A bill to bolster U.S. visa security is headed to the House floor, and the Texas congressman leading the effort says it will enable the U.S. to have “the right tools in the right places.”
“The reality is, the origination point of the threat hasn’t changed since 9/11,” Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, told the Washington Examiner. “That means we need to be putting the same level of scrutiny in Europe as we have in other places in the past.”
The 10-page proposal, H.R. 5253, or the “Strong Visa Integrity Secures America Act,” is aimed at strengthening visa screening procedures and closing potential loopholes, said Hurd, a former CIA officer.
After participating in a task force that studied people fleeing overseas to fight for terrorist organizations, Hurd noted that one of the key findings was discovering visa security units were not being used in the necessary places.
Pointing to recent attacks in Brussels and Paris, Hurd said terrorist threats are more likely to come from people using a European passport and traveling through Europe’s legal system as opposed to the Middle Eastern region.
Specifically, Hurd said, his legislation would assign trained officers to 50 U.S. consular and diplomatic posts overseas. Currently, more than 75 U.S. embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions are located in places such as France, Germany and other countries in the Europe-Asia region where Hurd said efforts must focus on enhancing security protocols.
In Middle Eastern nations such as Iraq, Syria and Libya, the U.S. has 28 posts.
The proposal, which passed the House Homeland Security Committee with bipartisan support on June 8, also includes a method of assigning officers to posts on risk-based criteria.
Those include the number of terrorists identified by the U.S. based in a particular country, and that country’s level of cooperation in counterterrorism efforts. Other contributing factors can include a country’s border and immigration situation, as well as available information on known terrorism activity.
“The idea of the criteria is, things may change and evolve, and if we have resources, we should make sure our resources are in the right place based on the threat picture at the time,” Hurd said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection would also be required to electronically screen passports within one year of the bill’s signing into law. The agency would be required to use facial recognition and biometric technology when possible.
Hurd said the electronic screening measures shouldn’t create an increase in funding requirements, because passports already have the needed embedded chip technology. Additional costs associated would be offset by the budget before being brought to the House floor for a vote.
“All this stuff is already coded into our actual passports, into individuals’ passports,” Hurd said. “We should be using that tool to make sure the person in front of us is indeed the person on the passport, right?”
Another provision in the legislation calls for the information within the student and exchange visitor information system to be more easily available to primary inspection CBP officers at U.S. Customs and Immigration locations, and Hurd calls the measure a “very simple technical fix.”
Student visas, sometimes called I-20s, are a specific form for nonimmigrant student travelers that are accessible only to secondary inspection point CBP officers. Not every incoming individual is sent to a secondary point, which is often located in a separate part of the airport.
“There’s a whole host of reasons why someone would come through a port of entry and have to go through a second inspection, so we want to make sure that that person in front has the latest I-20 form,” Hurd said.
Hurd’s background on national security began in 2000 when he joined the CIA as an undercover officer and gathered intelligence in the Middle East and South Asia. Hurd retired from the CIA after a nine-year tenure and became a senior adviser at a cybersecurity firm.
Hurd said he was encouraged by the bill’s momentum, with organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Travel Association announcing their support over the past month. He added that he wanted to continue ensuring the safety of Americans throughout the process.
“We’re allowing folks to come, stay in our hotels, eat in our restaurants, visit, see our great monuments,” Hurd said. “They’re able to get here, but we got to keep the bad guys out.”
