Read An XML File In To SQL Server?

Iam using VB.net to read an XML file in to SQL server. I am using VBs XML parser to read nodes, elements, etc. When an element's value contains a LE symbol and I insert the string in SQL, the resultant SQL record contains an Equal sign and not an LE.

I cannot examine the string for this character before inserting into SQL because I cannot find an ANSII equivalent. Normally I could find it with iPositiion = Instr("XML String", chr(??)). That does not work because there does not seem to be a number for the ?? that represents a LE. Someone suggested using 263 but that is a small o with a accent. iPosition = Instr("XML String", chr(263)) returns a -1, i.e. chr(263) was not found.