Numbers USA reports:
The House Republican Leadership has announced plans to bring a Visa Waiver bill to the floor introduced by Rep. Candace Miller (R-Mich.) that would make it more difficult for potential terrorists to enter the United States.
But simply tightening up the Visa Waiver Program isn't enough, which is why we're still pushing for Congress to include Rep. Brian Babin's (R-Texas) H.R.3314 into the must-pass, spending bill. Rep. Babin's bill would suspend the Refugee Resettlement program until the Government Accountability Office could study its impacts on local communities and require Congressional approval before being restarted.
We're also advocating for the funds that would be used to resettle refugees in the United States to be redirected to helping them closer to their homelands. According to a recent study from the Center for Immigration Studies examining the costs to resettle refugees from the Middle East, the United States could help 12 stay closer to their homes for approximately the same cost to resettle one in the U.S.
The Visa Wavier Program was created by the 1986 amnesty law and allows foreign citizens from 38 countries to visit the United States for up to 90 days without a visa. A country must meet certain requirements, including a low visa refusal rate. Visas are refused to individuals who are perceived to likely overstay their visa. But since the United States doesn't have a biometric entry-exit system in place, it's impossible for the feds to have reliable data on overstays.
Rep. Miller's bill would require that most foreign citizens with a passport from a visa waiver country go through the normal visa application process if they've recently visited, or are from, Syria, Iraq or a country that DHS has designated to have terrorist links. The bill would also require that the Visa Waiver country have an electronic, machine-readable, and fraud-proof passport along with full awareness of their borders.
Again, the Miller bill addresses some of our concerns with the Visa Waiver Program, but still falls short of addressing the bigger problem with the refugee resettlement program. This appears to be just another attempt by Congress to distract attention from the bigger issue.
If you haven't sent the fax urging your Members of Congress to include the Babin bill in the upcoming spending bill, please do so today....Read about the billClick here
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