House of Representatives
Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment. Mr. Chairman, my amendment simply suspends the Visa Waiver Program for fiscal year 2008. The Visa Waiver Program was established in 1986 as a temporary, and I underline temporary, program to allow…
Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
Mr. Chairman, my amendment simply suspends the Visa Waiver Program for fiscal year 2008.
The Visa Waiver Program was established in 1986 as a temporary, and I underline temporary, program to allow tourists or short-term business visitors to enter the United States for 90 days or less without obtaining a visa. The program was later made permanent by Congress and currently allows nationals of 27 countries into the United States with a simple stamp.
The Visa Waiver Program ill advisedly trusts the security of our Nation to the background check capabilities and passport procedures of foreign governments. There are numerous instances of terrorists and would-be terrorists who have exploited this program, or easily could have.
September 11 conspirator Zacharias Moussaoui is a great example of this. He exploited the Visa Waiver Program to travel to the United States. The 9/11 Commission stated that ``a maximum U.S. effort to investigate Moussaoui conceivably could have unearthed his connections. Those connections might have brought investigators to the core of the 9/11 plot.''
It's an interesting case because, of course, he was actually under investigation at the time by the French Government, by their secret service. Had we required a visa program that allowed for us to conduct that kind of background check, we may very well have identified those connections and not allowed him the visa. It seems clear that a maximum effort would include a thorough vetting of those seeking access to the United States.
Would-be ``shoe bomber'' terrorist Richard Reid exploited the Visa Waiver Program to board the flight he tried to bomb. The London subway bombing was executed in large part by British citizens with known ties to terrorism. Under the Visa Waiver Program, any British citizen can travel to the United States without having to apply for a visa and without giving our government the ability to do even a cursory investigation as to whether he or she may have ties to a terrorist group. British citizen Hemant Lakhani is just such an example. He was busted in a sting in New Jersey in 2003 when he tried to sell shoulder- fire surface-to-air missiles to a Federal operative who he believed to be a Somali terrorist plotting against American jetliners.
Mr. Chairman, we cannot give those who wish to harm us open access to America under the cloak of the Visa Waiver Program. We need to suspend the program until we are equipped to check the criminal and terrorist background of every visitor who arrives at any port of entry to confirm the identity of each visitor using the biometric identifiers.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, if passports alone provided the kind of security that the gentleman suggests they provide, then of course we would not need visas at all. Why would we impose this particular kind of background check if passports alone gave us the kind of security that we need to make sure that the people entering this country are, number one, who they say they are, and more importantly, that their backgrounds do not show anything that might suggest that they should not be allowed into the country.
But don't just take my word for it. Listen to what former DHS Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin recently said: ``We ought to be ending the Visa Waiver Program, not expanding it. There is a reason why terrorists are keen to obtain passports from visa-waiver countries. They don't have to undergo extensive security checks.''
So when you say there is no opposition to the program, I would suggest that that is not correct. There certainly are people involved with the program who feel as I do, that we need to abandon this particular visa-waiver idea.
And the IG isn't alone. Last September, the Government Accountability Office found that stolen passports from visa-waiver countries are prized travel documents among terrorists, criminals and immigration law violators. Based on a State Department report from January 2002 until June 2004, 28 foreign governments reported 56,943 stolen blank foreign passports. The Director of the U.S. National Central Bureau of Interpol has said that for 55 of the 181 Interpol countries, there were probably over 10 million lost and stolen passports that might be in circulation. In August of 2004, according to CBP, their database contains 1.2 million records of stolen passports. Notably, between January and June of 2005, DHS confiscated 298 passports issued by visa-waiver countries that travelers were attempting to use at ports of entry to fraudulently enter the United States.
I encourage the adoption of the amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment that I offered many times in the past. It was actually passed by the House, I believe, in the last session. The fact is that we need to, unfortunately, run at it again.
My amendment would prevent State and local governments who refuse to share information with Federal immigration authorities from obtaining Federal funds under this act. These are so-called sanctuary policies, and they are not only misguided and dangerous, but they also are illegal.
That is an interesting aspect of this that we have brought to the attention of the Congress many times in the past. There is in fact a law. It has been on the books now for over 10 years. Section 642 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 already makes it illegal for a State or local government to block communications between State and local police and Federal immigration enforcement authorities.
Unfortunately, there are no provisions for enforcement. Therefore, many local governments adopt policies that explicitly prevent their police officers from cooperating with immigration and Customs enforcement agents.
A recent example of this increasingly brazen defiance of Federal law is the City of San Francisco. Just a couple of months ago, Mayor Gavin Newsome assured a concerned audience that he would ``not allow any of his department heads or anyone else associated with the city to cooperate in any way, shape or form with these immigration raids.'' Unfortunately, San Francisco is not is not the only jurisdiction in this category.
When local governments refuse to share information with Federal immigration authorities, police departments often stop and/or arrest criminal aliens time and time again, only to release them without ever checking their immigration status. As a result, instead of being deported, these aliens move on to commit other crimes.
The City of Denver also has a sanctuary city policy that violates Federal law. Their police manual explicitly prohibits officers from initiating actions whose objective is to ``discover the immigration status of a person.''
Mr. Chairman, I can tell you from my own experience that there have been numerous occasions where this sanctuary city policy in Denver alone has resulted in the deaths of individuals, and certainly other kinds of crimes being perpetrated, because people that were involved with these murders and/or manslaughter charges that were brought against them were illegal aliens. They had come in contact at some time in the past with the authorities, but because of these sanctuary city policies, none of the authorities were able to communicate with ICE and therefore, of course, these people went undetected and otherwise almost certainly would have been taken into custody and deported and those crimes would not have been committed.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, the issue is not whether DHS funding is used in contravention. It is whether or not there is any penalty to be assessed to enforce the law that is on the books. Naturally there has been no suit brought or whatever because there is no penalty in the law itself. What we are doing here is providing a penalty for the violation of the law.
Yes, I most certainly do, and I have brought them to the attention of the body. There are many, many more like this.
No. The question was am I aware of any violations of the law, and the answer is yes, many violations of the law.
That is correct. I am trying to assess a penalty for a violation of the law, and this is the penalty that I believe is appropriate.
At the present time, it is not. But if we pass this amendment, it would be, yes. There has to be some sort of penalty assessed to the law that is already on the books or, of course, it is of no value. That is why so many cities have adopted these sanctuary city programs, and that is why we have to do something about it.
Mr. Chairman, any first responder money, any of the money we are talking about here in San Francisco, is currently appropriated in violation of the law, actually, and what this would do is establish that fact.
Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield further, there are innumerable cases we could cite, and certainly I did, of where cities were in contravention of the law. They described themselves as sanctuary cities. They have said they will not in
fact obey the law, the 1996 law that I have already described, that we have laid out, section 642 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.
Yes. The fact is if they chose to maintain this particular program, it would prohibit the funding.
They are not protecting the city. They are protecting the border.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).
Mr. Chairman, talking about not telling local communities what they should do, we have a law. It is on the book. I am not imposing new legislation telling communities what to do, I am simply assessing a penalty for the law that already exists.
It is interesting that the gentleman would bring up New York City. As a matter of fact, in New York City there was a case where there was a woman brutally raped by five people, four of whom were illegal immigrants and had already come in contact with the police many times. It was that case that made New York City rethink, albeit temporarily, their whole sanctuary city policy, and they did take it away for a while because of that. They have sort of reimposed it.
Also, the 9/11 hijackers, had we known that they had been stopped before, which they actually had, if they had come in contact with the police, which they did, we may have been able to stop them had we not had sanctuary city policies in place, not just in New York but throughout the country.
These are cities violating the law at the present time. Honestly, I am not trying to make new law, just enforce existing law.
Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.