I am more concerned about the regularization of the nearly 12 million -through the McCain/Kennedy provisions- who are living in this country illegally that will occur if this bill is adopted. We allow these law breakers to continue to stay in our country and we're going to have a lot more to worry about than "brain drain."

Making it more difficult and costly to apply, much less attend, US institutions is shockingly short-sighted. The cultural knowledge and good will that comes from international education is a demonstrable key to the growth of healthy polities. I have been an active proponent of the Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholars program for many years. Senator Feinstein's action is harmful to the ideals and positive effects of this ornament of educational achievement. Furthermore, as a Californian I will write the Senator to this effect.

I'm all for encouraging foreign students to come here and study. The MBA program I am currently attending is definitely not lacking in international students, and I consider that to be one of the many benefits of the program.

I'm at a private, not public, university though.

DiFi will support increasing the H1Bs because Oracle et al count more than unemployed programmers because they give her more money.

Here in Washington State there is not enough room in our public universities for all the Washington State Students who want to attend, Under such conditions, I'm not sure if they should be letting in out-of-state students OR out-of-country students...

Sad but true in a government being drained dry to give tax cuts to millionaires...

This is like trying to fix a golf swing, with one error corrected by a counterbalancing error, which creates yet another error, none of which address that you can't swing a club in the first place.

The problem is that we, especially in the Golden State, have adopted the conventional wisdom that we can no longer afford to support public universities in the same way we did pre-Reagan. So we tinker with fees, incremental expansion, and tweak scholarship programs, generally losing ground as we go. Last year, we constricted the number of UC seats for the first time ever, never mind the number we'd need to keep up with population growth.

Nonsense. Either we re-embrace the principle set in the widely adopted pre-Reagan CA example to offer education to all qualified students, regardless of ability to pay, or we don't. And let's be honest about it, Senator Feinstein.

As a graduate student in the sciences who has sat in number of admissions committees/meetings, I can say that foreign students already have huge hurdles in coming to school in the U.S. (at least for graduate school). This is pretty unfortunate from Feinstein. It fails to address the long term issues inherent in the global economy.

I agree with Mr Clemons to the extent that the US needs to exert more control over its borders.

But there appears to be some sort of nationalist paranoia that extends and alienates "Smart, brilliant people beyond our borders [from] now electing not to try to get into this country anymore because the hurdles are too high."

There is a deep need for intellectual dynamism and innovation in the US, but we are making it more difficult to import new ideas while exporting war and the propaganda of shallow ideologies (democracy!). Domestic policies regarding foreigners should be even more active as our foreign policy regarding same; no doubt its easier to kill foreigners in foreign lands than to create cogent policy for foreigners in the homeland.

Graduate schools outside the US are the beneficiaries of the new US isolationism. As an example, non-US MBA schools are accepting increasing numbers of foreign students - paying full tuition - who would otherwise be at American schools. It is the same for Executive MBA programs and specialized programs designed for executives of one industry or one company. Their gain is America's loss.

How about our government looking into why all these immigrants are fleeing their homelands. Most probably human rights or lack-of-freedom-and-democracy issues driving them out. Seems that sanctions could be a solution in stemming this problem. Fat chance. Isn't it because our corporate industrial complex actually benefits from the undemocratic systems that these immigrants are fleeing from?

Without foreign students, our computer science classrooms would be deserted and our labs would be depopulated. I once had some admiration for DiFi, back when she was on the San Francisco Board of Supes but she has become more and more clueless over the decades.

In a country so proud of our competitive nature, an increase in restrictions on foreigners attending US Schools is ridiculous. Having lived overseas for a number of years, all of my colleagues view attending schools in the US among the highest honors one can achieve. The United States, to use one of President Bush's terms, has won more hearts and minds through foreign student attendance then we could ever begin to measure.

I have similar concerns about raising hurdles for foreign students to attend U.S. universities, but I have a related - but, to my knowledge, undiscussed - corrollary question.

In what ways is the U.S. encouraging its students to take advantage of educational opportunities in other countries?

Just reading the daily media reminds us how shockingly parochial this country is. Those foreign students who do attend our universities mitigate this in a small way, but much more could be accomplished if U.S. students routinely attended universities in Europe, Japan and China, and took advantage of semester programs in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere.

When its been only a decade since Republican members of Congress applauded themselves for not even possessing a passport, and more recent since we blew our international political capital post-9/11, a serious effort should be made to pushing the kids out of the cradle and into the "real world"

The UK's Halle orchestra just cancelled a tour for the stated reason that US visa requirements are too onerous and that's just for a brief visit, not to study for a couple of years.

The UK's longest-established symphony orchestra has abandoned plans for a US tour because of the time and money needed to secure visas for its players.

Manchester's Halle Orchestra required 100 work permits at a cost of £45,000.

These could only be obtained from the US embassy in London, 185 miles away, where each member of staff would have been interviewed and fingerprinted.

Marketing director Andy Ryans said the orchestra "simply couldn't bear" the visas fees or the 100 trips to London.

The USA is cutting off its nose to spite its face - if it wasn't already on the verge of becoming a second-rate cultural pariah state, your current idiot leaders would finish the job.

I've been hearing that it's been getting harder for US Citizens to get into universities because money hungry schools are giving preference to the foreign students that pay more.

Another rumored problem is from foreign students coming here for school, working for a year or two in American companies while making copies of IP(intellectual property) like schematics and software, then going back to their home countries to compete with the same US businesses.