Sam Brownback: “I urge my colleagues, as well, to support the Byrd amendment. The reasons have been stated by both Senators Byrd and…”

“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.”