House Votes to Restrict Travel by Foreigners Who Visited Iraq, Syria- Measure passed 407-19; expected to be wrapped into spending bill and become law By Siobhan Hughes
http://www.wsj.com/articles/house-votes-to-tighten-visa-waiver-program-1449613891
WASHINGTON—The House overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday to limit certain travel privileges granted to citizens of 38 friendly foreign countries, the first step in what lawmakers expect will be a larger response to an evolving terrorist threat.
The terror attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris have prompted a new emphasis on security but left lawmakers struggling to determine the appropriate response. The strikes reach into so many different policy areas—travel, guns, technology, mental health, immigration and intelligence—that coming up with a comprehensive plan has been challenging.
Instead, a piece-by-piece approach appears to be emerging. The initial step was legislation to put some restrictions on the visa-waiver program, which allows travelers from the 38 mostly European and Asian nations to enter the U.S. without obtaining a visa. The measure would ban people from those nations who had traveled to places including Iraq or Syria since March 2011 without first getting a visa.
The bill, which passed 407-19, is supported by the White House and is expected to be wrapped into a must-pass spending bill and become law by year’s end.
ENLARGE Under the bill, the U.S. government also could suspend from the program any country that failed to provide terrorism-related information to the U.S. in a timely manner. Travelers would also have to have passports, like those issued in the U.S., that contain biometric and other data to make them fraud-resistant.
“We live in a free and open society,” said Rep. Candice Miller (R., Mich.), the author of the measure, which is also supported by the White House. “But you have the enemies of freedom who are using our freedoms against us. We have to think clearly about what we can do to mitigate any vulnerability that we have.”
Congress put its focus on the visa-waiver program after the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris, the perpetrators of which included Europeans who had been radicalized after visits to Syria. The concern was that the relative ease of travel between the U.S. and 38 favored nations left American authorities with no way to filter out citizens who had been radicalized abroad.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D., Calif.) said that Congress might have to tighten the visa-waiver program further. The new restrictions would be “mostly evadable,” he said, because most foreign fighters enter Syria through Turkey, where their passports are stamped. He also said that European nations would be unlikely to share with the U.S. large lists of citizens who had traveled to Iran or Syria because of their own privacy rules.
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The range of ideas being pushed in Congress appears to represent the most significant discussion about security since the September 2001 attacks led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and ushered in new restrictions on air travel.
Besides restricting participation in the visa-waiver program, lawmakers are also contemplating whether to require new preclearance procedures in a traveler’s country of origin. Also under scrutiny is the practice of staying in the U.S. beyond the period permitted by a visa, and the visa program through which Tashfeen Malik, the Pakistani national who, with her husband, shot county workers last week in San Bernardino, entered the country.
As after Sept. 11, common ground is difficult because strengthening security can end up infringing on a right or privilege that some groups hold dear. A Democratic proposal to ban the sale of guns to people on the government’s watch list draws Republican opposition because of concern that people erroneously on the watch list would lose gun rights. A House-passed bill to halt the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S. and overhaul the screening process has drawn the condemnation of the White House and Senate Democrats for going too far.
With each side jockeying to have its position heard, Democrats and Republicans appeared to be working to find compromise on the Syrian refugee program, with both sides seeing signs of a possible agreement to add into the spending bill a modified version of the measure that passed the House.
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