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   As a Senator from Vermont, I know what a serious issue border security is. For too long, Congress has taken a haphazard approach to border security, meeting many of the needs of our southwest border but neglecting our border with Canada. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, we have taken a far more comprehensive approach. Congress took its first steps to strengthen our borders in the USA PATRIOT Act, which authorized tripling the number of Border Patrol personnel, INS Inspectors, and Customs Service agents serving along our northern border, and $100 million in funding for improved technology for the INS and Customs Service's use in monitoring the border. As the author of those provisions, I am pleased that the administration has requested substantial increases in funding for border security personnel. I urge the Congress not only to fund this priority, but to ensure that the northern border receives at least half of any new supply of border security enforcement officers.

   The legislation before us today builds on the first steps taken in the USA PATRIOT Act to strengthen substantially the security of our borders. It will further increase the number of INS Inspectors and INS investigative personnel, and authorize raises for Border Patrol agents and inspectors so that we can retain our experienced border security officers, who have been so overworked over the past 7 months. The bill also authorizes funding for training of INS personnel for more effective border management, and for improving the State Department's review of visa applicants abroad. In addition, it authorizes $150 million for the INS to improve technology for border security, another important follow-up to the USA PATRIOT Act.

   Beyond authorizing badly needed funding for our borders, this legislation includes a number of important security provisions, a few of which I would like to highlight today. First, it requires the Attorney General and Secretary of State to issue only machine-readable and tamper-resistant visas , and travel and entry documents using biometric identifiers, by October 26, 2003. They must also have machines that can read the documents at all ports of entry by that date.

   Second, the bill requires the Secretary of State to establish terrorist lookout committees within each U.S. mission abroad, to ensure that consular officials receive updated information on known or potential terrorists in the Nation where they are stationed.

   Third, the bill will foster information sharing between other Government agencies and the State Department and INS, and shorten the deadline established in the USA PATRIOT Act to develop a technology standard to identify visa applicants.

   Fourth, the legislation requires all commercial vessels or aircraft entering or departing from the United States to provide complete passenger manifests.

   Fifth, this bill would substantially strengthen existing law for the monitoring of foreign students. The Government would be required to collect additional information about student visa applicants, and educational institutions would be obligated to report visa holders who did not appear for classes. In addition, the INS Commissioner would perform periodic audits of educational institutions entitled to accept foreign students.

   I will vote for this bill because it will help protect our Nation and our borders. More than ever since September 11, those issues are fundamental priorities for this Congress. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill, and look forward to its becoming law.

   Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, today we are considering legislation on one of the most important issues in our fight against terrorism --how we can effectively secure our borders.

   For me and for my State, one of the most critical things this bill does is to build on our efforts last year to increase staffing at the border by authorizing annual staffing increases on the borders for each of the next 5 years.

   Those of us who represent States along the northern border knew before September 11 that the northern border was woefully understaffed. While we were able to double staffing across the border last year, the northern border will need a yearly infusion of staff to guarantee our security for the future.

   This bill also incorporates many of the ideas of our colleague from California, Senator FEINSTEIN, to create a workable entry and exit system and better tracking of those in this country on student visas , and I would like to thank her for her many years of work on these issues.

   Finally, this bill is about better use of technology to provide the enhanced security and border efficiency we need. But with every technological solution, comes the very real risk that the technology could be misused to invade personal privacy.

   I have worked hard to make sure that provisions of this bill preserve the right to privacy. As we come to rely more on technology, including voluntary programs that require our citizens to provide personal information to government agencies, we will need to make very sure that we have sufficient

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   Many of the provisions of this bill are based on and cross-reference a provision I was able to include in the USA PATRIOT Act. That provision requires the State Department and the Department of Justice to develop a technology standard for the purpose of exchanging law enforcement and intelligence information necessary to screen applicants for U.S. visas and individual's using visas to enter the country.

   Within that standard, there are specific privacy safeguards to limit the application of the standard of aliens; limit the purposes the date collected could be used to background checks and border verification; limit the distribution of the data to consular officers and border inspectors; require that any changes to expand access to the data has to be done by regulation so that the public can have input; finally, we require Congressional oversight of the implementation of the technology standard.

   I am pleased that this legislation incorporates these safeguards and adds others specific to the ``interoperable database system'' that facilitates the sharing of law enforcement and intelligence information with the State Department and INS.

   The bill before us today limits re-dissemination of information accessed through the system; ensures that the information is used solely to determine the admissibility or deportability of an alien to the United States; requires accuracy, security and confidentiality; requires protection of any privacy rights of individuals who are subject of the information in the system; and requires the timely removal and destruction of obsolete or inaccurate information.

   Even with these provisions, Congress must keep a watchful eye on the implementation of the provisions of this legislation. We need to be vigilant to make certain we are achieving the proper balance between the need for national security and the need to protect the privacy of our citizens.

   I am concerned about protecting the privacy of my constituents and citizens across our country, and I thank the authors of this bill for working with me to address these concerns.

   I support this legislation because I believe that the security measures are well balanced against privacy concerns--and both security and privacy must be served.

   Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, I rise today to support H.R. 3525, the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2001. This bill includes important provisions that will enhance our overall security. As a member from a border State, I am especially supportive of provisions that improve our ability to provide security on the Northern border.

   H.R. 3525 authorizes the addition of 200 Immigration and Naturalization Service agents on the border, raises their pay and improves their retirement benefits, increases funding for their training, and authorizes money for them to improve and buy new technology. In Minnesota, some of our borders crossings, such as the crossing at Crane Lake, are staffed only part-time in the summer and even then are not staffed around the clock. Some parts of the border are staffed via telephone and video. For example, a person wanting to cross into the United States from Canada arrives at a border station, picks up a telephone or video-phone, and calls Border Patrol personnel located elsewhere to announce his arrival. We must address this security risk. We must address the vulnerability of our borders.

   The situation on our northern border demands immediate attention but simply putting new staff there is not enough. We must retain experienced officials and provide adequate training to identify and intercept would-be terrorists. By raising the pay grade of INS border personnel and improving their retirement benefits, we can ensure the retention of dedicated, experienced officials. By providing them adequate training and improving their ability to share information, we can prevent the entry of people who intend to do this country harm.

   The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2001 also has provisions to help us determine who is coming to the US before they arrive. It requires our consulates to transmit to INS officials electronic versions of the visas they issue so that information is available on the person prior to this arrival. It requires commercial flights and ships to provide manifests about each passenger prior to their arrival and it fills the gaps in the foreign student monitoring program to ensure we know who is coming to the United States to study at our universities before they get here. The more we can do to know who is coming to the United States before they actually arrive, the more secure we will be.

   I would like to take a moment to address the issue of civil liberties. Many of us have concerns about the changes taking place in regard to our Federal agencies sharing intelligence information. Today, more than ever, we must ensure that Federal law enforcement and other agencies have the ability to share information in a timely and effective manner. Nothing is more distressing than to think that the horrible events of September 11 may have been prevented through better interagency communication and organization. Yet, we must ensure that we vigorously monitor the effects structural changes now underway will have on our civil liberties. We must continue to monitor implementation of laws that question the fundamental balance between our security and liberty.

   We are doing that here today. The USA PATRIOT Act which we passed last October required the FBI to provide the State Department and INS with access to certain FBI databases. During the debate on that bill there were serious concerns over how to determine what information those agencies needed and how to protect that information. The bill before us requires the President to report to Congress on exactly what information the State Department and INS need, and to develop a comprehensive information-sharing plan with adequate privacy protections. I support this important provision and believe it is a good example of what needs to be done in the future. We must review, and improve legislation if necessary, to ensure protection of our fundamental freedoms.

   Colleagues, H.R. 3525 is a comprehensive bill which will strengthen the security of our borders, secure our visa entry system and enhance our ability to deter potential terrorists. It is another important step towards ensuring that we will never again witness the tragic event of September 11. I urge my colleagues to support it.

   Ms. SNOWE. Madam President, I am pleased to rise today in support of the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act of 2001.

   I have worked with Senators KYL and FEINSTEIN, first on their Visa Entry Reform Act of 2001, and subsequently with them and Senators KENNEDY and BROWNBACK on this legislation. These sponsors have worked feverishly to bring this bipartisan bill to fruition and I have very much appreciated the opportunity to work with them in assembling a strong and meaningful package to help secure our homeland.

   The bottom line is, at this extraordinary time, in the wake of horrific attacks from without against innocent lives within our borders, we must take every conceivable step with regard to those variables we can control in securing our Nation. How can we do anything less when it has become so abundantly and tragically apparent that admittance into this country cannot and must not be the ``X-Factor'' in protecting our homeland?

   Entry into this country is a privilege, not a right, and it is a privilege that has clearly been violated by perpetrators of evil who were well aware of inherent weaknesses in the system. Just look at the story of Mohamed Atta, coming into Miami, he told the INS that he was returning to the U.S. to continue flight training, despite the fact that he presented them with a tourist visa, not the student required visa for his purposes, and they let him in. INS has since said that Atta had filed months earlier to change his status from tourist to student so they let him in, despite long-standing policy that once you leave the country, you're considered to have abandoned your change of status request.

   What this bill is about is stopping dangerous aliens from entering our country at their point-of-origin and their point of entry by giving those Federal agencies charged with that responsibility the tools necessary to do

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   This was clear from the aftermath of our investigation of the comings and goings of the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the radical Egyptian cleric Sheikh Rahman. We found that the Sheikh had entered and exited the country five times totally unimpeded, even after the State Department formally revoked his visa and even after the INS granted him permanent resident status. In fact, in March of 1992, the INS rescinded that status which was granted in Newark, NJ about a year before.

   But then, unbelievably, the Sheikh requested asylum in a hearing before an immigration judge in the very same city, got a second hearing, and continued to remain in the country even after the bombing, with the Justice Department rejecting holding Rahman in custody pending the outcome of deportation proceedings and the asylum application, stating that ``in the absence of concrete evidence that Rahman is participating in or involved in planning acts of terrorism , the assumption of that burden, upon the U.S. government, is considered unwarranted.''

   To address the trail of errors, I introduced legislation to modernize the State Department's antiquated Microfiche lookout system, but as we have painfully learned in the interim, such a system is only as good as the information it can access. That is why we fought tooth and nail to require information sharing between the FBI and the State Department. In 1994 Congress passed my legislation to give State Department officials access to FBI criminal records for every visa application, whether for immigrant or non-immigrant purposes. Addressing non-immigrants who enter the U.S. using student visas was particularly important, as was demonstrated by the inexplicable errors by INS, and in the case of the bomber who entered the U.S. on a student visa before dropping out of school, remaining undetected for two years on the expired visa, and driving a truckload of explosives into the World Trade Center in 1993. Unfortunately a revised provision limited this access only for purposes of immigrant visas , dropping my requirement for the non-immigrant visas initially used by all 19 of the September 11 hijackers.

   So I am pleased that the USA PATRIOT counterterrorism bill we passed last year does require information sharing between the State Department and the FBI, but we can and must do more, we must also require information sharing among all agencies like the CIA, DEA, INS, and Customs.

   And that is what this bill does, along with my measure that is included to establish ``Terrorist Lookout Committees'' at every embassy, which are required to meet on a monthly basis and report on their knowledge of anyone who should be excluded from the U.S.

   I am also pleased to have worked further with Senators KENNEDY and KYL to include in the managers' amendment a provision increasing accountability by requiring the Terrorist Lookout Committees to report to the Secretary of State after each monthly meeting and with reports from the Secretary to Congress on a quarterly basis.

   We ought to ensure that the person standing in front of the INS agent at the border is the same person who applied for that visa. It does no good to do every background check in the world overseas, only to have someone else actually show up at our doorstep. The fact is, we have the so-called ``biometric technology'' available to close this gap, and I am pleased that my measure requiring the use of this biometric technology such as fingerprinting for visa applicants both abroad and at the border has been included, although not exclusively limited to fingerprinting. The information collected by the consular officer issuing the visa must then be electronically transmitted to the INS so that the file is available to immigration inspectors at U.S. ports of entry before the alien's arrival.

   In addition to these protections, the bill provides funding for an increase in border patrol personnel and for training of those agents and other agency staffs at U.S. ports of entry and in our consular offices to improve the ability of these officers, our first line of defense on our borders, to more easily identify and intercept would-be terrorists.

   As the President has said, ``We're going to start asking a lot of questions that heretofore have not been asked.'' By giving the Director of Homeland Security the responsibility of developing a centralized ``lookout'' database for all of this information, along with instituting tighter application and screening procedures and increased oversight for student visas , we will close the loopholes and help bring all our Nation's resources to bear in securing our Nation.

   This is a crucial bill in our war on terrorism and I urge my colleagues to support this bill. I yield the floor.

   Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I first want to commend the chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee, Senator KENNEDY, my colleague from Massachusetts, for his leadership on this bill. The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act gives law enforcement and immigration authorities greater access to the tools they need to improve border security. The legislation enhances our ability to identify terrorists and other individuals who should not be allowed to enter the Untied States and establishes new programs to ensure that people whom we welcome as visitors live up to their responsibilities under our immigration laws.

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