Visa-waiver program hurts U.S. security

[WifeOHunkyJohn 2]

Visa-waiver program hurts U.S. security

By Rosemary Jenks

Article Launched: 08/13/2007 07:08:30 PM PDT

TO fully appreciate the gift Congress just sent al-Qaida, recall the Christmas season of 2001.

On Dec. 22 of that year, American Airlines Flight 63 was somewhere over the Atlantic, carrying 197 passengers from Paris to Miami, when a stewardess noticed a man lighting matches. As strange as it seemed, it looked like he was trying to set his shoelaces on fire. When she tried to stop him, he bit her.

Fast-moving passengers - 9/11 fresh in their minds - flew to the aid of this stewardess. They subdued the match-lighter and lashed him to his seat.

Ten months later, Richard C. Reid - aka the "shoe bomber" - stood in a federal court and defiantly admitted attempting to blow Flight 63 out of the sky. "I'm a member of Al Qaeda," he said. "I pledge to Osama bin Laden and I'm an enemy of your country, and I don't care."

Who gave this murderous fanatic a U.S. visa? Truth be told, no one. Under a loophole in the immigration law called the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), all Reid needed as a British citizen to put himself in a position to murder a plane-full of Americans was to purchase a ticket on a U.S.-bound flight.

According to The London Daily Telegraph, a laptop captured in Afghanistan contained evidence indicating al-Qaida clearly understood the benefits of Reid's citizenship. "His British passport was described as perfect cover," the paper said.

Reid was not the only al-Qaida terrorist who exploited VWP. "In addition," said a 9/11 commission staff report on terrorist travel, "Zacarias Moussaoui, an Al Qaeda operative suspected of being primed as a possible pilot in the 9/11 plot, entered the United States on Feb. 23, 2001, from London, England, using a French, `visa waiver' passport."

Moussaoui was arrested in August 2001 for staying longer than the 90 days he was routinely granted when he arrived in Chicago with this French passport. As Moussaoui later admitted in court, he sat in jail for three weeks declining to warn U.S. authorities of the attacks that were about to happen.

Congress started VWP as a pilot program in 1986. It was designed to facilitate tourism and reduce the workload of State Department consular officers who vet foreign nationals applying for visas.

Originally, it applied to only eight countries, but was eventually expanded to 27.

In 2000, Congress made VWP permanent.

Even though VWP aided al Qaeda terrorists Reid and Moussaoui, President Bush announced last fall that he wanted to expand the program and use it to reward our allies in the war on terror with visa-free travel to the United States. Not surprisingly, that decision flabbergasted former Department of Homeland Security Inspector

General Clark Kent Ervin. "We ought to be ending this visa-waiver program not expanding it," he told USA Today. "There's a reason why terrorists are keen to obtain passports from visa-waiver countries: They don't have to undergo extensive background checks."

Last week, Congress sided with Bush. It sent him a bill, ostensibly designed to fulfill the remaining recommendations of the 9/11 commission, which includes provisions making it easier for countries to join the visa-waiver list.

In typical Washington fashion, congressional backers of expanding the Shoe-Bomber Loophole say it will "strengthen" security. The bill, they point out, says VWP expansion cannot happen until DHS establishes an electronic system for tracking when aliens leave the country at airports and that countries cannot be added to the visa-waiver list unless they are helping the U.S. on counterterrorism matters and meet certain minimal standards for the rate of overstays by their nationals, the rate at which visas have been refused to their nationals, the security of their passports and their willingness to promptly accept repatriation of their nationals ordered removed from the United States.

Even some of these provisions have loopholes, however. DHS, for example, has already abandoned plans to electronically monitor the exit of foreign nationals at land borders (as opposed to airports), so the bill will not create a system that allows the government to really know which aliens have left the country and which have not. The bill also vastly increases the acceptable "visa-refusal" rate for countries added to the visa-waiver list. Under current law, a country cannot have had 2 percent or more of its nationals refused U.S. visas if it wants to be added to the list. That jumps to 10 percent under this bill.

In other words, if nine out of 100 applicants from country "X" were denied visas because they were suspected terrorists, country "X" would still qualify for visa-waiver listing.

That's nuts. If Congress is serious about protecting American against terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, the Shoe-Bomber Loophole should be closed.

Rosemary Jenks is with Numbers USA, an immigration reform group with more than 500,000 activists nationwide.

[almaty 19]

yeah, seal the borders. ..

oh wait, we have had our own citizens arrested for terrorism too...limit travel for americans on planes too..

[thesnowman 1]

What a load of nonsense The VWP is a good program which if canceled would greatly reduce the amount of tourist coming to America. Also to suggest that all the people getting refused a visa is a terrorist is crazy. Most people that i have heard about getting refused is because they cant provide enough evidence of ties to there own country, not because they are friends with Bin Laden.

Also the shoe bomber had a clean record and if he had to apply for a tourist visa, he would have got one. It also might make it harder to track terrorist if they cant use the VWP as they will then gain entry via other means, probably coming in illegally via Mexico.

[SteveLaura 0]

American business won't allow the VWP to end. Make it more difficult for people to come here? Great for the tourist economy!

[mawilson 2,133]

Even though VWP aided al Qaeda terrorists Reid and Moussaoui, President Bush announced last fall that he wanted to expand the program and use it to reward our allies in the war on terror with visa-free travel to the United States. Not surprisingly, that decision flabbergasted former Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin. "We ought to be ending this visa-waiver program not expanding it," he told USA Today. "There's a reason why terrorists are keen to obtain passports from visa-waiver countries: They don't have to undergo extensive background checks."

Bush wants to expand the program to include Poland, a 99.999% white Christian country.

Let's face it-- you're not going to find a single Muslim terrorist with a Polish passport.

[KaiserD 12]

I think I read something similar in the Daily Mail back in january.

More fear mongering. Yay

I think it's funny they refer to it as a "loophole" like some accidental thing they forgot to address when discussing foreign visitors.

[russ 1]

American business won't allow the VWP to end. Make it more difficult for people to come here? Great for the tourist economy!

The voters here in Florida (a fairly important state in a presidential election) will never let that happen. Europeans buy a good chunk of real estate here. Lots of tourists too.

[mawilson 2,133]

The voters here in Florida (a fairly important state in a presidential election) will never let that happen. Europeans buy a good chunk of real estate here. Lots of tourists too.

So what? All they have to do is apply for a tourist visa and pass background checks.

[russ 1]

So what? All they have to do is apply for a tourist visa and pass background checks.

Every time you want to go away for the weekend?

Does a realtor want to hear "Sure I'll buy that condo, but I'm waiting for my tourist visa to be approved?" Is someone more likely to buy a place when they need a visa to see it? When there are plenty of places (Spain, Bahamas, Greece...) where they don't? They will have the added hassle of family and friends needing visas for them to visit. And we are talking about the multi-million dollar vacation homes here, the type used by people who do bring friends at the last minute.

Planning a vacation at the last minute will be impossible.

Even the passport requirement for going to Mexico has been a nightmare for real estate developers working there. They book appointments for buyers, who can't travel for months with the passport backlog. They end up flying to Arizona and driving. This is a major inconvenience, and does nothing to improve security.

Imagine what the backlog would be for former VWP visas. If they go quickly, it would just tell us that they aren't really checking anything. If they do a thorough job, it will take forever. And of course, VWP countries will retaliate by requiring visas for all Americans. Most of the business trips I have taken across the Atlantic have been on less than 2 days notice.

We ALREADY screen arriving air passengers for outstanding warrants and criminal records in the US.

[mawilson 2,133]

So what? All they have to do is apply for a tourist visa and pass background checks.

Every time you want to go away for the weekend?

No, just once. UK citizens who are not eligible for VWP travel already get 10-year visas,

I believe they want to introduce life-time visas.

[cartaverde 12]

I love the French attitude : when French are required to go thru some visa BS to enter or to live in some country, the people from that some country will have to go thru the same visa BS to be able to visit or to live in France.

So get France out of the VWP - and suddenly the Americans will require a visa for visiting France. If they want to remove the VWP for any country, that is the only reasonable way.

I find it interesting that Saudi Arabia is still in VWP. Considering the amount of the hijackers of 9/11 having Saudi citizenship and passport. Most were in with a visa, but even if they would not have been, they had easy access with VWP. I guess Saudi Arabia has way too much money in the US for anyone making a move to remove them from the VWP.

[mawilson 2,133]

I find it interesting that Saudi Arabia is still in VWP.

You do? That's odd because Saudi Arabia is not (nor has it ever been) in VWP.

Visa Waiver Program - Participating Countries.

1. Andorra
   
2. Australia
   
3. Austria
   
4. Belgium
   
5. Brunei
   
6. Denmark
   
7. Finland
   
8. France
   
9. Germany
   
10. Iceland
    
11. Norway
    
12. Ireland
    
13. Italy
    
14. Japan
    
15. Liechtenstein
    
16. Luxembourg
    
17. Monaco
    
18. the Netherlands
    
19. New Zealand
    
20. Portugal
    
21. San Marino
    
22. Singapore
    
23. Slovenia
    
24. Spain
    
25. Sweden
    
26. Switzerland
    
27. United Kingdom
    

[Stabu 0]

You do? That's odd because Saudi Arabia is not (nor has it ever been) in VWP.

That's because it's not on the list. VWP list is yearly checked and only the countries apply in which less than 3% of applied visas are denied. There's currently a law pending about lifting this limit from 3% to 7%. This change would qualify Cyprus, Greece, Estonia, Taiwan and a few others on the VWP list (Saudi Arabia wouldn't be one of them).

[Mrs.J06 4]

The voters here in Florida (a fairly important state in a presidential election) will never let that happen. Europeans buy a good chunk of real estate here. Lots of tourists too.

So what? All they have to do is apply for a tourist visa and pass background checks.

I agree, the practical implications wouldn't even be so bad. Business travellers and tourists would just apply for multiple entry multi-year visas.

It's more the psychological side that bothers me. It would be perceived as a slap in the face by many Europeans. This has been discussed before, and the reaction in my home country was usually "really? well, then I'll just go somewhere else with my holiday budget..."

[Fandango 1,439]

So what? All they have to do is apply for a tourist visa and pass background checks.

Every time you want to go away for the weekend?

Does a realtor want to hear "Sure I'll buy that condo, but I'm waiting for my tourist visa to be approved?"

however, I'd send a virtual tour of the prop and give them wiring instructions for the money, and order the closing as a mailaway

....see problem solved

Actually, I agree that the VWP is a good thing and should not be abolished.