TOPICS
TOPICS
State Department faces potential visa-processing nightmare
The State Department will be forced to process millions of additional visa applications annually unless Congress loosens the requirements of an immigration law enacted to protect the country from future terrorist attacks, officials said Tuesday.
Officials from the State Department and Homeland Security Department are lobbying lawmakers to relax a requirement in the 2001 Border Security Act that calls for 27 countries to issue passports with biometric data to their citizens who travel to the United States. Only two countries, which are part of the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, may meet the congressionally mandated deadline of Oct. 26, 2004 for compliance, Maura Harty, assistant secretary of state of consular affairs, told lawmakers Tuesday.
Under the congressional mandate, citizens from countries that do not meet the deadline will have to go through the formal U.S. visa application process. Harty said the State Department estimates that consular offices, in turn, will have to process an additional 5 million visa applications, which would require hiring and training hundreds of additional officers.
"As a manager, I can't really justify hiring so many more people," she said, adding that 68 percent of all U.S. visitors come from visa waiver countries, such as Canada, Great Britain, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
The visa waiver issue is one of the first serious problems to emerge with new immigration policies that Congress passed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Most countries will not meet the deadline, which requires passports to be issued with biometric facial recognition data. Japan and Britain say they will comply in late 2005, and other countries say they will not comply until at least a year after that, Harty said.
Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary of homeland security for border and transportation security, said a deadline extension "could be well-justified."
"If it is not extended, then you're going to have millions of additional visa requests that have to be processed by our State Department consular offices," Hutchinson said, adding that Homeland Security officials are meeting with lawmakers on the issue.
Hutchinson said the requirement presents a challenge to visa waiver countries and U.S. immigration officials who have to review passports. For example, it is not clear if countries will use varying kinds of biometric data on their passports or follow a single international standard. If data does differ, then each U.S. port of entry might need several different passport reader systems.
"It would be a huge expense for us to have multiple different types of readers at all the different ports for all the different countries," Hutchinson said.
"There is a logical argument that there needs to be more time to carefully refine the international standards for those biometrics," he said. "We're going to work with Congress as to what the solution is to this very difficult problem for us and for our international partners."
COMMENTS
- This country will never be safe until our "so-called leaders" understand that US citizens are the primary concern. Not the convenience of foreigners. There would be no need to hire any additional personnel. Who cares if it takes a foreigner a year longer to gain access to this country? If those countries do not want to comply, then let their citizens stay at home. There can be NO COMPROMISE!! BOB GOOD Posted April 22, 2004 7:47 AM
- The State Department has known about this requirement since the drafting of the law, and typically has done nothing proactively to address it. Automated processing does not appear to be an option with the old-line management whose only solution to the problem is to "hire more people". This is a typical response from the agency that still clings to the "cable" as the most modern of communications options between Washington and overseas. The State Department should get out of the 19th Century and into the 21st. GovExec.com reader Posted January 29, 2004 7:19 AM
- Some people occupying some very high positions in government still don't get it. The "primary" concern and first priority should be homeland security, not ease and convenience. We have been down the other road and it was literally a "dead end" Time to step up to the task at hand and do it right. Security first! No compromise! Hire the needed resources! The citizens of this country expect and deserve nothing less. David Knotts Posted January 29, 2004 6:14 AM
