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Washington, D.C. -- With the opening of the 109th Congress, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), introduced a bill designed to improve intelligence gathering and strengthen national security through the expansion and improvement of foreign language study.
The National Security Language Act would improve America’s foreign language education capabilities through five initiatives:
- The International Flagship Language Initiative (IFLI). The bill provides $6 million fora federally funded program providing grants to US universities and colleges to establish high quality, intensive in-country language study programs in a broad range of countries around the world;
- Science and Technology Advanced Foreign Language Grants. The bill authorizes $15 million in grants to institutions of higher education to establish programs that encourage students to develop foreign language proficiency as well as science and technological knowledge;
- Loan Forgiveness For Undergraduate Students in Foreign Languages Who Become Teachers or Federal Employees. The bill would authorize the Secretary of Education to assume the obligation to repay a total of not more than $10,000 of the principal and interest for a student borrower who has obtained an undergraduate critical need foreign language.
- Encouraging Early Foreign Language Studies. The bill authorizes $48 million to establish grants for foreign language partnerships between local school districts and foreign language departments at institutions of higher education. The bill requires that a national study be conducted to identify heritage communities with native speakers of critical foreign languages and make them targets of a federal marketing campaign encouraging students to pursue degrees in those languages.
“Enlarging the pool of linguists fluent in the languages spoken in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world is vital both to our national security and our public diplomacy generally,” said Holt. “To defeat al Qaeda and its allies, we must be able to reach the same audiences that the extremists are targeting with our own message of tolerance, pluralism and respect for other cultures. We must also be able to supply our military and intelligence community with the linguists they need to prevail in battle. This bill will help on both counts.”
Holt also introduced several other bills at the start of the new Congress:
- The Higher Education Affordability and Fairness Act, a tax cut that would make college tuition tax deductible, up to $10,000 per student or $15,000 per family.
- The Social Security and Medicare Lock Box Act, which would mandate that Congress could not spend any Social Security or Medicare trust fund money on any other projects until the long-term funding issues surrounding both programs are resolved.
- A bill to prevent potential abuses of detainees captured in war from being abused by requiring the videotaping of all detainee interrogations—as many police departments across the country already do as a matter of standard procedure.
- The School Environment Protection Act of 2005, which would amend the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act to require local educational agencies and schools to implement integrated pest management systems to minimize the use of pesticides in schools, and to provide parents, guardians, and employees with notice of the use of pesticides in schools.
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