House Just Made Big Move To Tighten Controls On Travel To US (Video)

The House voted overwhelming on Tuesday to tighten travel into the U.S. under the so-called “visa waiver” program, which requires visas from anyone who has traveled to Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Sudan in the last five years.

By a 407-to-19 margin, the House passed the measure with broad bi-partisan support and the White House has indicated that the president backs the legislation, as well.

The 38 countries who participate in the visa waiver program with the United States would be “required to share counterterror information with the U.S. or face expulsion from the program. All travelers would be checked against Interpol databases, and visa waiver countries would be required to issue ‘e-passports’ with biometric information,” Fox News reports. 

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

“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. “Those are gaps that we need to fix.”

Fox News reports:

Some 20 million visitors come to the U.S. annually under the visa waiver program. They already are screened through an online system maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, and the White House has recently announced a series of improvements to that and other aspects of the program.

But in past years, the program has been used by would-be terrorists, including “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, who boarded a flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001 without a visa and attempted to set off a bomb. Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20th hijacker” from 9/11, also flew from London to Chicago with a French passport and no visa in February 2001, according to a Homeland Security Inspector General report from 2004.

One of the 19 who voted against the visa reform was the nation’s only Muslim member of the House, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who said the bill was overly broad. “Our focus should be on terrorism, not just country or origin,” he said. 

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the Democrats’ ranking member on the House Committee on Homeland Security, disagreed stating, “This is a good bill, it’s one that’s time has come.”

The bi-partisan vote to reform the visa waiver program comes in the aftermath of last month’s Paris attacks and the San Bernadino shooting last Friday. Lawmakers are also looking into potential changes to the fiancee visa program, which San Bernadino shooter Tashfeen Malik took advantage of to gain access into the country.