In Tallinn,
Estonia, on the way to this year's NATO summit meeting in Riga,
Latvia, President Bush announced plans to bring a plan to Congress
to reform the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). This a smart move for the
security, economy, and public diplomacy of the U.S. and a boon for
our friends and allies. The VWP is a key travel and business
facilitator, which allows most visitors from the 27 nations
participating in the program to enter the United States for up
to 90 days without a visa if they have valid passports from their
countries. Currently, participating nations must meet strict
requirements to enter the program, such as government-issued
machine-readable passports with biometric capabilities that are
secure and low non-immigrant visa refusal rates.
The "Waiver"
The President's
proposal waives certain requirements of the VWP for countries that
are willing to sign up for more vigorous security measures and
programs to decrease non-immigration refusal rate. The
non-immigration refusal rate is a reflection of the rate of people
from a participating nation who overstay their visa. Currently, the
rate of non-immigrant visa refusal rates must be lower than three
percent. Many aspiring VWP countries, such as South Korea and many
Eastern and Central European nations, are on the cusp of that
requirement. The waiver, which would be negotiated on a bilateral
basis, would last only a certain number of years, upon which the
U.S. could reconsider the nation's full participation in the
program or renegotiate terms of the waiver.
"Waiver" is a
misleading term since countries allowed into the VWP would actually
have stronger security requirements than current VWP members. For
example, according to the President's proposal, countries seeking
entry under the waiver must comply with mandatory and prompt
reporting of lost or stolen blank and issued passports. The VWP
only requires the reporting of lost and stolen blank passports.
Furthermore, countries seeking entrance under the waiver would be
required to cooperate in additional information sharing, such as
terrorist watch lists and the Passenger Name Recognition Program to
which the European Union and the U.S. have agreed. Prospective
countries would also need to undergo travel authorization reform-in
other words, they would have to move toward an electronic visa
system and generally raise the quality of passport documents.
Finally, they must show progress in
reducing the number of non-immigrant visa refusals due to overstays
and commit to full cooperation in investigations and return of
immigration law violators.
The current VWP lacks these additional
security measures. Adding these
components to the VWP would enhance the program by making it a
stronger tool for facilitating international travel and commerce,
enforcing immigration law, and fighting terrorists. As the
waiver countries work to meet the visa refusal rate standards,
Congress, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of
State could work on strengthening the VWP to include the additional
security measures. If a current member nation does not meet the
standards, it should be denied admittance to the program or engage
in bilateral negotiations to fulfill the criteria.
Congressional Action
Needed Now
The President's
initiative to reform the VWP will result in better, more flexible
security standards for our nation and participating nations. It
will also open up business and trade between the U.S. and countries
with markets that are currently going to Europe, China, and India.
Moreover, along with more business comes more tourism and interest
in travel and study in the U.S., which results in a conversation
between nations on a person-to-person level that no heads of state
could reproduce. Thus, the VWP reforms would strengthen U.S. public
diplomacy. Congress should move forward with the President's
proposal to create the waiver based on tougher security standards
for potential country participants while strengthening the VWP
along the way.
James Jay Carafano,
Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow for National Security
and Homeland Security and Laura P. Keith is a Research Assistant in
the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy
Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis
Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage
Foundation.