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Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senators.

[Page: S2918]  GPO's PDF

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?

   The Senator from West Virginia.

   Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, before the distinguished Senator from New Mexico leaves the floor, I say to the Senator from New Mexico, he has made a very important observation.

   I am going to vote for this bill. But we do not have a CBO estimate of the cost. We have no estimate of the cost. There is an estimate by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Now, that may be off a great deal or it may not be off a great deal.

   I think it is important to keep in mind what the distinguished Senator from New Mexico has pointed out. There is a great difference between authorizations and appropriations. And it is the money that counts. Cicero, that great Roman orator, said: ``There is no fortress so strong that money cannot take it.'' So it is the money that counts. And the Senator has made an important observation. I made that observation, too, early on. And I don't know what the estimate of the cost is going to be in here. We have certain estimates, the $1.1 billion for the first year, and the $3.2 billion--or something like that--$3.2 billion for 3 years. But those are estimates. They are by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. And, of course, that is not a great bank to put your money into when the INS estimates it. We have seen that agency fall on its face so many times in recent years.

   But, in any event, I thank the Senator.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield for 1 minute?

   Mr. BYRD. Yes. I would be glad to yield.

   Mr. DOMENICI. A question along with this observation: I say to the Senator, it seems to me that what we do--and what we are doing in this crisis, which is a very big crisis, with the President putting large numbers of billions of dollars in homeland security and saying this is new money--we come along and pass bills that authorize the new programs that he is saying he wants new money for, but the truth of the matter is that very seldom are any existing programs that are being paid for eliminated.

   So you are going to have a subcommittee of your Committee on Appropriations, maybe two, that are going to fund this authorization bill--or maybe not, or maybe part of it; who knows? But the President had in mind canceling a whole bunch of programs in order to pay for this. And the point I make is, nobody helps with that part of the burden. Nobody carries any weight on trying to make room within the Government. They just pass on to the appropriators a very good, wonderful, new set of authorizations that we have all passed, and we go home and tell our people it is going to help solve the crisis that is before

   us with reference to taking care of our borders, which are porous and should not even be called borders, they are so bad.

   I thank the Senator.

   Mr. BYRD. Well, the Senator is correct. There will be a lot of eyes looking toward the Senator from New Mexico and toward me, and the other 27 members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, when it comes time to put the money on the barrelhead.

   But having said that, I am going to vote for this bill. I am still going to seek a CBO estimate of the cost because I think that would be helpful in the coming days as we proceed to the conference and then to the conference report, and so on.

   AMENDMENT NO. 3161

   Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the opportunity to seek a quality higher education has long enticed men and women to leave their homelands to travel to America.

   We are, by and large, a generous Nation when it comes to providing an education to foreign citizenry. Indeed, American colleges, universities, and technical schools have opened wide their doors to students from foreign lands. And all levels of schooling are available to foreign nationals of every age--from preschool to post-graduate work, from public grade schools to private technical-training institutions.

   In fact, foreign students have proven to be a lucrative source of revenue for U.S. educational institutions. Private-sector analysts estimate that foreign students contribute between $9 billion and $13 billion to the U.S. economy every year. Any number of marketing efforts are made by colleges and universities to recruit foreign students, whose tuition fees serve to bulk up college budgets.

   As a result, we have opened our borders to a stream of foreign students with precious little oversight of their movement through the American educational stream. According to the INS, there are currently 2 million foreign students admitted to study in this country--649,000 of whom were admitted just last year. These include nuclear engineering scholars, biochemistry students, and pilot-trainees, who have access to sensitive technology, training, and information.

   Yet while our schools have been training would-be pilots in the art of flying airliners, we have been asleep at the switch! There has been too little accountability, and too few checks, largely because oversight has proven too burdensome and costly for the government and the U.S. educational industry.

   The lax government oversight of these student visa beneficiaries was underscored by the fact that three of the September 11 hijackers were awarded student visas --not to mention the fact that the INS was still processing the student visa applications for two of them 6 months after they had crashed two planes into the World Trade Center towers and gone on to meet their eternal destiny.

   Clearly INS has not been up to the job of monitoring foreign students, and, in its current condition, placing new burdens on that agency alone is no solution. Therefore, as we look at our Nation through the prism of the new realities of terrorism , we must reconsider ways to involve those who have the best opportunity to prevent attacks. We need the assistance of our educational institutions.

   In recent years, efforts to impose more stringent reporting requirements on schools have faltered because educational institutions have been reluctant to get into the job of monitoring foreign students. In fact, colleges and universities have lobbied heavily against such requirements, and the current lack of a national program to monitor foreign students indicates the effectiveness of that lobbying effort.

   The pending legislation takes some important steps toward closing many of the loopholes in our foreign student policies that could be exploited by a potential terrorist. If the student monitoring provisions in this bill are to be successful, however, we must ensure the participation of our schools. These institutions are best suited to inform the INS and the State Department as to which students have been accepted to attend a school, whether

   they actually show up for class once they enter the country on a student visa, and whether they continue their classes or merely drop out of sight after checking in with the admissions office.

   Monitoring the student via program requires a partnership between the government and all colleges, and technical schools that accept foreigners.

   The pending bill gives the INS and the Secretary of State too much discretion in determining whether or not these educational institutions should be penalized.

   Section 502(c) of this bill reads:

   EFFECT OF FAILURE TO COMPLY.--Failure of an institution or other entity to comply with the record keeping and reporting requirements to receive nonimmigrant students or exchange visitor program participants under section 101(a)(15) (F), (M), or (J) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15) (F), (M), or (J)) or Section 641 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (8 U.S.C. 1372), may, at the election of the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization or the Secretary of State, result in the termination, suspension, or limitation of the institution's approval to receive such students or the termination of the other entity's designation to sponsor exchange visitor program participants, as the case may be.

   What's more, in section 502 of this bill, the ``periodic reviews,'' which the INS Commissioner, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Education are required to make to determine whether institutions are complying with this legislation, are not defined. A ``periodic review'' could mean every 5 years or it could mean every 20 years or it could mean every 50 years.

[Page: S2919]  GPO's PDF

   That is very soft language.

   My amendment would require reviews by the relevant agency heads at least once every two years. Further, if they found that U.S. educational institutions were materially not complying with the reporting requirements in this bill, my amendment would require the relevant agency heads to terminate or suspend, for at least one year, the right of those institutions to accept foreign students.

   This amendment makes clear the serious concern about this Nation's ability to help foreign students while also protecting our homeland. Educational institutions are essential partners in our efforts to ensure that foreign students really are ``students'' with no other agenda but learning.

   I thank Senators KENNEDY, BROWNBACK, FEINSTEIN, and KYL for their support of this amendment. I hope that the Senate will adopt it.

   Mr. President, I have made my statement prior to calling up the amendment. I ask unanimous consent that the time I have consumed in reading my statement come out of my time on the amendment.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I send the amendment to the desk.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.

   The legislative clerk read as follows:

   The Senator from West Virginia [Mr. BYRD] proposes an amendment numbered 3161:

    On page 49, beginning on line 4, strike ``The'' and all that follows through ``reviews'' on line 7 and insert ``Not later than two years after the date of enactment of this Act, and every two years thereafter, the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, in consultation with the Secretary of Education, shall conduct a review''.

    On page 49, lines 22 and 23, strike ``The Secretary of State shall conduct periodic reviews'' and insert ``Not later than two years after the date of enactment of this Act, and every two years thereafter, the Secretary of State shall conduct a review''.

    On page 50, line 16, strike ``(c) EFFECT OF FAILURE TO COMPLY.--Failure'' and insert ``(c) EFFECT OF MATERIAL FAILURE TO COMPLY.--Material failure''.

    Beginning on page 50, line 24, strike ``may'' and all that follows through the period on line 5 of page 51 and insert the following: ``shall result in the suspension for at least one year or termination, at the election of the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, of the institution's approval to receive such students, or result in the suspension for at least one year or termination, at the election of the Secretary of State, of the other entity's designation to sponsor exchange visitor program participants, as the case may be.''.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.

   Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I will urge our colleagues to support this amendment for the excellent reasons that the sponsor gave in support and in justification of the amendment.

   There are now 26,000 universities and schools that can effectively approve a foreign student to come and study. But the foreign student has to qualify for the visa project at the current time. We have included some very important requirements in this legislation because this has been one of the great loopholes in our monitoring of who comes into this country and who does not.

   The State Department must first receive the electronic evidence of the acceptance from an approved U.S. institution prior to issuing a student visa. The State Department must inform the INS that a visa has been approved. The INS must inform the approved institution the student has been admitted into the country, and then the approved institution must notify INS when the student has registered and enrolled. If the student doesn't report for class, the school must notify the INS of this absence not later than 30 days after the deadline for the classes.

   So the colleges and universities have to develop that kind of system in order to be qualified for these programs, which is enormously important and a very significant, dramatic change from the current situation.

   Currently, there are sporadic inspections of the universities. So now the Byrd amendment comes along and says, well, what you have in here looks good on paper, but what we take note of is the fact that, even if it is good on paper, the INS, in its history, has been sporadic in inspecting and finding out whether the schools and colleges are doing what they said and what they are supposed to do. That has been true. This tightens that provision up in a very important way.

   If there is a material breach, then there will be a suspension of that institution from being able to receive the foreign students. So I believe it is going to make a very important difference in terms of compliance with one of the most important aspects of this legislation, which is understanding the students who are coming here, monitoring the students when they are here, knowing when the students are leaving, and if the students are not attending the schools, having access to that kind of information as well.

   I thank the Senator from West Virginia for the amendment. What it does is put real teeth into this provision which we had worked out in the committee to achieve the kind of oversight the INS has not had up to this time.

   Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his statement.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized.

   Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues, as well, to support the Byrd amendment. The reasons have been stated by both Senators BYRD and KENNEDY. I think the important thing to look at and see here is that we have a number of foreign students in the United States, and this has been a very positive thing, overall, for the United States and for the rest of the world. I don't think anybody would disagree with that statement. Yet what we have had taking place is a system that, over time, has gotten far too loose, and we saw the effects of that on September 11, where a couple of these individuals who came into the United States and did this operation, this horrific thing that happened, came in under student visas because they were looking for weaknesses in the system to get into the United States in a less restrictive, reviewed area. So that is why this has been at the very heart of this bill.

   Senator Byrd puts in a good provision. There have been sporadic reviews by the Government of the educational institutions to see that they are doing this right, that they are taking the program seriously and not just finding some way of being able to bump up their student account and the number of students coming to the United States. We will have a regular reporting requirement and we will be able to monitor this much more closely. It should not inhibit legitimate students from coming here, nor the institutions that are legitimate and serious about what their projects are. It will be a bit more of a hindrance to those looking to increase their foreign student accounts and, hopefully, it will help us to get at those students who are

   here to do us harm.

   I urge adoption of this amendment.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California is recognized.

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, this amendment actually came into the bill from the original parts of the bill, Senator Kyl's and my investigations from the Terrorism and Technology Subcommittee. What we found is the student visa program was greatly in disarray. We found that we have about 660,000 students coming in a year, and there is no tracking of any of them. Nobody knows whether they are really at a school.

   Up to this point, the schools have had no responsibility to report that a student has arrived, that a student is taking this or that course and, yes, that the student has stayed in school. So I think Senator Byrd's amendment strengthens what is already in the bill. I think it makes it a better bill. We intend to follow up on this. Senator Kennedy and I have discussed it. We intend to see, in fact, that the schools do keep their word and do, in fact, do the reporting they are required to do under this legislation.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.

   Mr. KYL. Mr. President, Senator Feinstein and I were upstairs a moment ago during the time allotted for discussion of the bill in general. Let me take a couple of minutes, if I could, to express my support also for the amendment pending that Senator Byrd offered. As Senator Feinstein said, it will strengthen what we are trying to do with the student visa program.

   Mr. President, the Judiciary Committee has a couple of subcommittees of jurisdiction. Senator Kennedy and Senator Brownback are the chairman

[Page: S2920]  GPO's PDF

   This legislation is designed to close as many of those so-called loopholes as we can. I think it is a good effort in that regard. Each of the amendments that will be offered by Senator Byrd, in one way or another, strengthens the bill we have already offered.

   I wanted to make two quick comments. Eighteen of the terrorists who entered the country and flew airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and into the ground in Pennsylvania came in using B-1, B-2 tourist visas . According to the Department of State, 47 foreign-born individuals, including these 19, have been charged with, pled guilty to, or been convicted of involvement in terrorism over the past decade. All 47 of these people had contacts with an INS inspector. Yet, somehow, they were able to get into the country. The 19th of the 19 was Hani Hanjour. He entered the country on an F1 student visa, the subject of the specific amendment now before us. He supposedly came here to attend classes and study English. He never showed up for class. The school did not notify the authorities that he never attended classes. He overstayed his visa and just melted into our society.

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