleague yield?

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I, with all due respect, differ with my colleague from Wyoming on this. Were I to vote on the Feinstein amendment regarding this, I would vote against that, also. I think our colleague from Michigan is correct that we have to keep legal and illegal separate. Now, it is true, as Senator Simpson has said, that the majority of people who are here illegally came in legally. But we have to add that this amendment will do nothing on that. These are people who came in on visitors' visas, or student visas. This amendment does not address that. A second thing has to be added that somehow has escaped so far this morning, and that is, the majority of the people who come in as immigrants to our society are great assets to our society. Illinois is one of the States that has major numbers in immigration. But a smaller percentage of those who come into our country legally are on various Government programs, such as welfare, than native-born Americans, with the exception of SSI. That is an exception. And there are some problems we ought to deal with. There are problems we ought to deal with in illegal immigration. But not on this particular bill. Let me also address the question of the numbers. There is some conflict, apparently, in the numbers that are going around. I think, in part, it is because the Immigration Service--and I have found them to be very solid in what they have to say--are projecting what is going to happen. And there is a bubble because we have this amnesty period. And so there is going to be a period in which the numbers go up, and then they will go back down. I do not think it is a thing to fear. And then, finally, Mr. President, yesterday on this floor, I heard that we are going to be facing real problems in Social Security. We all know that to be the case. The numbers who are working are declining relative to the numbers of retirees, in good part, because of people in the profession of the occupant of the chair, Mr. President, who have added to our longevity. One of the things that happens in the fourth preference, where you bring in brothers and sisters, is that you bring in people who will work and pay Social Security. It is a great asset to our country, not a liability. So I have great respect for our colleague from Wyoming. I think he is one of the best Members of this body, by any gauge. But I think he is wrong on this amendment. I think we should separate these two insofar as possible, the illegal and the legal immigration. Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. And that is with the understanding that the time would be equally divided. Is that correct?

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I would like to clarify the intent of the conferees in regard to funding for the VISTA Program. It is my understanding that the conference agreement provides an additional $2.1 million for VISTA and that this represents half of the $5 million added by amendment in the Senate for the VISTA Literacy Corps. Is this correct?

Mr. SIMON. Am I also correct in assuming that the conferees intend that these funds may be allocated specifically to the efforts to combat illiteracy that have been carried out by the VISTA Literacy Corps?

Mr. SIMON. I thank the Senator and appreciate the support of the Committee for the effective work of the VISTA Literacy Corps. disaster assistance

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, since I have not spoken to Senator Domenici, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for 3 minutes and not have it charged to either side.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I agree with 90 percent of what my friend from North Dakota has to say. Where I do differ is--and let me add in the Budget Committee I supported Senator Fritz Hollings in saying that we should exclude Social Security as we balance the budget. I cosponsored that legislation. What is true, however, is that the balanced budget amendment that we proposed, as it was, protects Social Security more than the present law does. Bob Myers, chief actuary for Social Security for 21 years, strongly supported the balanced budget amendment saying it was essential to the protection of Social Security. I recognize that we are close to getting something worked out. I hope we can. I do think it is unrealistic, the amendment offered by my friend from North Dakota, that by the year 2002, we can do this, excluding Social Security. I think if we go on a glidepath for a few years later, that can be worked out. To those who question that, that provides a great deal more protection than you have in the present law. The present law gives theoretical protection, but it is not there. The Constitution gives muscle to that. Now, I add that I want to make sure that, in the years we have deficits, we fill those deficits, that we do not exclude both the receipts and the deficits, because the time will come--I may not be around to need it but the Senator from North Dakota will--when we need to protect those deficits and make clear that is a liability of the Federal Government. I am hopeful something can get worked out yet. There are various versions floating around right now. It would be a great day for the American public if we could get it worked out.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I was just shown this amendment a few minutes ago by Senator Coverdell and Senator Dole. I have every reason to believe that we can work out, if not this specific language, some modification to do this. I commend my colleague from Georgia for the amendment. I ask, and we have an understanding on this, I ask unanimous consent that it be set aside until tomorrow.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Will my colleague yield for a question?

Mr. SIMON. When Senator Simpson mentions the health care bill and your statement and Senator Kassebaum's statement that they would resist any amendments, is it not true that any Member could offer an amendment, and, in fact, Senator Domenici offered an amendment with Senator Kerry here in this body? Any single Member could have offered a minimum wage amendment at that point. The procedure we are following here is dramatically different. Is that not correct?

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I want to join, first of all, in the comments that Senator Feingold made about Senator Simpson. Our title here is ``United States,'' not Senator from Wyoming, Senator from Colorado, Senator from Illinois, Senator from California or Wisconsin. Alan Simpson has served the people of Wyoming well. But he has also been a U.S. Senator who has looked at the broad scope of things and has been a real legislator and has contributed immensely. I will differ with him on this particular amendment. Let me add, I will differ with my friend from Wisconsin, Senator Feingold, with whom I rarely differ, on this matter of pilot verification that he was just talking about. Senator Simpson has reminded us over and over again on the floor that we have to stop the magnet that is the economic pull to people to come into this country illegally. So we passed, a few years ago, employer sanctions. It was a matter of controversy. I ended up being a minority on this side, joining the Senator from Wyoming and voting for that. Employer sanctions have not worked as well as we had hoped. I think the key is verification. Unless we are willing to try a pilot verification program, and here is where I differ with my friend from Wisconsin, I do not think you will have any meaningful way of stopping a steady flow of people who come up here for economic reasons. To say we are going to just have a slight tap on the wrist to employers and tell people who are desperate, ``We are going to be tougher on you if you come up here and try to work,'' they will still come up here and try to work. I point out one other reason on the verification, and that is the GAO report that says there is discrimination. If you appear to be Hispanic or Polish or Asian, and particularly if you speak with a bit of an accent, it is inevitable, unless we have some system of verification, that there is going to be discrimination. I think it is important, and I think we will have a close vote on this, but I think it is important that we have a pilot verification program. The question on this immediate amendment is, is it worthwhile to give up some basic liberties in order to have this amendment, and are we going to accomplish that much? I think we will not accomplish very, very much at all in terms of discouraging the employment of illegal workers here. I think it is one more step in taking away basic civil liberties. The reason this passed originally, we had a lot of problems with people who would be driving down the highway, and all of a sudden they look at a field and it looks like there are a bunch of ``foreign- looking workers there.'' They stop, go out, and make a raid. We have a tradition in our country with the fourth amendment you have to go into court in order to have a search. We ought to abide by that. Now, the argument is made, well, you can have that search. You can go into court. How many farmers are going to go into court? It just is not going to happen. It makes it very costly. Second, whenever you give people in any field arbitrary power, whether it is law enforcement or anything else, there is an invitation to corruption. I think we have to recognize that. This can be a shakedown kind of thing. My staff has given me two examples of the kind of abuses that take place when you do not go in to court. As far as I know, and the Senator from Wyoming can correct me, as far as I know, there have been no denials for any Immigration Service requests to have a search of the field by the courts. Maybe they have existed--I do not know. In Pasco, WA, INS agents entered a field for 29 straight days searching for undocumented workers. On some occasions the agents drove their trucks across the bean fields, causing substantial damage to the bean crop. The latter part of that is not that significant, but if you want to go 29 straight days to search somebody's field, you ought to go into court 29 straight days to get a court OK for doing that. In Othello, WA, INS agents entered a farm four times in 1 month looking for undocumented workers. Their last three trips were without a warrant, and they found no undocumented workers. They arrested two workers who were Japanese, but it turned out they were exchange students who had a lawful right to be in this country. Finally, Mr. President, I have been here, now, 22 years in the House and the Senate. We always find some excuse for giving up basic civil liberties. I think we ought to be very, very careful on this. If there is an overwhelming reason to have an infringement on the fourth amendment that is kind of gray, maybe we should consider it. It ought to be an overwhelming reason. This is not an overwhelming reason to violate that basic constitutional protection. My hope is the amendment will be defeated. My vote, with all due respect to my friend from Wyoming, will be in opposition to his amendment. Mrs. FEINSTEIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, there is a great deal of talk about what we will do long term to protect Social Security. One relatively simple method of buttressing that fund and also putting the Federal Government in better financial shape is to follow the advice of former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. He had an op-ed piece recently in the Los Angeles Times that really makes sense, which I ask to be printed in the Record after my remarks. The difficulty rests with our system of campaign financing. Those who benefit by the present system of not taxing incomes above $62,700 are the big contributors to our campaigns. Even if you do not buy the idea of lowering the Social Security tax, revising the exemption certainly makes our tax system a much more just system. Mike Dukakis is right. The article follows: [From the Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1996] A Fair Flat Tax to Rally Behind (By Michael Dukakis) Steve Forbes hoped to ride into the White House on a flat income tax with a low-earner exemption. He apparently had a lot of company, at least on the Republican side of the street. Of course, when you look at it closely, the flat tax is nothing more than another attempt to give a huge tax break to wealthy taxpayers like Forbes. But it sounded good at least when he first proposed it, and it transformed him, at lest temporarily, into a serious challenger for the Republican nomination. Suppose, however, that a candidate for the presidency ran on a plan for a flat tax with a high-earner exemption. We'd think he was out of his mind. Yet that's exactly how the Social Security tax works. We pay a flat tax of 6.2% on every dollar we make, up to $62,700. All wages above that are tax exempt. The high-earner exemption is as regressive as it sounds. And it's taking a huge chunk out of the wages of average working Americans. A worker making $60,000 a year pays eight times the rate paid by someone pulling in a half-million a year and 80 times the rate paid by someone making 5 million a year. To put it another way: A $60,000 earner pays 6.2% on all her earnings; a $500,000 earner pays the 6.2% on the first $62,700, which is 0.78% of all his earnings, and the earner of $5 million pays the same, which is 0.078% of his earnings. It's bad enough that working middle class Americans are feeling less and less secure. For those lucky enough to still have a job in these days of massive corporate downsizing, the Social Security tax is the unkindest cut of all. In fact, more than half the people in this country pay more in Social Security taxes than they do in income taxes. And you can bet they aren't among the wealthiest 20% to whom virtually all income growth has gone since 1980. What can we do about it? It's a simple as it is common sense. Get rid of the high-earner exemption, cut the Social Security tax rate and apply it to all earned income--just what the flat-taxers say they want to do to the income tax. If we made this one move, the Social Security flat tax rate would decrease by 12%. Everyone earnings less than $82,000-- that's more than 97% of American workers--would get a tax break. It wouldn't increase the federal deficit one dime. But it would eliminate the necessity for the kind of tax cut that budget negotiators are wrestling with, which would add billions to the deficit. Lower taxes for the overwhelming majority of working Americans. Heightened fairness. A fiscally responsible tax cut for the middle class. These are the goals that all fair- minded Republicans and Democrats should be able to support. Of course, people like Steve Forbes would have to pay the same rate as the rest of us. But wasn't that the principle behind the flat tax in the first place?

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, every study that is made suggests that the United States has to do a better job in the field of education. No one disputes it. And yet at the congressional level and candidly also at the State level we are going along blissfully ignoring this reality, mouthing pious statements about education, but not really doing much. One of many economists who has been telling us that we have to do better in the field of education is Lester Thurow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and probably the most widely read economist in the country. He is also one of the most thoughtful. Recently in the Washington Post he had an article titled ``Preparing Students for the Coming Century,'' which I asked to be printed in the Record after my remarks. I am sure some of my colleagues read it, but since it was in the Education Section of the Sunday edition of the Washington Post, some of you may not have read it. It is worth reading for Senators, for House Members, for staffers, and for anyone who may pick up a Congressional Record and go through it. The article follows: [From the Washington Post, Apr. 7, 1996] Preparing Students for the Coming Century (By Lester C. Thurow) Consider an alphabetical list of the 12 largest companies in America at the turn of the 20th century: the American Cotton Oil Company, American Steel, American Sugar Refining Company, Continental Tobacco, Federal Steel, General Electric, National Lead, Pacific Mail, People's Gas, Tennessee Coal and Iron, U.S. Leather and U.S. Rubber. Ten of the 12 were natural resource companies. The economy then was a natural resource economy, and wherever the most highly needed resources were to be found, employment opportunities would follow. In contrast consider the list made 90 years later by the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry, enumerating what it projected to be the most rapidly growing industries of the 1990s: microelectronics, biotech, the new material-science industries, telecommunications, civilian aircraft manufacturing, machine tools and robots, and computers (hardware and software). All are brainpower industries that could be located anywhere on the face of the earth. Where they will take root and flourish depends upon who organizes the brainpower to capture them. And who organizes the power most efficiently will depend on who educates toward that objective best. But back to the industries for the moment: Think of the video camera and recorder (invented by Americans), the fax (invented by Americans), and the CD player (invented by the Dutch). When it comes to sales, employment and profits, all have become Japanese products despite the fact that the Japanese did not invent any of them. Product invention, if one is also not the world's low-cost producer, gives a country very little economic advantage. Being the low-cost producer is partly a matter of wages, but to a much greater extent it is a matter of having the skills necessary to put new things together. Wages don't depend on an individual's skill and productivity alone. To a great extent they reflect team skills and team productivities. The value of any single person's knowledge depends upon the smartness with which that knowledge is used in the overall economic system--the abilities of buyers and suppliers to absorb that individual's skills. In an era of brainpower industries, however, the picture is even more complicated: The economy is a dynamic economy always in transition--the companies that do best are those able to move from product to product within technological families so quickly that they can always keep one generation ahead. Keeping one jump ahead in software, for instance, Bill Gates's Microsoft had a net income running at 24 percent of sales in 1995. If a country wants to stay at the leading edge of technology and continue to generate high wages and profits, it must be a participant in the evolutionary progress of brainpower industries so that it is in a position to take advantage of the technical and economic revolutions that occasionally arise. Knowledge has become the only source of long-run sustainable competitive advantage. Recent studies show that rates of return for industries that invest in knowledge and skill are more than twice those of industries that concentrate on plant and equipment. In the past, First World citizens with Third World skills could earn premium wages simply because they lived in the First World. They had more equipment, better technology and more skilled co-workers than those who lived in the Third World. But that premium is gone. Today's transportation and communications technologies have become so sophisticated that high-wage skilled workers in the First World can work together effectively with low- wage unskilled workers in the Third World. America's unskilled now get paid based on their own abilities and not on those of their better-trained co-workers. Industrial components that require highly skilled manufacturers can be made in the First World and then shipped to the Third World to be assembled with ``low skill'' components. Research and design skills can be electronically brought in from the First World. Sales results can be quickly communicated to the Third World factory, and retailers know that the speed of delivery won't be significantly affected by where production occurs. Instant communications and rapid transportation allow markets to be served effectively from production points on the other side of the globe. Multinational companies are central in this process: Where they develop and keep technological leadership will determine where most of the high-level jobs will be located. If these firms decide to locate their top-wage leadership skills in the United States, it will not be because they happen to be American firms but because America offers them the lowest cost of developing these skills. The decisions will be purely economic. If America is not competitive in this regard, the market will move on. The countries that offer companies the lowest costs of developing technological leadership will be the countries that invest the most in research and development, education and infrastructure (telecommunications systems, etc.). If the person on a loading dock runs a computerized inventory-control system in which he logs delivered materials right into his hand-held computer and the computer instantly prints out a check that is given to the truck driver to be taken back to his firm (eliminating the need for large white- collar accounting offices that process purchases), the person on the loading dock ceases to be someone who just moves boxes. He or she has to have a very different skill set. Factory operatives and laborers used to be high school graduates or even high school dropouts. Today 16 percent of them have some college education and 5 percent have graduated from college. Among precision production and craft workers, 32 percent have been to or graduated from college. Among new hires those percentages are much higher. In the last two decades, the linkage between math abilities and wages has tripled for men and doubled for women. The skill sets required in the economy of the future will be radically different from those required in the past. And the people who acquire those skill sets may not be the unskilled workers who currently live in the first world. With the ability to make anything anywhere in the world and sell it anywhere else in the world, business firms can ``cherry pick'' the skilled or those easy (i.e., cheap) to teach wherever they live. American firms don't have to hire an American high school graduate if that graduate is not world- class. His or her educational defects are not their problem. Investing to give the necessary market skills to a well- educated Chinese high school graduate may well end up being a much more attractive (i.e., less costly) investment than having to retrain an American high school dropout or a poorly trained high school graduate. Take Korea for example. In a global economy, what economists know as ``the theory of factor price equalization'' holds that an American worker will have to work for wages commensurate with a Korean's wages unless he works with more natural resources than a Korean (and no American can, since there is now a world market for raw material to which everyone has equal access); unless he has access to more capital than a Korean (and no American can since there is a global capital market where everyone borrows in New York, London and Tokyo); unless he has more skilled co-workers than a Korean (and no American can claim to since multi-national companies can send needed knowledge and skills anywhere in the world); and unless he has access to better technology than a Korean (and few Americans have, since reverse engineering--tearing a product apart to learn how it is made--has become an international art form, highly refined in Korea). Adjusted for skills, Korean wages will rise and American wages will fall until they equal each other. At that point, factor price equalization will have occurred. The implications for the future are simple. If America wants to generate a high standard of living for all of its citizens, skill and knowledge development are central. New brainpower industries have to be invented and captured. Organizing brainpower means not just building a research and development system that will put us on the leading edge of technology, but organizing a top-to-bottom work force that has the brainpower necessary to make us masters of the new production and distribution technologies that will allow us to be the world's low-cost producers. To do this will require a very different American educational system. And building such a system is the new American challenge. Progress has to start by ratcheting up the intensity of the American high school. The performance of the average American high school graduate simply lags far behind that found in the rest of the industrial world. Those Americans who complete a college course of study end up catching up (the rest of the industrial world doesn't work very hard in the first couple of years of university education), but three quarters of the American work force doesn't ever catch up. The skill gap doesn't end there. Non-college-bound high school graduates elsewhere in the industrial world go on to some form of post-graduate skill training. Germany has its famous apprenticeship system; in France every business firm by law has to spend one percent of its sales revenue on training its work force; and with lifetime employment as a fact of life, Japanese companies invest heavily in the work force's skills since they know that it is impossible to hire skilled workers from the outside. In America, government- funded programs are very limited in nature, and, with high labor-force turnover rates, American companies quite rationally don't want to make skill investments in people who will leave and take their skills elsewhere. The net result is a compounded skill gap for those Americans who do not graduate from college. Closing this gap and giving the country a competitive edge should be America's number one educational priority.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. I object.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Madam President, I yield myself 3 minutes in the absence of anyone else, and then 5 minutes to the Senator from California and 5 minutes to the Senator from New Jersey. Madam President, I think I can speak without anyone saying, ``He is trying to help himself,'' because I am going to be retiring at the end of this year. Government is complicated. No one here would go to the yellow pages of their phone book when they had plumbing difficulties and get a plumber and he advertises, ``I have no experience with plumbing, call'' whatever the number is. If that is true with something as relatively simple as plumbing, it is infinitely more true of the decisions that we have to make in this body. Bennett Johnston, for example, who is retiring, has huge knowledge in the scientific area that I think is unequaled in this body. Meaning no disrespect to whomever may succeed him, that person is not going to have that kind of knowledge. Senator Byrd brings a wealth of knowledge here from that experience. On the other side of the aisle, a former colleague of yours and mine, Madam President, Henry Hyde--I differ with Congressman Henry Hyde on a lot of things, but he is a class act. He brings a wealth of experience, and he has improved the end product of the laws of our country because of what he has contributed. To cut off a Henry Hyde or a Bennett Johnston or a Robert Byrd arbitrarily and take that decision away from the people of the Nation and of their respective States and districts, I think, is wrong. This is a constitutional amendment that should be defeated. Mrs. BOXER addressed the Chair.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, our Nation's immigrant heritage is exemplified best in the city of Chicago. Generations of immigrants, from Europe, Latin America, and more recently Asia and Africa have chosen to come to Chicago and have contributed immensely to the vitality and fabric that makes it such a great city. Recently, the city of Chicago sponsored a naturalization ceremony for 1,200 new citizens at historic Navy Pier with the Immigration and Naturalization Service Chicago District Office. To help immigrants fully integrate into our city and our society, Mayor Richard M. Daley established a citizenship assistance council to help thousands of immigrants complete the often complicated naturalization process. The council has attracted leaders from various ethnic communities and corporate leaders from Fannie Mae, United Airlines, and First Chicago. Through the citizenship council, Mayor Daley has committed to sponsor several large scale citizenship ceremonies with INS in the coming months. The naturalization program in the city of Chicago is truly a joint effort between the Federal and local government. I applaud Mayor Daley's effort and ask that his speech welcoming the new U.S. citizens on March 18, 1996, and his proclamation declaring the day to be Citizenship U.S.A. Day in Chicago be printed in the Record. The material follows: Mayor Richard M. Daley's Remarks, Chicago Citizenship Assistance Council--Naturalization Ceremony, March 18, 1996 I want to begin by congratulating everyone here on becoming United States citizens. As Mayor, I attend many events--but swearing-in ceremonies are always very special. Two years ago, I formed Chicago's Citizenship Assistance Council to coordinate the efforts of community groups that help immigrants become citizens. Today's ceremony is made possible thanks to a strong partnership among the Citizenship Assistance Council, the federal government, and the private sector. Together, we are working to help the INS relieve the backlog of over 50,000 citizenship applications in the Chicago area. People have been waiting for as long as 17 months to be sworn in as citizens. Throughout the year, we will work with the INS to increase the number of swearing-in ceremonies to help speed up the process. We will conduct several large-scale citizenship ceremonies in the summer and fall. Our corporate leaders on the Council include Fannie Mae, United Airlines, and First Chicago. They will provide assistance in finding the necessary facilities and help to cover associated costs. This is a wonderful example of how local and federal government can work with the private sector to get the job done. Immigrants built Chicago and our country. And the business community understands this better than anyone. America has always been strong because we have been a beacon for people who want to work hard, make something of their lives, and become Americans. We lose part of our national character when we shut ourselves off to different cultures. Some politicians are trying to use immigrants as scapegoats. They have gone beyond blaming illegal immigrants for our problems--now they are even calling for more restrictions on legal immigration. Legislation now pending before Congress would keep U.S. citizens from bringing their parents or children to this country. This is wrong and unfair because it tears families apart and it sends the wrong message. Proposed restrictions on employment-related immigration will also damage our country. A flexible legal immigration system is essential to our economic growth and well-being. Until last week, these restrictions were found in one piece of legislation that dealt with all aspects of immigration. I want to thank Senator Paul Simon for helping to restructure that legislation into two bills--so that they address legal and illegal immigration separately. And, I want to encourage the members of the House to do the same thing when the issue comes up for debate. Immigrants help build this country--and they are still making us strong. We can't turn our backs on them now. I urge Congress to keep this in mind as they debate restrictions on immigration. Now, I'd like to read a proclamation designating March 18th as ``Citizenship U.S.A. Day'' in Chicago.

Mr. SIMON

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I recognize Senator Coats is going to have his amendment next. But Senator Conrad's point that we would like some kind of knowledge as to what order we are going to come in here--some of us have been waiting a long time. And it will take a few minutes. I wonder if there can be some agreement following the Coats amendment as to who is going to be up here with their amendments.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.