[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20861-20862]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      FOREIGN EXCHANGE STUDENTS ARE GOODWILL AMBASSADORS FOR U.S.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sodrel). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, last Sunday during the Emmy awards,

[[Page 20862]]

I realized that one of the most popular new comedies about domestic 
life in America is Desperate Housewives, and one of the most popular 
ongoing dramas about domestic life in America is The Sopranos. And even 
though a majority of Americans still have regular contact with church, 
one of the few shows that actually shows contact between a family and 
religion is The Simpsons. Now, it is not my intention to try to bash 
television shows or Hollywood, but these are hardly adequate or 
accurate views of America, and this inaccuracy does have policy 
implications.
  If the image of America is derived from the popular culture and not 
the reality of what America is, it has an impact on our foreign 
affairs. Let me try to illustrate. In the year 2003, I was part of the 
Congressional Study Group on Germany and had the opportunity, with 
others, of representing the United States in Berlin with the German 
Government, which at the time was, shall we say, not a big U.S. 
supporter of U.S. foreign policy.
  In fact, that particular German Government had just a very narrow 
election by doing a significant amount of America bashing to get there. 
But the tone of that government would have been more acrimonious were 
it not for a senior SPD member, Hans Ulrich Kluse, from Hamburg, who, 
at considerable political risk, put his reputation on the line to 
insist that his government try to make more cooperative pragmatic 
relations with the United States.
  At the time, I wondered why somebody would spend so much political 
capital to be pro-American, until I also realized that the references 
he always gave when he was speaking about America were to his 
experiences in the 1950s as a foreign exchange student in Clinton, 
Iowa. I also realized his experiences with real American families gave 
him an insight and friendship that no one can ever gain by watching 
America as purported by television and the movies.
  As I traveled that year as well as last year to Germany, I realized 
that those places in Germany that are extremely pro-American are those 
where they have the greatest contact with Americans. And in like 
manner, where anti-American attitude develops and proliferates is in 
those areas that have the least amount of contact, which may be one of 
the reasons why the Ambassador from the United States at that 
particular time was undertaking a prolonged and expensive initiative to 
try to increase the contact between Americans and Germans, especially 
Germans of school age. Such contacts, he thought, were the only way to 
improve Americans' image abroad and mitigate anti-American attitudes 
where they may be growing in the future.
  In fact, I found one constituent, who did not know my interest in 
this area, who wrote me. Martha, from Park City said, ``At a time when 
youth in strategic parts of the world such as the Middle East are 
confronted with dangerous cultural misunderstandings about the United 
States, youth exchange programs are uniquely suited to allow young 
people to experience an America unfiltered by Hollywood. These exchange 
participants frequently take home an understanding and often 
appreciation for America's people, society, and values.''
  She is right on. Every year we have the opportunity of sending 30,000 
ambassadors out into the world. And for 19 years, the host families of 
those 30,000 potential ambassadors have been receiving a tax deduction 
of $50, which is nice. But that is why I am happy to have joined with 
the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews) and nine others to sponsor 
H.R. 1504, which will change that $50 to $200. That is not enough to 
cover the expense of host families, but it is enough to encourage 
families to open their doors so that more kids can have the opportunity 
to experience an American way of life, which may indeed be the smartest 
foreign policy decision we could possibly make.
  With America and America's way of life under constant attack, both 
literally and rhetorically, it would be wise to do everything we could 
to encourage students of the world to experience what this country has 
to offer, return home, and then watch that influence tend to grow.
  If our image abroad is important to the spreading of democracy and to 
the defeat of terrorism, and I think it is, it is good to get the good 
kids of the world with those good families in America. And the payoff 
will be improved foreign policy options and relations 10 and 20 years 
from now. Such an investment would be wise.
  I would urge my colleagues to look at the details of H.R. 1504 and 
join us in planting seeds that can be reaped to the benefit of American 
foreign policy in the future.

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