The UK Babe Channels Forum

(01-02-2017 14:00 )wackawoo Wrote: [ -> ]What is the truth of this?

Quote:In 1986, Congress established the Visa Waiver Program. It allows citizens from approved countries to travel to the United States without a visa, for business or pleasure, for as long as ninety days. Britain was the first country to join. Today, there are thirty-eight participants, mainly in Europe, but also including Asian allies such as Japan and Australia. No Muslim-majority country is a participant. Neither is Israel.

After the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush Administration tightened scrutiny of Visa Waiver travellers, mainly by deploying technology. It required Visa Waiver travellers to have machine-readable or biometric passports. Later, the Bush Administration set up an online registry system that allowed for screening of such travellers before they flew to America.

In December, 2015, after the Paris attacks, President Obama signed into law the Visa Waiver Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act. The law sought to address the problem of Belgian, French, and other European-passport holders, who had volunteered by the hundreds to fight for ISIS, and who might be able to fly into the United States, under Visa Waiver, without being noticed.

The new law said that if a traveller from a Visa Waiver nation had, at any time since March, 2011, visited a country compromised by terrorism he or she would have to attend an American consulate to apply for a regular visa and submit to an interview, as many other travellers to America from the around the world do routinely, rather than simply entering visa-free. Early in 2016, the Obama Administration named seven countries as destinations that would disallow subsequent use of the Visa Waiver program. They were Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, and Yemen—the same seven named in President Trump’s order, as Trump’s spokespeople have often pointed out this week.

The Obama list, though, was not a ban but a chance to ask more questions. Syria, Iraq, and Libya host significant numbers of Islamic State volunteers from Europe. If a Belgian kid travelled to those places, it would be prudent to ask why he had done so before he turned up in New York. Somalia is the home of Al-Shabaab, a regional terrorist group that has attracted international volunteers. Yemen hosts an Al Qaeda branch that has attempted attacks on U.S. soil. The inclusion of Iran and Sudan was less persuasive, yet both countries, along with Syria, are on the State Department’s official list of state sponsors of terrorism, so that provided a rationale for including them. The most notable omission was perhaps Pakistan, the locus of a number of terrorist groups with records of cross-border attacks, including a fizzled attempt to set off a car bomb in Times Square, in 2010.

Donald Trump and his advisers received this inheritance not as counterterrorism technocrats but as political opportunists. Trump’s order on Friday went far beyond the policy set last year. First, Trump’s order was not limited to Visa Waiver travellers from Europe or Asia who might have visited the flagged countries. In its initial formulation, the order apparently covered everyone born in those seven countries who was not a U.S. citizen. Nor did it merely require the designated travellers to attend a consulate to apply for a regular visa. It banned all travel to the U.S. for at least ninety days, while the Trump Administration worked out its plans for “extreme vetting.”