The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee is questioning the Obama administration about its efforts to weaken the visa application process, considering the growing terrorist threat from foreign fighters taking advantage of U.S. visa laws.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on Wednesday sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry accusing the State Department of trying to “water down” the law by expanding waivers of a required interview component of the application process.
A State Department official said Kerry had yet to receive Grassley’s letter. “Once we receive the letter, we will respond as appropriate,” the official told the Washington Examiner.
Prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, there were looser visa requirements and U.S. authorities had interviewed only two of the 15 hijackers from Saudi Arabia before those attacks. Congress reacted by changing the visa rules to ensure that consular officers interview in person all applicants for visas between the ages of 14 and 79, with very few exceptions.
In 2012, however, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the rules much more flexible by allowing an exemption from the visa interview requirement if the secretary deems it to be “in the national interest of the United States to do so.”
Grassley argued that Secretary Clinton “exploited” the exemption to designate entire categories of visa applicants from the visa interview requirement.
“The primary ‘national interest’ upon which such class-wide exemptions were based appeared to be nothing more than reduction of visa application wait times and facilitation of travel by foreign visitors,” Grassley said in a letter to Kerry.
He pointed out that one well-known immigration lawyer’s website cheered the program as a welcome reversion to the “pre-September 11th era.”
Now, Grassley argues, the State Department is set to further expand the exemptions in a new proposed regulation the agency issued in November.
“This administration appears intent to circumvent the law and ignore the safeguards that Congress has put in place to prevent terrorists from coming to our shores,” Grassley said.
Grassley asked Kerry a series of questions about the new and existing exemptions, asking him to describe the classes of visa applicants that are eligible for the waivers and the consular posts where such interview waivers are in effect.
He also wanted to know how many interviews have been waived in the past five years, and whether the department collects fingerprints despite waiving in-person interviews.
