Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., is calling on President Bush to reconsider a move by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to delay important security measures on nationals from so called “visa-waiver,” or “friendly” countries.
 Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. |
“It is clear that the very premise of the visa-waiver program – the notion that the U.S. has no great need to apply heightened levels of scrutiny to nationals from ‘friendly countries’ – has been called into question,” said Tancredo, head of the Immigration Reform Caucus.
“Rather than looking for ways to push back the deadline, we in government ought to be looking at ways to further enhance levels of security and scrutiny applied to all foreign visitors,” he said in a statement.
Tancredo, a leading voice in Congress for tough immigration reform, said the timing of the administration’s request to push back the Oct. 26 deadline was particularly “surprising and disturbing” in light of Attorney General Ashcroft’s announcement earlier this week and recent news reports detailing the theft of large numbers of passports in France – a visa-waiver country.
ABC News reported “thousands of French passports are known to have been stolen in the past year,” noting last July two gunmen hijacked a van near Marseille and stole 5,000 blank passports. Almost two months later, hundreds more blank passports were stolen from a courier service near Lyon
The “visa-waiver” countries have been given an Oct. 26 deadline to begin issuing machine-readable passports that contain a biometric identifier. Under current law, people from visa-waiver countries who do not have the new passports by that date would be required to obtain a visa to enter the United States.
“While it is clear that implementing the deadline will present some
challenges for the Department of State, and some minor inconvenience for international travelers, extending the deadline will leave the American people more vulnerable to attacks by future would-be terrorists from more than 20 visa-waiver countries,” Tancredo said.
“We hope the administration will reconsider these efforts to waive or otherwise delay the implementation of these requirements.”
Earlier this year, Tancredo launched “Team America,” a political action committee to raise money for candidates who oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants.
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