State, Homeland Security chiefs argue for extension of immigration law

Lawmakers expressed their support Wednesday for giving more than two dozen countries additional time to comply with a new U.S. immigration law, but indicated they may not grant as much leeway as the Bush administration wants.

Countries that are part of the U.S. Visa Waiver Program will not be able to issue machine-readable travel passports with embedded biometric information for their citizens who visit the United States within the deadline set by Congress, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. The deadline requires all 27 visa waiver countries to comply by Oct. 26, but the administration has asked Congress to extend that deadline an additional two years.

Powell said failure to do so would cause the demand for visas to jump by more than 5 million applications, representing a 70 percent increase in workload. The "massive surge in visa processing," he said, would mean extra costs, diversion of personnel from other activities and extending service hours at some consular offices. He added that extended wait times could also affect tourism and commerce if people decide not to come to the United States.

Powell said visa waiver countries are willing to comply, but cannot overcome technical hurdles in the time allotted, including guaranteeing the security of passport data, the reliability of embedded chips, and the interoperability of readers and passports.

Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., acknowledged that the deadline is "unreachable" for most visa waiver countries and an extension is justified. But he and several other lawmakers wondered if the countries can come into compliance in less than two years.

Sensenbrenner questioned whether giving the countries more time would lead them to make the issue less of a priority. Other lawmakers asked whether slipping the deadline would set a precedent for slipping it again in two years.

"We are working closely with all of our allies on the need to get their machine-readable, biometric passports into being as fast as possible," Powell countered. "I don't think they're going to see this two-year extension as a rationale for them to sort of lay back and take it easy.

"They know that this has to happen," Powell added. "And I can assure you that it would be very hard for any secretary of state or secretary of homeland security to come back up here and ask for another extension. I think Congress has made it clear what your will is, and we have made it clear to our friends that if we get this extension, it must be met."

Regardless of whether a deadline extension is granted, the government plans to begin enrolling visitors from visa waiver countries into the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US VISIT) program starting Oct. 26. Under that program, nonimmigrant visitors will have two fingerprint scans and a digital photo taken when they enter the country. The information will be entered into a database and compared to terrorist and criminal watch lists.

Lawmakers also questioned the biometric information that will be embedded into passports. The visa waiver countries plan to embed facial recognition biometric information into their passports, which is a standard advocated by the International Civil Aviation Organization. Lawmakers, however, said fingerprint biometrics are better and should be the standard.

"We should be driving this train, not the international community. We're the ones that got our buildings blown up," said Rep. John Carter, R-Texas.

Ridge said the U.S. government should embrace the international standard of facial biometrics first, and then push countries to adopt fingerprint biometrics.

A few lawmakers also questioned whether the visa waiver program should continue to exist.

"With all due respect for the difficulty that you're confronted with in trying to make our homeland more secure, I must tell you that I do not support the Visa Waiver Program at all. I think it's discriminatory," said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. "I think it was brought out here today that you have no Caribbean countries, you have no African countries in this program. And so I don't know what the criteria are. I don't know how you rate all of the other countries."

She said the U.S. government should have "zero tolerance" when it comes to giving preferences to some countries over others.