CONTRIBUTIONS OF HARDWORKING PORTUGUESE IMMIGRANTS ARE AN IMPORTANT PART OF OUR COUNTRY'S HISTORY; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 193
(House of Representatives - December 04, 2019)
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CONTRIBUTIONS OF HARDWORKING PORTUGUESE IMMIGRANTS ARE AN IMPORTANT
PART OF OUR COUNTRY'S HISTORY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
California (Mr. Costa) for 5 minutes.
Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the passage of
legislation this week called the AMIGOS Act. It is a bill that will
spur Portuguese investment in our economy and help create jobs here in
America.
As a proud Portuguese American and a co-chair of the Congressional
Portuguese Caucus and a member of the Hispanic Caucus, I joined with
Congressmembers Cicilline, Nunes, and others, in being the original
cosponsors of the AMIGOS Act. I want to thank my colleagues this week
for their support in the passage on a bipartisan basis.
Our friendship with Portugal and the contributions of hardworking
Portuguese American immigrants are an important part of our country's
history and our heritage, as well as our economy.
The United States is Portugal's largest trading partner outside the
European Union. In 2018 alone, trading between our two countries
reached in excess of $5 billion. This will only increase that economic
activity, because this bill will make it easier for Portuguese
investors, business people, to increase their operations in the United
States, growing both our economies, drawing our nations even closer
together, and creating more jobs.
More than 100 Portuguese companies today already have operations in
the United States. What do those operations do? They create jobs. They
create opportunities. And they build additional prosperity on both
sides of the Atlantic.
We have done our part. Now it is time, we hope, that the United
States Senate will do their part so that we can send this bill to the
President that has, again, strong bipartisan support. It will obviously
be good to get this measure passed, hopefully, before the end of the
year.
Senators Whitehouse and Toomey, again bipartisan, have already
introduced their version of the legislation, the AMIGOS Act, in the
United States Senate. We thank them for their strong efforts and their
partnership.
Sharing prosperity in this instance can only benefit both the United
States and Portugal, and it is this kind of commonsense trade policy
that we need to be advocating for, along with continuing to build on
our partnerships both within the European Union as well as within South
America and with Asia, and, of course, with our closest neighbors,
Canada and Mexico.
Trade obviously done properly can create good-paying jobs in America
and benefit our relationships and our economic activity with those
countries who we value the most.
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