Clarification of Definition of Foreign Country for Purposes of Malign Foreign Talent Recruitment Restriction

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 7686.

Mr. Speaker, we recently celebrated the 2-year passage of the CHIPS and Science Act. In those 2 years, we have reinvigorated domestic semiconductor manufacturing, and we are revitalizing the American scientific enterprise. The positive impact of that legislation can be felt in everyone's district, so we should be proud of this bipartisan accomplishment.

In the same vein, as with all great legislation, we need to perform some legislative maintenance and improvements. The CHIPS and Science Act has many provisions focused on improving research security. One of those provisions, section 10631, prohibits the distribution of Federal research awards to individuals participating in foreign talent recruitment programs.

Universities and research institutions are ultimately responsible for ensuring that their faculty members are aware of and compliant with that prohibition, but the current law contains two independent, lengthy, and--I know this is the first time this has ever happened-- rather complex prohibitions, which makes good faith implementation efforts difficult to achieve.

We have heard that there is a need for clearer definitions, specifically for the ``malign foreign talent recruitment program.'' H.R. 7686 amends the Research and Development, Competition, and Innovation Act to better clarify that definition.

The need for this clarification has been affirmed by the National Science Foundation. The agency believes that this change will aid Federal science agencies' work in ensuring compliance.

For all of my colleagues, please do keep in mind that this legislation is very sensitive in its nature. Even minor changes to these definitions can have decisive consequences that can make institutional compliance problematic.

Both Democratic and Republican staff have worked surgically, shall we say, to ensure that this amendment makes the necessary corrections so that institutions can faithfully carry out these research security efforts.

On that note, I would like to state my enthusiastic support for this bill.

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Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I close simply by thanking Mr. Garcia and Ms. Stevens on our side for all of their hard work on this extremely well-constructed bill. I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 7686.

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