The Department of State's proposed rule on the high school category of the Exchange Visitor Program, published on May 3, includes a provision prohibiting single parents without school age children in the home from hosting exchange student students. The proposed regulations suggest that single host parents put students at risk, but do not offer any data to support this conclusion. 



“The United States will spend $165-million over the next five years on programs to help strengthen higher education in Indonesia through educational exchanges and university partnerships,” the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. President Obama and Indonesia's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, announced this initiative yesterday at a meeting at the G-20 summit in Toronto.

The U.S. Senate confirmed by voice vote this morning the nomination of Ann Stock for Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs. CQ.com reports that in addition to Stock, the Senate confirmed more than 60 other nominees, including several Pentagon civilian appointees, members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and several U.S. attorneys.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to outgoing participants of the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program (YES) yesterday, commending them for being “courageous” and for “taking this opportunity to see what it was like in the United States.” Clinton also thanked the students’ host families for “opening up their homes to each and every one of you. We obviously could not run this program without them.”

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale welcomed the first group of International Fulbright Science and Technology Fellows—“the most prestigious grant offered through the Fulbright Program,” as she said—this past Tuesday in a reception at the Department of State:

While the timeline for the markup and passage of FY 2011 appropriations bills remains uncertain, the Obama administration released two memos last week “setting guidelines for departments and agencies on their FY 2012 budget requests,” the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition reported. The memos underscore a “growing focus on reducing spending and the deficit”:

NPR reported last week that Senators have placed “holds” on 120 executive and judicial nominees, done in most cases anonymously. A “’hold’ is an informal Senate custom that allows any lawmaker to delay action on any bill or nomination at any time for any reason.”

The Department of State announced in this morning’s Federal Register that it will hold a public meeting on June 17 to discuss the proposed rule on the high school category.

The meeting will be held at the State Department, from 9:00 until 11:00 a.m.

Please note that you must register in advance (by June 11) to attend this meeting, per the instructions below.

The full text of the announcement follows:

In a follow-up to its proposed rule in December 2009, the Department of State issued a press release earlier this week noting that it has published an interim final rule in the Federal Register to increase nonimmigrant visa application processing fees.

"We need Chinese and Americans of all ages [and] professions...to get to know one another, to understand each other better, to connect and collaborate,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a signing ceremony today in Beijing launching the “U.S.-China Consultation on People-to-People Exchange.” Noting that “government alone cannot solve the problems we face,” Secretary Clinton, along with Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong, asserted that the need for substantive interaction between t