The 38 countries who participate in the visa waiver program with the United States would be “required to share counterterror information with the USA or face expulsion from the program”.
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The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly December 8 to tighten restrictions on travelers to the United States who have visited Iraq, Iran, Syria, or Sudan. Foreign travelers would also be denied via waivers if they are citizens of the aforementioned countries.
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It comes after the Obama administration was angered when the House approved legislation last month cracking down on the Syrian refugee programme in the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks.
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Travelling to the USA could soon be a lot more complicated for Australians, after the United States passed a bill to limit the ease of obtaining a visa in response to growing terrorist threats to the nation. Belgium and France, home to most of the perpetrators of the Paris attacks, are among the participating countries.
– Requiring countries to use e-passports to help prevent extremists from using fraudulent documents. The Homeland Security Department has already announced a review of that program.
He added, “Moreover, it requires anyone who recently visited a country of concern to obtain a visa before traveling to the United States”.
Action on the visa waiver program is one of several issues Obama called for Congress to accomplish in his Oval Office speech Sunday night.
“House Democrats and House Republicans have no greater priority than keeping Americans safe”, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking House Democrat, said while urging support for the measure. Candice Miller, a Republican congresswoman who drafted the bill said: “That really is a big thing”.
The strong vote in the House could put momentum behind efforts to include changes to the program in the omnibus spending package – a must-pass bill that lawmakers are trying to finalize before government funding expires on Friday.
Senators Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, and Feinstein have introduced separate legislation in the Senate.
Begun in the 1980s, the visa-waiver program has been a highly successful way of boosting business travel and tourism. The fact that 5,000 European Union citizens who have travelled to Iraq, Syria and other hotbeds of terror in order to fight with ISIS are able to come to the U.S.so easily is a testament to how desperately we need to update our entire immigration and visa system.
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“This bill will do some good, but it’s mostly evadable”, said Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California.
