Chairman Goodlatte Floor Statement on H.R. 158, the “Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2014”

Chairman Goodlatte: I support H.R. 158, the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015. The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) allows nationals of 38 countries to travel to the U.S. for a maximum of 90 days for business or tourism purposes, without obtaining a visa. The travelers must present a valid machine-readable passport and meet certain other immigration and security requirements. In order to be designated a VWP country, a nation must offer reciprocal visa-free travel to U.S. citizens, agree to share security-related information such as whether citizens of that country traveling to the U.S. represent a threat to U.S. security or welfare, and agree to timely report lost and stolen passports, and have less than a three percent visa-refusal rate in the year prior to designation years, among other requirements. The VWP was created in 1986 as a way to promote and facilitate travel and tourism to the United States. And it has done just that with hundreds of millions of foreign nationals traveling to the U.S. since the program’s implementation. So the positive effects of the VWP on the U.S. economy should not be understated. Yet no amount of economic stimulation is worth risking the lives of our constituents. And recent events around the world necessitate changes to the VWP in order to help ensure its safety. Of particular concern is the rise of ISIS in the Middle East, and the large number of Europeans and other nationalities who have gone to Syria, Iraq and other countries of concern in order to train and fight alongside ISIS and the radical Islamist terrorists. With their VWP country passports, those terrorists can board a plane bound for the U.S. and can reach U.S. shores with relative ease. In VWP cases, there is no in-person interview with a U.S. consular officer. And there is no pre-travel enhanced screening. So we must help make sure that the VWP is as secure as possible. H.R. 158 takes constructive steps in this direction with provisions preventing dual nationals of, or those who have recently traveled to, Iraq, Syria or other countries of concern, from visa-free travel to the U.S. And among other security enhancements, the bill requires VWP countries to issue ePassports to their nationals and continuously share terrorism and foreign traveler data with us. The VWP is only one part of the national discussion that we should be having. There are Islamist terrorists looking at all aspects of our immigration policy to find any way possible to exploit it. We learned that lesson on 9/11 and we learned that lesson last week in San Bernardino. I hope this Body continues to address deficiencies in U.S. immigration policy by taking up and passing additional House Judiciary Committee bills including those reported out of the Judiciary Committee to reform the U.S. asylum process, to change the way unaccompanied alien minors are treated when they cross the U.S. border so that there is no longer an incentive to run across the border, and to finally prevent the interior immigration enforcement switch from being turned off at the whim of whoever happens to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I thank the Gentlelady from Michigan and the Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, as well as their staff members, for their work on this bill. Much more needs to be done to prevent exploitation of U.S. immigration policy by terrorists, but H.R. 158 is another good step in helping to ensure the safety of Americans and I urge my colleagues to support it. I reserve the balance of my time. Learn more about the House Judiciary Committee’s work to enhance national security through the immigration system here.