24 October 2003
U.S. Urged to Consider Impact of Visa Requirements on Travel, Tourism
Lawmakers warned that visa application hurdles may discourage travel to U.S.
By Anthony Kujawa
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- U.S. lawmakers heard testimony from government officials October 23 on progress in implementing reforms in the U.S. visa-issuing process designed to enhance security controls, but also heard warnings against making visa application requirements so stringent or time-consuming that they discourage travel to the United States.
Testifying before a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing on post-9/11 visa issuance reforms and new technologies to improve national security, officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and State Department outlined progress toward implementing reforms mandated by the "USA Patriot Act of 2001" and "Enhanced Border and Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002."
But lawmakers and representatives of U.S. business, tourism, and higher education urged that such measures be implemented with careful consideration of their impact on tourism, trade and international academic exchange.
"Our present and future prosperity as well as our military and economic security depend upon the swift movement of people, goods and services around the globe," subcommittee Chairman John E. Sununu of New Hampshire said in opening remarks.
Discussing the impact of visa reforms on prospective international visitors, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar told the officials, "Wave after wave of new travel requirements, paint a big picture that the United States is becoming a destination that's too difficult to enter, too expensive to visit, and simply not worth the effort."
But the State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services Janice Jacobs told the lawmakers, "'Secure borders, open doors' remains our goal."
"Our challenge has been to integrate the security-enhancing of our new programs in both the visa and passport worlds in a manner that does not discourage legitimate travel to the U.S.," she said.
Discussing progress on interagency information sharing mandated through the Patriot Act, Jacobs told the committee that the Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS), now has 15 million records of people ineligible to receive visas, more than double the number available before September 11, 2001. Sixty-one percent of this information is derived from other agencies, she said.
In addition, by October 26, 2004, Jacobs said all U.S. visas will incorporate a biometric identifier, meeting the congressionally mandated deadline of the Enhanced Border and Security Act. In accordance with international standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), she said the U.S. officials chose facial recognition and electronic fingerprint scanning as the "most effective and least intrusive" method to meet the congressional mandate.
Currently, six of the 211 visa-issuing posts -- San Salvador, Guatemala City, Frankfurt, Brussels, Ottawa and Montreal -- are collecting fingerprints. Using an electronic scanner, fingerprints are collected in about 30 seconds in an "efficient and effective manner," Jacobs said. An electronic record of all issued visas, including the photo and fingerprints, will be transmitted to the Department of Homeland Security in real time and checked against the department's IDENT database.
Jacobs also outlined U.S. efforts to develop an "intelligent passport" with an embedded chip that will contain a digital image of the passport bearers' portrait and the biographical data carried on the front page of the current version of the passport.
The chip, she said, will use a facial recognition standard consistent with the internationally accepted ICAO standard. The new passport is expected to be introduced in a pilot program in October 2004 and implemented system-wide by the end of 2005.
Asked to explain what security measures are in place for the 27 nations that have visa waiver agreements with the United States and are not required to submit fingerprints, Jacobs said that these countries are required to have machine-readable passports by October 2004. After this date, she said, they will need a biometric passport that will enable immigration officials to use facial recognition technologies to confirm the identity of travelers entering the United States.
Department of Homeland Security's Assistant Secretary for Policy, Border, and Transportation Security Stewart Verdery added that a key part of the visa waiver program is that U.S. authorities receive passenger name record information on incoming flights before passengers board the plane, in order to conduct name checks.
Commenting on the situation in South Korea, not a visa waiver country, President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea William C. Oberlin said that after a new visa policy was announced in May, the U.S. embassy in South Korea experienced a surge from approximately 35 percent of applicants requiring personal interviews before receiving a visa to 70 percent requiring interviews.
With "no appreciable increase in resources" and only two weeks notice before the policy was implemented, Oberlin said waiting time for a visa interview increased to more than 60 days. Pre-policy turn-around time for a visa, he said, was 2-5 days.
"The reality in Korea is that due to increased security [requirements] and a 'one size fits all approach' we are losing business, we are losing tourists, we are losing students and more importantly, we are losing friends and influence at a time when America can ill afford the loss," Oberlin told the committee.
"Where other countries seem to be rolling out the red carpet and welcoming Korean travelers, the welcome mat for America is indeed looking very frayed," said Oberlin, warning that delays will result in Koreas choosing other travel destinations and business partners.
"We must achieve the twin goals of improving security and facilitating the flow of legitimate trade and travel," Oberlin told the lawmakers.
While protecting the security of the United States continues to be the "primary goal" of the visa process, Jacobs told the committee, the U.S. government is "acutely conscious of the need for legitimate travelers -- who constitute the overwhelming majority of our applicant pool -- to receive swift, thorough and clear adjudications of their visa applications so that they can plan their travel to the U.S. consonant with the goals of that travel."
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
This page printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2003&m=October&x=20031024170750awajuka0.3700983&t=usinfo/wf-latest.html
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