Close the loophole for future shoe-bombers / terrorists

by Rosemary Jenks, NumbersUSA: . . .Richard C. Reid - aka the "shoe bomber" - stood in a federal court and defiantly admitted attempting to blow Flight 63 out of the sky, "I'm a member of al-Qaida. I pledge to Osama bin Laden and I'm an enemy of your country, and I don't care." Who gave this murderous fanatic a U.S. visa? Truth be told, no one. Under a loophole in the law called the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), all Reid needed as a British citizen to put himself in a position to murder a plane-full of Americans was to purchase a ticket on a U.S.-bound flight.

. . . Reid was not the only al-Qaida terrorist who exploited VWP. "In addition," said a 9/11 Commission staff report on terrorist travel, "Zacarias Moussaoui, an al-Qaida operative suspected of being primed as a possible pilot in the 9/11 plot, entered the United States Feb. 23, 2001, from London England using a French, 'visa waiver' passport." Moussaoui was arrested in Aug. 2001 for staying longer than the 90 days he was routinely granted when he arrived in Chicago with this French passport. As Moussaoui later admitted in court, he sat in jail for three weeks declining to warn U.S. authorities of the (pending 911) attacks . . . .

Congress started VWP as a pilot program in 1986. It was designed to facilitate tourism and reduce the workload of State Department consular officers who vet foreign nationals applying for visas. Originally, it applied to only eight countries, but was eventually expanded to 27. In 2000, Congress made VWP permanent. Even though VWP aided al-Qaida terrorists Reid and Moussaoui, President Bush announced last fall that he wanted to expand the program and use it to reward our allies in the war on terror with visa-free travel to the United States.

Not surprisingly, that decision flabbergasted former Dept. of Homeland Security Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin. "We ought to be ending this visa-waiver program, not expanding it," he told USA Today. "There's a reason why terrorists are keen to obtain passports from visa-waiver countries: They don't have to undergo extensive background checks." . . . . Congress sided with Bush. It sent him a bill . . . which includes provisions making it easier for countries to join the visa-waiver list. The bill vastly increases the acceptable "visa-refusal" rate for countries added to the visa-waiver list. . . . That's nuts. If Congress is serious about protecting America against terrorist attacks, the Shoe-Bomber Loophole should be closed. . . . [Read More]

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