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Terrorist attacks that were in the final planning stages more than two years ago sought to create a terror "spectacular." The goal of the terrorists was to bring down ten jet airliners on the same day as they flew over the Atlantic Ocean, headed towards the United States.
The destruction of the airliners would have been brought about by the creation of explosives on board the airliners by terrorists who planned to bring chemicals on board the airplane that, by themselves, would have appeared innocuous. However, by mixing them together, they would have created a deadly explosive.
This deadly plot is the reason that when we board airliners we are strictly limited as to quantity of liquids we may carry on board. Clearly our intelligence officials understood the obvious threat that liquids might pose in creating a binary explosive on board an airliner.
Last week, the mastermind of the attack was believed to have been killed by a missile strike launched by our soldiers operating in Pakistan. This apparently provided the terrorist, Rashid Rauf, to become the best kind of terrorist – a dead one.
What you need to know is that Rashid Rauf was a dual national. He was a citizen of Pakistan and was also a citizen of Great Britain.
As a citizen of Great Britain, Rashid Rauf and his co-conspirators were eligible to seek to enter the United States without first securing a visa.
It is important to consider this quote from the British newspaper, the Telegraph:
For many of the young British-born radicals who volunteered to join the jihad against Britain and other western countries, Rauf would have been their first point of contact on arriving in Pakistan. He would have made sure they were not followed and would have given them food and shelter in a safe house before taking them to training camps in northern Pakistan. In recent years, the war against al-Qaeda has been defined by new, more deadly tactics and the CIA has been successfully “degrading” al-Qaeda’s leadership by assassinating its leaders using the US Air Force’s unmanned Predator.
The tactic is something of a double-edged sword. While it has had undoubted success in disrupting al-Qaeda, the civilian deaths, which often accompany intelligence-led operations, are thought to be further radicalising increasing numbers of young men in Pakistan and Britain.
I’d like to point out an important issue that our government has consistently failed to address: the obvious lunacy known as the "Visa Waiver Program."
A number of news reports have discussed the fact that al Qaeda has been focusing recruitment efforts in Europe because citizens of most European nations are exempt the visa requirement if they state that they plan to visit the United States for 90 days or less.
While the Visa Waiver Program continues – in my judgment – to threaten the security of the United States, the administration is about to expand the number of countries that are able to participate. Consider this statement from the United States Department of State website concerning the imminent expansion of this program:
On October 17, President Bush announced the imminent expansion of the Visa Waiver Progam (VWP) to include the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, the Republic of Korea and the Slovak Republic. However, the United States must still complete certain internal steps required by statute before we can complete VWP expansion. Nationals of each country above continue to require visas to travel to the United States during that period. DHS has announced that nationals of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Republic of Korea and the Slovak Republic will be able to travel without a visa for tourist and business travel of 90 days or less beginning on November 17 provided they possess a biometric passport and register on-line through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). Review the Visa Waiver Program quick reference handout, as well as this webpage to learn more about VWP travel. For the full text of the President’s statement see the Press Release."
I am absolutely opposed to the Visa Waiver Program. Why? The Visa Waiver Program permits aliens from 27 nations to seek to enter the United States without first applying for a visa. A visa is generally a stamp that is placed in the passport of an arriving alien that has a number of security features built into it to make it difficult to be counterfeited. The visa is an indication to the Customs and Border Protection inspector at a port of entry that the arriving alien has been interviewed at an American embassy or consulate and has satisfied the U.S. consular official overseas that he (she) meets minimal standards to be given the visa. The visa is not a guarantee of admission, but represents the first step in the process for an alien to seek to lawfully enter the United States. The actual decision to admit an alien into the United States is made by a CBP inspector.
The countries that participate in the Visa Waiver Program are Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
The visa requirement is not always as thorough as I believe it should be, but it does offer five distinct advantages that are worth considering.
1. By requiring visas of aliens who seek to enter the United States, potential passengers on airliners that are destined to the United States can be screened. Richard Reid, the so-called "Shoe Bomber," was able to board an airliner to come to the United States – although he had no intentions of actually entering the United States. His apparent goal was to blow up the airliner and its many passengers somewhere over the depths of the Atlantic Ocean by detonating explosives he had concealed in his shoes. Because he is a subject of Great Britain, a country that participates in the Visa Waiver Program, Reid did not obtain a visa before he boarded that airliner.
2. CBP inspectors are supposed to make a decision in one minute or less as to the admissibility of an alien seeking to enter the United States. The visa requirement helps them to do a more effective job.
3. The application for a nonimmigrant visa contains roughly 40 questions that could provide invaluable information to law enforcement officials should that alien become the target of a criminal or terrorist investigation. The information could provide intelligence as well as investigative leads. You can check out the application for a nonimmigrant (tourist) visa by clicking here.
4. If an alien applicant lies on the application for a visa, that lie is called "visa fraud." The maximum penalty for visa fraud starts out at 10 years in jail for those who commit this crime simply in order to come to the United States, ostensibly to seek unlawful employment or other such purpose. The penalty increases to 15 years in jail for those aliens who obtain a visa to commit a felony. For aliens who engage in visa fraud to traffic in narcotics or commit another narcotics-related crime, the maximum jail sentence rises to 20 years. Finally, when an alien can be proven to have engaged in visa fraud in furtherance of terrorism, the maximum penalty climbs to 25 years in prison. While it may be difficult to prove that an individual is a terrorist, it is usually relatively simple to prove that the alien has committed visa fraud when there is fraud involved in the visa application. Indeed, terror suspects are often charged with visa fraud.
5. The charge of visa fraud can also be extremely helpful to law enforcement authorities who want to take a bad guy off the street without tipping their hand to the other members of a criminal conspiracy or terrorism conspiracy.
Under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program, none of the significant benefits to law enforcement or national security apply.
President-elect Obama ran on the slogan, "Change you can believe in." I would love to have a government I can believe in, at a time that our citizens have witnessed a continual erosion of its expectations of freedom and privacy. Meanwhile, the extremely dangerous and wrong-headed Visa Waiver Program is about to expand in large measure because of great pressure, generated by the expenditure of huge sums of cash by executives of a number of industries – most significantly, the travel and hospitality industries.
Those greedy executives concocted a program known as "Discover America." Unfortunately, al Qaeda has already discovered America.
Our beleaguered nation has gotten slammed by unscrupulous bankers and magnates of other industries who are so blinded by greed, that to them the bottom line is only the bottom line. Our nation's economy is in shambles and we have yet to determine where bottom is.
The time has come for our government to honor its responsibility to our nation and our citizens to provide meaningful security at a time when the security of our nation and the safety of its citizens are on the line.
The new administration would do well to reconsider the Visa Waiver Program and hopefully end it before citizens of our nation and others, pay a heavy price because of its existence.
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