Political Quotes

“I rise to speak about amendment No. 1311, the Hire Americans First amendment, which I hope to call up later. Nearly 8 percent of Americans are unemployed or underemployed and our immigration policy obviously must be a jobs policy. Any successful immigration plan must take a closer look at the H-1B Program, which serves an important but specific and limited purpose. The H-1B visa was created so businesses--particularly in high tech but not exclusively that--so businesses could recruit foreign workers to help fill the void created a by a lack of American workers with those specific skills. Yet, as this bill comes to the floor, something very important was excluded. The bill lacks a requirement--which was in earlier versions of the bill--that employers hire an equally or better qualified American worker when one is available, rather than a potential H-1B worker. The bill lacks a requirement that employers hire a qualified, equally or better qualified American worker when one is available, rather than a potential H-1B foreign worker. With this bill we are enshrining a process--without this amendment--that allows companies to pass over skilled Americans for foreign workers after they have been required to actually actively recruit those Americans. The bill has provisions to recruit Americans for these jobs that might have gone to an H-1B foreign worker, but it falls short.…”