Secretary's Speech

Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez
The University Club
Washington, D.C.

Thank you, Norman Bailey. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Norman. I appreciate that very kind and generous introduction. And I just want to say I’m very pleased—very pleased to be at the University Club to talk about a topic that is very current and probably very much on everyone’s mind, and that is immigration reform.

We believe that immigration is probably the domestic social issue of our time. We believe that it is an issue that impacts all Americans and it has been a top priority for President Bush since day one. As the president said last week in Georgia, now is the time to address the issue of immigration. It’s in this country’s interest to solve the problem.

Under the president’s direction, Secretary Chertoff, members of the White House staff, and I have worked many hours alongside a bipartisan group of senators to craft a comprehensive immigration policy, a so-called “grand compromise,” which many have billed it as such. And it was announced about three weeks ago at a press conference. Since then, the Senate has been debating this legislation and it has captured the attention of many people around the country.

Last night, the Senate did not vote to invoke cloture on the bill, and for now, the bill has been pulled from the floor. However, we are very much encouraged that Senator Reid and Senator McConnell have said that they’ll bring it back. The White House has called on Senator Reid to move this legislation forward. And I would just like to say that today, as we wake up today from the news last night, we did not achieve the cloture vote. We are more determined than ever, more determined than ever to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

And in many ways, we hope that last night—the fact that we came close and the fact that the bill was pulled from the floor—that it was a wakeup call for people. It is a wakeup call that we could be in a position where we have to live with the current system, where we are stuck with the status quo. And I think you’ll all agree that the status quo is unsustainable. We have a broken immigration system and it needs to be fixed. And that’s what leadership is all about.

It’s a controversial system; it’s a controversial fix; it’s a controversial topic. But leadership is about fixing tough issues, and that’s why President Bush is determined to do so.

There has been a clear demonstration of strong bipartisan support and good will throughout this process. We believe that some senators do need some more time. We believe that this is such a complex topic that some senators do need more time for debate. And we were just a few days from getting there. But please know we remain committed, and we do so because comprehensive immigration reform is a necessity, because we must do comprehensive reform, because we should not let ourselves off the hook, because we cannot just ignore this and assume that it’s going to go away.

This is not the first time we’ve tried to fix our immigration system. The lessons of the past are clear—we need to address all elements together or none of them will be solved. The debate on this issue has bounced back and forth between two extremes—wholesale amnesty or mass deportation of 12 million people. Neither option is viable, workable, or realistic. The solution is somewhere in the middle and, as we know, this is a very complex issue.

Every side has a point of view. Businesses, workers, religious organizations, foreign governments—the list is endless; everyone wants comprehensive reform in their own special way. And very importantly, this is not a Republican issue and this is not a Democrat issue. This is an American issue. It’s an issue of our country. And it is an issue that must be resolved in a way that does provide a compromise, in a way that as many Americans as possible can look at the compromise and say, yes, that is a solution.

There are two things that we must achieve with comprehensive immigration reform. And the important thing is that these two elements make it clear why we need comprehensive reform now. The first one is national security. We must secure the border. We have to know who enters our country. We have to know who is already here. We need a verification system that allows employers to feel confident that the employees they hire are here legally.

The key thing is that today we don’t have the laws and we don’t have the tools to get it done. So it is easy to say, enforce the laws—you know, just enforce the laws that are on the books. We do not have the laws and we do not have the tools to be able to gain the national security that we need and that we all want. In order to have that, we need to have comprehensive reform.

We have laws in this bill, and we have money for tools in this bill that will enable us to be a lot more secure and achieve that level of national security that we all want. We have made tremendous progress at our borders in recent months. We have ended the policy of catch and release. We have stepped up worksite enforcement, and we’re doubling the number of border patrol agents. But, again, we need new laws and we need new tools, and all of that is in our bill. And in many ways, that is the guts of our bill, and we can’t have real national security without that.

The second part that is absolutely essential is economic growth. And the economic case for immigration is very straightforward and very logical. And just consider this: last year, our economy grew at about 3.1 percent for the year. To continue that growth, we also need to grow our workforce. So our workforce has to grow as our economy grows. And just a way of thinking about that, we can’t grow 3 percent through productivity alone. So it has to be a combination of adding people and productivity.

Today we are near historic lows of 4.5 percent unemployment. That is below the average of each of the past four decades, and there are thousands of jobs across the country that today are being unfilled. You would be surprised at the anecdotes I hear about jobs that don’t get filled. This isn’t a matter of point of view; this isn’t matter of opinion; it’s a matter of reality. There are jobs in this country that aren’t getting filled, and unless we have a way of filling those jobs, we’re going to be in trouble.

Unfortunately, the demographics are not on our side. And we know that we have an aging population, and we have all heard that. And one of the impacts of that aging population is that we have more—a higher proportion of our people retiring than we do entering our workforce. The number of people in prime working years—that is 25 to 54—is expected to increase a mere 0.3 percent over the next seven years—0.3 percent. That is not a point of view. It’s not an opinion that I have about whether we need immigration or not. It is a mathematical reality: 0.3 percent, our prime-age population of 25 to 54.

So immigration is not something that we need to just tolerate. And I think the debate has been such that, you know, it almost comes down to a matter of do we tolerate it or do we not tolerate it. I think it’s a matter of something that we need, and ideally, it’s something that we would look at as an opportunity. The proportion of low-skilled native workers in the U.S. is declining. We often talk about jobs that Americans don’t want to do, and then that also becomes a matter of subjectivity. Well, I agree with you. I don’t agree with you. You know, a matter of point of view. My point of view is this and my opinion is that. This isn’t about points of view; it’s about numbers, about reality.

Just consider this: In 1970, 36 percent of the native-born labor force in our country—36 percent did not have a high school diploma. So without a high school diploma, they looked for low-skilled jobs. Many people found a very rewarding career in low-skilled jobs, and they stayed there, and they provided for their families, and they made sure their kids went to school, and they worked their way up and they built their families, and they helped their families work their way up.

Today, about six percent of the native-born labor force does not have a high school diploma. So if we’re going to create about 19 million jobs over the next years from 2004 to 2014—that is what we need to create in order to continue to grow—about one-third of those jobs are low-skilled jobs. So our people have moved on. They no longer want to do those types of jobs. It’s not as if though they haven’t—you know, they have earned their high school diploma; they have gone on to college. Their aspirations are bigger; their ambitions are bigger, but the jobs that they did 40, 50 years ago are still here. Not only are they still here, but they are growing.

We have more of those jobs. That isn’t a point of view; it isn’t an opinion; it is a reality. And so much about immigration is about realities, whether it be farms, ranches, hotels, construction firms—you can keep going and going—native-born Americans have in many ways moved beyond low-skilled jobs, and immigrants are the next wave to continue up the economic ladder. And essentially, it’s the way our country has been built. People move up as others come in, and they move up, and others come in, and that is what has added the energy and vitality to our economy.

This labor market isn’t exclusive to the low-skilled market—the labor shortage that is. We also need reform in high-skilled as well. We have a similar problem when we look at the high-skilled workers as well and the high-skilled number of executives we will need versus the number that we are producing. The comprehensive immigration bill also looks at a subject that has been somewhat controversial, and I think it has been overstated a bit.

But what has driven our immigration throughout the years is something that is called chain migration. And that basically means that I come in with my spouse and three kids, and if my spouse wants, she can bring in her sister and her sister’s husband, and their kids. And then her sister’s husband can bring in his brother and their kids, and also his kids from a previous marriage. And that is—and it just goes on and on and on, and that is what we—that is why we call it chain migration. That is the way our immigration system is driven. That is the prime driver of our immigration system.

And what we have said is that we’d like to move from that system to a system that is more merit-based. It doesn’t mean that we are giving up on families. In fact, way in the future, once this system is in place, 51 percent of the green cards that we will give out will be to families. So it’s not that we have given up and we’re no longer a country that’s friendly to families. We are creating a balance between bringing in merit-based—people on the basis of merits, with occupations and skills that our economy needs, as well as families.

The bill would also increase the number of H-1B visas, which allow foreign workers with specialized skills to come to America and contribute to our economic growth. The interesting thing, as well, is that if you look around the world today – and again, these are numbers—just about every developed economy—and I think every developed economy goes through this cycle—every developed economy has a similar demographic challenge. Look at France; look at Germany; look at Italy; look at Spain; look at Japan; China, in about 25 years. Russia’s population is actually declining today. And what has happened is a lot of their population has moved up, it’s gotten older. And they have to make a decision: if they want to grow, they need an immigration strategy; they need an immigration policy. And the question is, will they be able to do it? And in the future, whatever country is able to do it better than others will have an advantage, will have a competitive advantage.

And I’ll tell you something. Part of the frustration, for me, of seeing this reality and seeing these numbers and seeing how important this is for our country is that we don’t see that this is one of the biggest opportunities we have to gain a competitive advantage over the rest of the world that could last us for the next century. We could have an advantage that others cannot compete with, because they don’t have experience with immigration.

Think about Japan, if Japan all of a sudden decided to become a country of immigrants? It’s quite a leap. That’s not a leap for us; it’s a leap for just about everyone else. But for us, it’s something we’ve been doing for 230 years. It is our advantage; it is something that we know how to do. We should not be having this debate. We should be moving forward to come up with a solution.

Immigrants, we know, contribute and have always contributed to the dynamism and to the energy in our economy. They bring creativity; they bring vitality; they bring energy; they bring entrepreneurship. They’re hungry; they’re looking for a new life. That’s what adds blood; that’s what adds the fuel to our economy. It always has and there’s no reason to think that this time it will be different.

I speak with a little passion when it comes down to immigration because I am an immigrant myself. And being part of the Commerce Department, I see what it does to the economy, I look at the numbers, so I have a dual interest in this.

I came to this country in 1960 from my birth place in Havana, Cuba. I was six years old when I came over and I learned English from a bellhop at a hotel, and I’m extremely grateful to that bellhop because I’m glad that they just threw me into school and forced me to learn English and forced me to be part of the mainstream of society.

And my story is not unique. This story has been repeated over and over and over again. Generations of immigrants who have come to this country from Asia, from Western Europe, from Eastern Europe, we truly are a nation of immigrants and immigrants have contributed to our strength, to our culture, to our economy. I believe that all of you in this room have contributed to our economy and culture and unless you’re Native American, I have to assume that somehow, somewhere in your family, an immigrant came to this country. The American Dream has nothing to do with being born here. It is an ideal that rests on the belief that this is a land of opportunity, that if you work hard and you play by the rules, anything, anything is still possible.

Assimilating immigrants has been our historic strength. And, again, while other nations will continue to struggle and struggle often very violently, we can use this as a core strength. So in the end, we have an historic opportunity that we don’t want to let go, that we don’t want to let slip away. And I’ll tell you, if we don’t do it now, we’re not going to do it next year, immigration reform is not going to come up during a presidential election year. And I don’t know if our next president will want to tackle immigration reform in his or her first term. It’s not an easy issue. We have a president who wants to deal with it. We have a president who wants to face up to it and tackle it and do it now.

So we want to keep our country secure. The way to do that is through immigration reform. We want to keep our economy growing. The way to do that is through comprehensive immigration reform. We believe that this is a time for leadership and not a time for complaining about what is wrong, not a time for complaining about what hasn’t been done over the last 20 years. Anyone can do that. It is a time for leadership, a time to stand up and say our country needs us, it may be controversial, but let’s go forward and one day we’ll look back and we’ll be glad we did it.

So I’m here to ask for your leadership, for your leadership and support of comprehensive immigration reform. I can’t think of anything better that we can do for our society, for our economy, and for our country. Thank you very much. (Applause.)