Latest in Visa Waiver Program
If you are planning to travel to Europe this summer .... your trip may be harder than you thought. You have the US Congress to thank.
Last Thursday’s hearing by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs made clear that the Republicans in Congress are still steaming about the Obama administration’s narrowing of Congress’s recent restrictions to the U.S. Visa Waiver Program (VWP) related to Iran. But as usual when the President narrows a statutory program related to foreign relations, Congress has only itself to blame.
In response to the San Bernadino shootings (which involved an alien admitted on a K-1 Visa) some in Congress have suggested that we should review and revise the Visa Waiver Program (that is, the program by which the citizens of 38 countries come to the US without the need for a visa or a consular interview -- and by which, reciprocally, Americans travel to those countries without the need for a visa). One recent Wall Stree Journal op-ed has argued that the VWP program is inherently a security risk.
Gubernatorial and presidential candidate fretting about refugees, and House passage last week of a bill aimed at effectively halting resettlement of Syrian refugees in the United States, has the country in a frenzy about migration and terrorism. Steve has already written about the law of federalism and refugees.