Basically, the department runs an $18-million loan program for immigrants, and this is part of an annual review process that we go through when we assess the collectibility of these debts. On average, we collect over 90% of the debts, but there are some debts due to bankruptcy, small amounts, and so forth, that we go through and assess the collectibility of in accordance with the proper accounting procedures, and we write off the ones where we figure that the cost of collection activity would be more than actual debt, or that the recovery rate is so low that we write them off. So this is the write-off process that we do every year.
On November 7th, 2006. See this statement in context.