The bill, the second major piece of security legislation approved in the chamber in response to the November 13 Paris attacks, passed by 407 to 19. “We know thousands of radicalized people with Western passports have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight with terrorists groups like ISIS, and the House is taking decisive action to close security gaps these foreign fighters could exploit”.
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It takes aim at the visa waiver program. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., said the bill is overbroad in stripping visa waiver privileges from all Syrian and Iraqi nationals and said it should include more exceptions for more people, such as journalists and researchers.
Begun in the 1980s, the visa-waiver program has been a highly successful way of boosting business travel and tourism.
Right now travelers under the visa waiver program are required to pass the electronic counter-terror screening system set up by the Department of Homeland Security. France and Belgium are among the countries that participate in the program. A different, Senate version of the bill is also in the works and is stricter than the House’s bill as it would prevent anyone who has traveled to Iraq or Syria from participating in the program for the next five years.
This bill would also bar travelers who have been to Iraq and Syria since March 2011 from availing the Visa Waiver Program.
Under the plans for improvement that achieved bipartisan support, there is a need to expand the criteria, which would determine if a country should be removed from the Visa Waiver Program.
Some lawmakers said they also planned to re-examine a visa that Tashfeen Malik used to come to the country.
The United States House of Representatives has voted in favor of implementing more strict rules on visa-free entry in the country, according to BBC News.
Prospective visitors are required to notify the United States government if they have travelled to any of the four banned countries, and undergo more intensive screening.
The bill, which passed with a 388 majority out of 426, was voted for following a series of would-be terrorists legally entering the United States without a visa.
The new laws mandate all visa waiver countries to check travellers against Interpol databases and issue fraud-resistant “e-passports” carrying biometric information and sharing of data on lost and stolen passports.
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“By putting tougher security measures in place to address the program’s weaknesses, we can better understand who is entering our country and keep foreign terrorists from reaching our homeland”.
