I first of all want to thank the gentleman from Florida for allowing us to sandwich our bill because of a scheduling conflict in between his other bills that are scheduled and to especially thank the gentleman from Virginia for graciously agreeing to be here tonight and to join us in hopefully passing this important legislation. Mr. Speaker. very briefly. this legislation is nine provisions. human rights and refugee related. It is a bipartisan bill. It is cosponsored. I am happy to say. by our committee chairman. full committee chairman. the gentleman from New York . the ranking member. the gentleman from Indiana . the gentleman from California . who is ranking on my subcommittee. the gentleman from California . the gentleman from Illinois . the gentlewoman from Florida . the gentleman from Pennsylvania . and others. It is a consensus bill about what needs to be done in a number of important human rights areas. It also provides some authorities that the State Department would like to have. one especially dealing with machine readable fees to finance border security programs at no cost to the U.S. taxpayer and an authority of the United States to stabilize the channel of the Rio Grande River in accordance with international agreements. and there are also some provisions dealing with USIA. Mr. Speaker.
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border security refugee