Travel Industry Looking to Block Restrictions on Visa Waiver Program

“The problem is the European communities, which are generally all visa waiver communities”, Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said Wednesday after exiting a closed-door briefing with homeland security officials. The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote Thursday on legislation addressing the security concerns.

But while one of the attackers might have posed as a Syrian refugee to re-enter Europe, the other terrorists appear to have been French or Belgian citizens.

The Visa Waiver Program, or VWP, was established in established in 1986 and now allows about 20 million travelers into the country annually that would otherwise have to secure a visa. “That has lawmakers anxious”. They would still be allowed to visit but would have to obtain a traditional visa, which involves submitting to an interview at a US embassy or consulate.

While the attention in Washington this week has focused largely on whether to keep accepting Syrian refugees into the United States, a few lawmakers in addition to Paul have begun looking at reforming the visa waiver framework.

The bill would also change fingerprinting requirements for those covered by the visa waiver program.

Staples says there are indications that following this year’s attacks, France and the rest of Europe are moving toward a more concerted effort to share data.

Further complicating things for Ryan, four House Republicans called on Tuesday for suspending all refugee resettlement programs, not just those covering people applying to leave Iraq and Syria. When Americans themselves visit those participating countries without filling out any paperwork, they typically don’t dwell on the global negotiations that made such frictionless travel possible.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “the visa waiver program potentially is the place where there’s greater gaps possibly than the refugee program itself”, according to The Hill. The U.S.travel industry doesn’t like the idea. “That was the proper instinct then and it remains so now”, U.S. Travel Association President Roger Dow said after Sen.

Since 2012, there have been 1,854 Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. President Obama has said that we will take in an additional 10 thousand in the fiscal year 2016.

A separate bill from Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, introduced legislation Thursday to close a loophole in federal law that allows foreigners who have come to the USA under the visa waiver program to purchase and carry guns (foreigners who do not come from visa waiver countries are prohibited from purchasing guns).

The Kentucky senator’s legislation would also impose a waiting period on visa processing for travelers from other countries.

“Were I in Europe already, and I wanted to go the United States, and were I not on a watch list or a no-fly list and I wanted to get there, the likelihood is I would use the visa waiver program before I would try to pawn myself off as a refugee”, said Sen.

“That’s particularly a concern for those who are maybe born in France or Germany or Britain who have traveled to Iraq or Syria in the past five years”.

Following deadly attacks against satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo last January in Paris, U.S. lawmakers grew increasingly concerned about the travel freedoms afforded to nationals of 38 countries, including 23 in the European Union, plus Australia, Chile, Japan, Norway, Singapore and others.