Federal Register / Vol. 74, No. 169 / Wednesday, September 2, 2009 / Proposed Rules 45385 

exempt the majority of small businesses 

from the survey. For most industries, 

the size standard used by the Small 

Business Administration (SBA) for 

designating businesses as ‘‘small’’ is 

based on receipts or employment. For 

the industries designated as small based 

on receipts, the SBA size standards, as 

published in the Table of Small 

Business Size Standards, are all 

significantly below $60 million; it is 

reasonable to assume that few, if any, of 

the businesses in these industries would 

have to file the BE–605. For industries 

where the small business size standard 

is based on employment, a direct 

comparison with the BE–605 reporting 

criteria is not possible because 

employment is not used as a reporting 

criterion and is not collected on the 

survey. However, after examining the 

employment-based standards, and 

under the assumption they are roughly 

comparable to the receipts-based 

indicators in terms of the size of firm 

that is to be designated as small, BEA 

has concluded that it is unlikely that 

many small businesses in these 

industries would be required to file the 

BE–605. For certain types of banking 

and finance companies, the SBA size 

standard is based on assets. 

Approximately 20 small businesses in 

these industries would be required to 

file the BE–605. This number represents 

a small percentage (0.5%) of the 

expected total number of 4,000 filers of 

the BE–605. Additionally, based on the 

estimated average burden of one hour 

per response per quarter, BEA estimates 

the total respondent burden for the BE– 

605 on these businesses would be only 

80 hours annually, while the total 

estimated respondent burden for all 

companies is 16,000 hours. 

Because few small businesses are 

subject to the reporting requirements, 

and because those small businesses that 

are subject to reporting are subject to 

minimal record keeping burdens, the 

Chief Counsel for Regulation certifies 

that this proposed rule will not have a 

significant impact on a substantial 

number of small entities. 

List of Subjects in 15 CFR Part 806 

Economic statistics, Foreign 

investment in the United States, 

International transactions, Penalties, 

Reporting and recordkeeping 

requirements. 

Dated: July 30, 2009. 

J. Steven Landefeld, 

Director, Bureau of Economic Analysis. 

For reasons set forth in the preamble, 

BEA proposes to amend 15 CFR part 806 

as follows: 

PART 806—DIRECT INVESTMENT 

SURVEYS 

1. The authority citation for 15 CFR 

part 806 continues to read as follows: 

Authority: 5 U.S.C. 301; 22 U.S.C. 3101– 

3108; E.O. 11961 (3 CFR, 1977 Comp., p. 86), 

as amended by E.O. 12318 (3 CFR, 1981 

Comp., p. 173), and E.O. 12518 (3 CFR, 1985 

Comp., p. 348). 

2. Section 806.15(h) is revised to read 

as follows: 

§ 806.15 Foreign direct investment in the 

United States. 

* * * * * 

(h) Quarterly report form. BE–605, 

Quarterly Survey of Foreign Direct 

Investment in the United States— 

Transactions of U.S. Affiliate with 

Foreign Parent: One report is required 

for each U.S. affiliate exceeding an 

exemption level of $60 million. 

* * * * * 

[FR Doc. E9–21132 Filed 9–1–09; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 3510–06–P 

DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

22 CFR Part 62 

[Public Notice: 6749] 

RIN 1400–AC56 

Exchange Visitor Program—Secondary 

School Students 

AGENCY: Department of State. 

ACTION: Advance notice of proposed 

rulemaking (ANPRM). 

SUMMARY: The Department seeks 

information on alternative and more 

specific means of screening potential 

families to host exchange visitors 

participating in the Secondary School 

Student category of the Exchange Visitor 

Program. Current regulations allow 

sponsors the flexibility to exercise their 

independent judgment when evaluating 

the financial resources, moral character, 

and composition of potential host 

families, as well as the suitability of 

potential home environments. The 

Department believes, however, that the 

lack of specificity or industry standards 

may have contributed to the recent 

degradation of the appropriateness of 

selected families, thereby putting at risk 

the health, safety, and welfare of this 

most vulnerable group of exchange 

visitors. 

DATES: The Department will accept 

comments from the public up to October 

2, 2009. 

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments, 

identified by any of the following 

methods: 

E-mail: JExchanges@state.gov. You 

must include the RIN in the subject line 

of your message. 

Mail (paper, disk, or CD–ROM 

submissions): U.S. Department of State, 

Office of Designation, SA–5, 5th Floor, 

2200 C Street, NW., Washington, DC 

20522–0505. 

Fax: 202–632–2701. 

Persons with access to the Internet 

may also view this notice and provide 

comments by going to the 

regulations.gov Web site at: http:// 

www.regulations.gov/index.cfm. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Stanley S. Colvin, Deputy Assistant 

Secretary for Private Sector Exchanges, 

U.S. Department of State, 2200 C Street, 

NW., SA–5, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 

20522–0505; or e-mail at 

JExchanges@state.gov. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The 

Department of State (‘‘Department’’) 

designates academic, government, and 

private sector entities to conduct 

educational and cultural exchange 

programs pursuant to a broad grant of 

authority provided by the Mutual 

Educational and Cultural Exchange Act 

of 1961, as amended. Under this 

authority, some 1,450 program sponsors 

facilitate the entry of more than 350,000 

exchange participants each year. 

Secondary school students—of which 

there were nearly 30,000 for the 2008– 

2009 academic year—have been a vital 

component of these exchange activities 

since 1956. This ANPRM is a general 

solicitation of public comments that 

seeks to gather input as to whether and, 

if so, how the Department should 

modify its regulations set forth in 22 

CFR 62.25(j) (Host Family Selection) to 

provide more specific guidance to 

sponsors for screening and selecting 

host families with whom they place 

students attending high school in the 

United States on the Exchange Visitor 

Program. 

The safety and security of these 

exchange student participants are of 

paramount importance to the 

Department. Although these students 

are generally 17 or even 18 years of age, 

some are as young as 15 and often away 

from home for the first time. Given the 

vulnerable status of such a population, 

most of whom are considered children 

under the laws of the 50 States where 

they are living and attending school, the 

Department modified the regulations 

governing this category of exchange in 

2006. The Department adopted a 

requirement that sponsors immediately 

report to the Department any incident or 

allegation involving the actual or 

alleged sexual exploitation or abuse of 

an exchange student participant. 


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45386 Federal Register / Vol. 74, No. 169 / Wednesday, September 2, 2009 / Proposed Rules 

Sponsors were also required to report 

such allegations pursuant to the local 

mandatory child abuse and neglect 

reporting laws all 50 States and the 

District of Columbia adopted pursuant 

to the Child Abuse Prevention and 

Treatment Act, 42 U.S.C. 5101 et seq. In 

addition, the Department adopted 

regulations that required sponsors to vet 

officers, employees, representatives, 

agents, and volunteers acting on their 

behalf who had direct personal contact 

with exchange students and any 

member of a potential host family 

household 18 years or older through 

criminal background checks. 

The Department has now had three 

years’ experience with host family 

placements following the 

implementation of these regulatory 

modifications. Although complaints 

about the inappropriate placement or 

actual mistreatment of these young 

participants represent the exception 

rather than the rule, there have been a 

sufficient number of incidents of such 

severity that the Department has 

determined that more specific guidance 

for host family selection may be 

appropriate. Current regulations set 

forth the minimum steps that sponsors 

must take to screen potential host 

families. Among other things, sponsors 

must utilize a standard application form 

to collect broad categories of 

information (22 CFR 62.25(j)(2)), 

conduct an in-person interview of all 

family members residing in the home 

(22 CFR 62.25(j)(3)), and obtain two 

personal character references from the 

‘‘school or community’’ for each host 

family. (22 CFR 62.25(j)(5)) They must 

also ascertain whether potential host 

families have adequate financial 

resources to undertake the hosting 

obligation (22 CFR 62.25(j)(6)), and they 

must verify that each member of the 

household 18 years or older has 

undergone criminal background checks. 

(22 CFR 62.25(j)(7)) Information 

gathered from commenting parties 

should allow the Department to 

determine whether it should clarify or 

strengthen these screening 

requirements. 

The current standard application form 

must provide ‘‘a detailed summary’’ of 

each family, its composition, and the 

home and community environments. A 

subjective verbal description of a 

physical environment, however, may 

not always present an accurate 

depiction. The widespread availability 

of digital camera technology (e.g., most 

cell phones have cameras) and the 

increased use of e-mail communications 

make it possible to obtain objective 

information about an exchange visitor’s 

potential new home with great ease and 

little cost. Requiring photographs of the 

interior and exterior of a potential 

home, including the student’s bedroom 

and the surrounding grounds, would 

complement any verbal description of 

the home and afford sponsors accurate 

information to use in assessing the 

suitability of the environment. The 

Department seeks information on 

whether sponsors’ field staffs have 

access to the equipment and technology 

necessary to photograph potential 

residences and incorporate the images 

into either hard copy or online host 

family applications. In the alternative, 

the Department asks commenting 

parties to suggest other means of better 

capturing and describing potential 

homes. 

The Department is aware that some 

field staffs allow relatives of potential 

host families to submit character 

references. In some instances, field 

staffs themselves serve as references. To 

ensure that character references were 

not biased, the Department recently 

reminded the sponsor community that 

the supplemental information 

accompanying the adoption of 

regulations governing secondary school 

student exchange programs explained 

that one potential host family reference 

should be from a member of the school 

community and the other, from the 

potential host family’s social, 

residential, or business community. 

Many sponsors expressed concern that 

some potential host families (e.g., 

‘‘empty nesters’’) were not known in 

school communities, and that some 

schools would not be willing to provide 

such references. As a result, the 

Department seeks information on how 

better to identify neutral and 

dependable persons to serve as 

character references for potential host 

families. Specifically, the Department 

asks whether there are certain limiting 

criteria (e.g., prohibiting local 

coordinators, other agents of the 

sponsors, or persons related to the host 

families by blood or marriage from 

serving as character references) or 

defining criteria (e.g., knowing the 

potential host families for a certain 

number of years) that would provide the 

most meaningful references for potential 

host families. Sponsors may wish to 

provide specific questions that they 

have found to elicit particularly 

insightful information about potential 

host families or otherwise share their 

‘‘best practices.’’ 

The Department has recently 

reminded the sponsor community that 

the public diplomacy underpinnings of 

the Exchange Visitor Program make it 

unacceptable for them to pay families to 

host students. This restriction reflects 

the statutory basis on which the entire 

program is founded. The Department is 

authorized, pursuant to the Mutual 

Educational and Cultural Exchange Act 

of 1961, 22 U.S.C. 2451 et seq., 

(Fulbright-Hays Act) to facilitate and 

direct educational and cultural 

exchange activities to develop and 

promote mutual understanding between 

the people of the United States and 

other countries of the world. Allowing 

sponsors to pay host families introduces 

an incentive that could replace the 

current motivation of host families, i.e., 

to further international understanding, 

to the potential detriment of the public 

policy intent of the Exchange Visitor 

Program. While this restriction may 

deny caring families with limited 

economic resources opportunities to 

participate in the program, the 

Department has steadfastly maintained 

this caveat to stay true to the purpose of 

the program as set forth in the FulbrightHays Act. As a result, sponsors must 

rely solely upon families’ incomes when 

assessing their financial eligibility to 

host exchange students. 

Determining whether families have 

adequate financial resources to host is 

not easy given the range of incomes of 

families in the United States, cost of 

living differences, and the inherently 

subjective views individuals have of 

what is a comfortable and nurturing 

home environment. Unfortunately, the 

Department has learned of situations in 

which sponsors have placed exchange 

visitors in unsuitable environments 

such as unsanitary or condemned 

homes and those without essential 

utilities. As a result, the Department 

seeks comment on how to objectively 

measure the minimum financial 

resources necessary for a family to host 

an exchange student. The Department 

asks sponsors to identify the singlepoint measures of income or series of 

indicators they currently use to assess 

financial eligibility of potential families. 

They may wish also to provide data on 

the percentage of their prior host 

families whose incomes met or 

exceeded such objective measures. The 

Department also seeks 

recommendations of alternative singlepoint measures or other accurate series 

of income indicators they may wish to 

adopt. Finally, the Department seeks 

comment on the impact the adoption of 

any of these objective measures might 

have on the ability of sponsors to place 

students. 

The Department is also studying 

whether we should adopt standards for 

the criminal background checks that all 

adult members of a potential host family 

must undergo. Currently, the 

Department has no specific requirement 


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Federal Register / Vol. 74, No. 169 / Wednesday, September 2, 2009 / Proposed Rules 45387 

with respect to this regulation. Instead, 

we have left it to the individual 

sponsors to exercise ‘‘those qualities of 

attention, knowledge, intelligence and 

judgment which society requires of its 

members for the protection of their own 

interest and the interests of others’’ (i.e., 

the ‘‘reasonable man’’ legal standard 

that has developed under case law) 

when deciding how much to spend for 

each background check, which 

commercial services to engage, or which 

databases to query. Most importantly, 

the Department does not dictate how 

sponsors should evaluate the results of 

these background checks, again 

allowing sponsors to apply the 

‘‘reasonable man’’ standard. The 

proliferation of media reports of 

American children being sexually 

abused across the nation, however, has 

escalated the Department’s concern that 

sponsors may not be doing enough to 

protect the foreign visitors entrusted to 

their care. 

Accordingly, the Department seeks 

information on the standards that other 

organizations use to deal with the safety 

and oversight of children to assess the 

suitability of volunteers or employees 

and the problems or benefits associated 

with adopting such practices. We also 

seek information on the identity of the 

service providers that current sponsors 

use, as well as the level and cost of the 

services obtained. Further, sponsors 

specifically are requested to recommend 

any Internet searches they may employ 

to supplement the formal background 

reports. Finally, we seek specific 

information from sponsors regarding 

their methods of evaluating the results 

of these reports, including identifying 

any acts that they believe render 

potential host families ineligible. 

Public Law 105–251, The Volunteers 

for Children Act (‘‘Act’’), amended the 

National Child Protection Act of 1993, 

42 U.S.C. 5119a, to allow organizations 

and businesses engaged in the care of 

other peoples’ children to use national 

fingerprint-based criminal history 

checks to screen out volunteers and 

employees with relevant criminal 

records. The Department seeks 

information on which, if any, State laws 

would consider a host family to be a 

‘‘qualified entity’’ as defined in the Act, 

thereby requiring sponsors to request 

national fingerprint-based checks of 

such volunteers. We seek comment on 

the costs and administrative effort that 

would result from requiring sponsors to 

vet adult members of potential host 

families through the FBI’s national 

fingerprint database and whether any 

sponsors have been using this approach. 

To the extent possible, parties should 

comment on whether there is a 

relationship between the cost of 

criminal background checks and the 

comprehensiveness and accuracy of the 

resulting reports. Sponsors should also 

provide information on the procedures 

they employ to obtain criminal 

background checks on adult members 

who join a household or children who 

turn 18 after an exchange visitor is 

placed in the home. The Department 

asks that sponsors also identify the 

criteria they use to determine when a 

frequent adult visitor in a home (e.g., a 

college student, grown child, or 

acquaintance of an adult family 

member) should also be vetted through 

the criminal background check process. 

The regulations also require sponsors 

to conduct an in-person interview with 

all family members residing in the 

home. The Department requests 

comment from sponsors regarding how 

they identify ‘‘all family members’’ 

residing in the home. They should 

specify whether they interview every 

adult who is vetted by a background 

check and whether they conduct 

multiple interviews if all family 

members are not available at the same 

time. Parties should comment on 

whether they believe that requiring such 

interviews to be conducted in the home 

provides additional insight into the 

family dynamic and its suitability to 

host an exchange student. 

The Department has never attempted 

to define a ‘‘family’’ for purposes of 

being eligible to host a foreign high 

school student. We take notice, 

however, of the fact that problematic 

placements often occur in homes of 

families that do not include a schoolaged child. As a result, we are 

considering regulations that require host 

families to be comprised of, at a 

minimum, one adult and one schoolaged child (natural, adopted, or foster) 

living in the home. Although this 

configuration would eliminate from the 

pool of host families a number of caring 

single adults or couples, such as 

‘‘empty-nesters,’’ the Department 

believes that the presence of a schoolaged child in a home may provide 

compensating advantages. The 

Department seeks information from 

sponsors on the configurations of 

families that have provided either 

successful or problematic placements in 

the past. We ask the sponsor community 

also to suggest alternative minimum 

configurations or to recommend 

extenuating circumstances under which 

minimum configurations might not be 

necessary to ensure appropriate 

placements. The Department asks 

parties to comment on the extent to 

which imposing more specific 

definitions of a family could impact the 

supply of potential host families and 

whether the increased suitability of 

selected families would compensate for 

the smaller pool of eligible host 

families. 

Finally, the Department encourages 

parties to comment on aspects of host 

family screening and selecting in 

addition to those specifically raised. For 

example, sponsors may wish to share 

the methods they use in identifying 

potential host families. More 

importantly, they may wish to 

enumerate the methods that their 

experiences have found to be 

problematic or that they believe may 

encourage inappropriate adults to agree 

to host high school students. Sponsors 

are especially encouraged to share their 

best practices with the Department to 

provide the entire industry with 

guidance on how best to protect the 

health, safety, and welfare of high 

school-aged foreign exchange students. 

Dated: August 27, 2009. 

Stanley S. Colvin, 

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Private Sector 

Exchanges, Bureau of Educational and 

Cultural Affairs, Department of State. 

[FR Doc. E9–21185 Filed 9–1–09; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 4710–05–P 

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION 

AGENCY 

40 CFR Parts 52 and 81 

[Docket: R02–OAR–2009–0508; FRL–8952– 

3] 

Approval and Promulgation of 

Implementation Plans; Puerto Rico; 

Guaynabo PM10 Limited Maintenance 

Plan and Redesignation Request 

AGENCY: Environmental Protection 

Agency (EPA). 

ACTION: Proposed rule. 

SUMMARY: EPA is proposing to approve 

the Limited Maintenance Plan for the 

Municipality of Guaynabo 

nonattainment area in Puerto Rico and 

grant the request by the Commonwealth 

of Puerto Rico to redesignate the area 

from nonattainment to attainment for 

National Ambient Air Quality Standards 

for particulate matter with an 

aerodynamic diameter less than or equal 

to a nominal 10 micrometers (PM10). 

On March 31, 2009, the Commonwealth 

of Puerto Rico submitted a Limited 

Maintenance Plan for the Guaynabo 

nonattainment area for approval and 

concurrently requested that EPA 

redesignate the Guaynabo 

nonattainment area to attainment for 

PM10. 


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