A top House Republican on the homeland security committee warns that the visa waiver program poses a threat to the United States.
The program permits visa-free travel access to the U.S. from allied nations, where the Islamic State is busy recruiting new members, said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich.
Miller, vice chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in Saturday’s GOP address that the visa-waiver program is “a glaring hole we have to close.”
“The members of ISIS will use every means within their power to attack our country. And that’s why we have to use every mean within our power to defend it,” she said.
Thirty-eight countries are currently members of the visa-waiver program, including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Japan and South Korea. According to the White House, 20 million people visit the U.S. a year using the program, and are allowed to stay in the U.S. up to 90 days.
After last month’s terror attacks in Paris, President Obama ordered the Homeland Security Department to track whether visa waiver applicants have traveled to a country known for being a haven to terrorists.
The order doesn’t go far enough, Miller said, because other countries do not share the information they have on possible threats. For instance, the U.S. had no intelligence on a gunman who tried to overrun a Paris-bound train in August, though European authorities had been tracking him for some time, Miller said.
A bill being worked on by House Republicans would aim to quell such threats. Any country participating in the visa waiver program would have to share any information on terror threats, or else lose its citizens lose their visa-free travel privileges. The legislation would end the privilege for western passport holders if they have traveled to Iraq, Iran, Syria or Sudan, which are known breeding grounds for terrorism.
Miller said the bill would also codify DHS’ new practice of collecting more biographical data on applicants before they can travel to the U.S. visa-free.
“[A]s Americans, we live in a free and open society, and terrorists are looking for any and every opportunity to exploit those freedoms and use them against us, so we need to think clearly,” Miller said.
