TO AMEND THE IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY ACT FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 1964 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, in room 346, Cannon Building, at 10 a.m., Hon. Michael A. Feighan (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Feighan and Chelf. Also present: Garner J. Cline, associate counsel. Mr. FEIGHAN. The subcommittee will come to order. This morning we will have as our first witness our able colleague, the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Anderson, appearing on H.R. 7919, which he introduced. We shall insert the bill in the record at this point. (The bill, H.R. 7919, follows:) [H.R. 7919, 88th Cong., 1st sess.] A BILL To amend section 212(e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the second proviso of section 212(e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended (75 Stat. 535), is amended to read as follows: "Provided further, That (1) upon the favorable recommendation of the Secretary of State, pursuant to the request of an interested United States Government agency, or of the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization after he has determined that departure from the United States would impose exceptional hardship upon the alien's spouse or child (if such spouse or child is a citizen of the United States or a lawful resident alien), or (2) upon written notification by the government of the country of which the alien is a citizen or national, advising the Attorney General that it has no objection to the alien's remaining in the United States without departure therefrom, the Attorney General may waive the requirement of such two-year foreign residence abroad in the case of any alien whose admission to the United States is found by the Attorney General to be in the public interest:". SEC. 2. This Act shall apply to any person who had, has acquired, or may hereafter acquire, exchange visitor status under any law heretofore or hereafter enacted. Mr. FEIGHAN. Will you proceed, Mr. Anderson? STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN B. ANDERSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS Mr. ANDERSON. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure for me to come before this distinguished subcommittee this morning and call its attention to what I consider to be a minor deficiency in the present law governing exchange students. I say a minor deficiency advisedly, because I suppose, viewed in an objective sense and in a larger sense, it is that, but to the individuals who are directly involved as a result of the provisions of the law as it now stands, I think this law is frequently a source of worry and of heartbreak and real dislocation. Mr. Chairman, I am sure that you and the members of your subcommittee are thoroughly familiar with the present immigration law as it applies to exchange students, but simply to provide a very brief framework for my remarks, I would like to summarize very briefly the provisions of section 212(e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to which my amendment is directed, or the amendment proposed by the bill that I have introduced. The subcommittee will recall that the law requires any alien who has entered this country for educational purposes or any member of his family who has accompanied him to spend at least 2 years in his own country following the expiration of his education visa, before he is eligible to make application for an immigrant visa entitling him to settle permanently in the United States and eventually to become a citizen. On the whole, I think this is a good law. I think that by requiring American-educated foreigners to return to their own lands for at least 2 years after their student visas have expired, we achieve three basically sound and beneficial results. First of all, you vindicate the basic overall purpose of the student exchange program. It does not do much good to institute a program to achieve better understanding among the peoples of the world, if, after the completion of their training in this country, they do not go back, but they simply stay here. I think that is fairly obvious. Secondly, this 2-year requirement prevents the exchange program from becoming a means of circumventing the immigration laws. It might otherwise be one of those loopholes that would allow people to convert a student visa into an immigrant visa, when that was never the intention when the visa was granted. I can appreciate the reasonableness of this feature of the law, and I think particularly when you are speaking of students who come from low quota nations or nations where the quotas are heavily oversubscribed, it is necessary to have something in the law to prevent the educational visa from being used merely as a means of circumventing the quota restrictions with respect to that country. And finally, I think there is some feeling, and justifiable so, that when foreign youths come here to take advantage of our educational facilities and many of them are on scholarship from either their own government or our Government-there is at least a moral obligation placed on these young people who come here to go back and put the newly acquired knowledge that they have received to work for the benefit of their own people, particularly if they should come from one of the so-called underdeveloped countries of the world. So I think the 2-year requirement that is imposed by section 212(e) is justifiable on the various grounds that I have cited. It is difficult in general to find fault with the main thrust of this law, but at the same time, I am sure that this subcommittee would not want to lose sight of the fact that the human element is very often involved in these cases where students come on these so-called edues tional visas, and that sometimes a hardhearted, across-the-board application of this section does result in real suffering and hardship. Let us take a very common case. A young foreigner comes to this country on a student visa. He embarks upon a program of study, and then, as so very often happens to young people, he falls in love with an American co-ed, and they get married, and perhaps a year later there is a child. The student has completed, then, his course of study and his visa expires, and facing this new family is then the prospect of either all of them leaving the United States for at least 2 years before they return, or there is the prospect of a 2-year separation. Mr. FEIGHAN. Could I interrupt, there? What is abhorrently wrong with this student who came here, fell in love, got married, and has a child, to take his spouse or her spouse back to the country of their origin with the child for 2 years? Mr. ANDERSON. I think it very often creates an awful hardship, Mr. Chairman. I know I have cases. I can give you a specific case in my office at the present time in which I filed a private bill for relief, of a young student, a nurse, who came to this country from Australia on an exchange visa of this kind, one of these educational visas. She was here in this country and pursing her training under this exchange educational visa, and she fell in love with a young man who was going to medical school. She was in the same hospital, I believe, where he was taking his internship. She fell in love with this young man, and they were married, and a year later a child was born. Then her visa runs out. Does this mean, then, that her American-born husband, who has just completed his medical training, who had the misfortune, perhaps, to fall in love with an Australian nurse who had come to this country on an educational visa, must then take his wife and his newborn child and go off to Australia for 2 years before he can come back to the United States to practice the career for which he has studied for 8 years? This is the kind of case that I am talking about. Mr. FEIGHAN. Are you speaking about a shotgun marriage, or a marriage entered into voluntarily, knowing all the facts, as a person in that capacity should? Mr. ANDERSON. I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, that in the case of which I speak, this was no shotgun marriage. This was one of those perfectly legitimate, wholesome American courtships, where a young American doctor-to-be fell in love with a young Australian nurse. Mr. FEIGHAN. I am speaking in generalities, not any specific case. Mr. ANDERSON. I realize that, Mr. Chairman. But I am sure, on the basis of my experience, which I am sure has been duplicated in the offices of scores and scores of other Congressmen, that this is a very common type case. And I beg the chairman to remember this, that in the kind of situation which I have outlined this morning, if you make the kind of dispensation which I am asking you to make under the proposed amendment which I would submit to the immigration and naturalization law, you are not just making some foreign student happy. 36-382-64-pt. 1- 14 You should see the mail that I get and maybe you get them, toofrom the grandparents, the American-born grandparents, of this young grandchild, who are disturbed at the fact that their first grandchild and their son is going to have to go off in the boondocks of Australia some place and live for a couple of years before he can bring his family back to the United States. I think this is an unconscionable sort of thing. Mr. FEIGHAN. You are aware, of course, that in the present law there is a provision that where there is exceptional hardship, the Attorney General may waive that 2-year requirement. Mr. ANDERSON. You have correctly stated the law, but I find from my examination of the cases that have been processed under this section of the law that the mere fact that there is a spouse and that there is a newborn infant or a minor child is not considered by the authorities at the present time to constitute the kind of hardship that will authorize a waiver or will bring about a waiver of this 2-year requirement. And I could give you some statistics, if I may, somewhere in my statement. Yes. The Immigration and Naturalization Service advised me that of 743 hardship cases on which action was completed in fiscal year 1963, only slightly more than one-third were settled favorable to the applicants. And I think in terms of the human suffering created for the 63 percent of the applicants whose cases were unfavorably concluded, this is an appalling figure. Now, maybe that is what they have to do under the law, and that is the reason why I proposed this amendment. And here, simply, very briefly, is what I would do. There are some alternatives now under the law, as the chairman has pointed out, for avoiding the operation of this 2-year requirement, but what I would do would be this: I would provide, in effect, a third alternative to the two that are already in the law, a third alternative which would help alleviate these hardship cases that I have been talking about. My bill simply provides that the exchange student who can obtain from his Government a statement to the effect that it has no objection to the student remaining in this country that then the 2-year requirement may be waived by the Attorney General upon a finding that it would be in the public interest. In other words, you have the consent, you have the assurance, of the foreign country from which the student has come, that as far as they are concerned this is all right, that he be permitted to remain here and to apply for an immigrant's visa. But you have the further requirement in my bill that you still have to have a finding from the Attorney General that this is in the public interest, that the student be allowed to remain here rather than going back to his own country for 2 years. Mr. CHELF. At that point, may I say that one difficulty, as I see it, with your proposal would be some confusion as to just who, what party, would speak in behalf of that particular country, I think we ought to definitely pinpoint somebody who would have the authority to do the job. Over the years we have had the expe |