releases: https://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=f11413c3-113a-4b35-a5b4-2b20ddeb1f0a
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
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| https://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=f11413c3-113a-4b35-a5b4-2b20ddeb1f0a | Portman Questions Administration Official on What Steps are Being Taken to Strengthen Visa Waiver Program | 2015-12-09 | 2015 | 2015-12 | Republican | House | OH | Rob Portman | P000449 | www.portman.senate.gov | legacy | We have to be right every time. They have to be right once. Washington, D.C. Today, U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio), a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, questioned Administration officials about what steps are being taken to strengthen our Visa Waiver Program in light of the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. Portman called for a thorough review of Department of Homeland Security and State Department vetting procedures to ensure that no terrorists or individuals with links to Islamist extremist groups make it into the United States. Todays roundtable follows up on Portmans questioning last month regarding what steps are being taken to ensure terrorists do not exploit the U.S. Syrian refugee resettlement program. Excerpts of Portmans remarks are below and the full exchange can be found here. My question goes to this fundamental issue of the fact that our security here in this country is only as good as the data thats being provided to us by our visa waiver partners. So these 38 countries have different databases. Some are better than others, as you all said this morning. So drilling down a little bit further on that, lets assume that the numbers are right that there are about 5,000 foreign fighters from western European countries alone, the bulk of them coming from France, the UK and Belgium. That means there are more than 5,000, total, from those 38 countries? I still havent gotten a good number on that so if you have one today wed like to have it. If you dont mind, let me ask you a further question If you have a porous border with Turkey, as we have in our borders with Mexico and Canada, and you have the ability to go back and forth without being identified through that porous border, and you have thousands of foreign fighters who are leaving Europe to go into the battle how do we know the information is accurate? In other words, they wouldnt show up in the pre-clearance or the ESTA data necessarily because they are walking across a border, and we certainly see the refugees going the other wayHow do you account for that and how good is the data? What Im getting at, though, is the gaps. So, in a testimony before this committee 7 weeks ago approximately, the director of the FBI and the director of the Counter-Terrorism center both said the same thing: we have gaps. And they were referring specifically to the gaps in Syria because we have nothing on the ground there to be able to collect information. We dont have a relationship with the government, even as compared to Iraq we dont have the data. My question is, Im not suggesting this is necessarily a large number of people, but as we have learned with terrorism it doesnt matter that its a large number or a small number, any number is significant. We have to be right every time. They have to be right once. So are there people that are going to go across this border, thats porous, where theres no means to identify them, come back to a visa waiver country, and us not be able to have that data in their system? Are you saying, Commissioner Wagner, that because we use other data sources, including our own, that that is unlikely to occur, or are you saying that weve only got what weve got which is that our security is going to be based on ultimately the best information that we get from these countries and theres going to be some gaps? Were glad that the Visa Waiver Program has resulted in us getting better information and better data. On the other hand, I dont think you can tell us here today that the Visa Waiver Program requires a more strenuous screening than the Visa program. In other words, the Visa Waiver Program is there for a reason its to facilitate travel. We support and facilitate business travel and so on. What were asking is, given the fact that the requirements are not as stringent, even though more data was collected because of it, what do we about this potential gap and specifically the foreign fighters who can go back and forth to a certain extent without identification? ### | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |