The Paris attacks provided impetus for Congress to revisit the visa waiver program, an attempt to tighten security and prevent terrorists from gaining easy entry to the country.
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An estimated 20 million foreigners a year travel to the US without going through the in-person interviews at American embassies and consulates that are required when getting a visa.
In the meantime, the White House said administration officials are talking to senators from both parties about the official visa waiver program changes, and have urged Congress to give Homeland Security additional powers for extra security measures, such as increasing fines for air carriers that fail to verify passport data, and requiring all travelers to use passports with embedded security chips. “Unless we take immediate steps to tighten-up the Visa Waiver Program, these individuals could exploit vulnerabilities and then enter the United States without a visa and do us harm”.
If the proposal goes ahead, British passport holders with older passports would have to renew their passports, at a cost of at least £72.50 each, if they want to travel to the US. “The refugee program as it is now exists is probably the most thorough, multilayered, time-consuming way for anyone to cross our borders, to come into this country”.
The Feinstein-Flake bill would also increase the fee charged by the United States to visa waiver travelers, now $14.
Travelers from countries that are not in the Visa Waiver Program pay $160 for a visa.
U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) are the lead sponsors of the bill.
Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is not calling for a stop to allowing Syrian refugees into the country, but she called the visa-waiver program “the soft underbelly of our national security”.
The most recent change came on Monday, when the department announced it would begin asking applicants whether they had traveled to countries that constitute “a terrorist safe haven”.
Legislative solution: Require biometric data to be provided by a foreign national prior to travel to the United States using the visa waiver program. Only individuals with machine-readable passports may travel using the Visa Waiver Program.
The administration outlined evaluations of waiver countries and terrorist information sharing to be completed by the Departments of Homeland Security and State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Another intended change would be to make sure that passengers were screened against a database of lost and stolen passports. For example, DHS and the Terrorist Screening Center will assist all interested VWP countries in screening refugees or asylum seekers, including through the application of extensive terrorism information already provided to VWP members and through piloting capability for conducting near real time biometric checks.
Require participation in the Visa Waiver Program be contingent on countries’ full implementation of information-sharing agreements, including agreements on foreign terrorists and those who have committed crimes. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) have signed on to the “Visa Waiver Program Security Enhancement Act” as cosponsors.
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Require DHS to consider a country’s ability to share information about foreign fighters with multiple countries and multilateral organizations, like INTERPOL.
