Home tightens controls on visa-free travel to US

“You have more than 5,000 individuals that have Western passports in this program that have gone to Iraq or Syria in the last five years”, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy stated.

Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., the bill’s original sponsor, said key provisions of the measure would beef up requirements for intelligence sharing by participating nations by giving the secretary of Homeland Security the authority to suspend or terminate a foreign country’s participation if concerns are triggered about intelligence sharing.

In response to the Paris attacks on November 13, 2015, this bill is the second major security legislation approved in the chamber.

The White House also supports the legislation, which could reportedly end up attached to the year-end spending bill now being finalized in Congress. One of the San Bernardino attackers had come to the U.S. on a fiancee visa but didn’t participate in the State Department’s visa waiver program. It could mean either hundreds of airports in other countries would be required by the US government to install biometric stations to comply, or travelers would have to visit the USA consulate before traveling-just as they would for a visa interview.

The bill also would require other countries to use passports with electronic chips that confirm a person’s identity and require countries report lost or stolen passports to Interpol within 24 hours or risk being suspended from the visa-waiver program.

“This will help neutralize the threat from foreign terrorists entering our country”, House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Tuesday.

Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said the measure was too arbitrary and should make exceptions for aid workers and dual nationals.

“Around 20 million visitors come to the USA each year on the visa waiver program, and overhauling it has emerged as an area of unusual bipartisan agreement amid partisan sniping over Syrian refugees and President Barack Obama’s larger anti-terror strategy”, The Associated Press reported.

Her husband, Syed Farook, who was also shot dead by police, was a U.S. citizen who carried out the attack at the San Bernardino developmental-disabilities center with Malik, officials said.

Senators Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, and Feinstein have introduced separate legislation in the Senate. Heritage Foundation research shows [the program] is a tremendous boon to US security and while any program can and should be improved, doing away with the VWP would harm USA security.

House Democrats staged a protest Tuesday over a recent rejection of their measure to ban those on the no-fly list from buying guns, forcing a series of floor votes to call attention to the issue and delaying the vote on the waiver program.