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 Under the new measures, which were prompted by the Nov. 13 attacks
in Paris by Islamic State militants, the Department of Homeland
Security would immediately start to collect more information from
travelers about past visits to countries such as Syria and Iraq, the
White House said.
The changes will "enhance our ability to thwart terrorist attempts
to travel on lost or stolen passports," White House spokesman Josh
Earnest told reporters in Paris, where President Barack Obama is
attending U.N. talks on climate change.
The DHS would also look at pilot programs for collecting biometric
information such as fingerprints from visa waiver travelers, the
White House said.
The DHS would also ask Congress for additional powers, including the
authority to increase fines for air carriers that fail to verify
passport data, and the ability to require all travelers to use
passports with embedded security chips, the White House said.
The White House also wants to expand the use of a "preclearance
program" in foreign airports to allow U.S. border officials to
collect and screen biometric information before visa waiver
travelers can board airplanes to the United States.
The White House urged Congress to pass legislation before leaving
Washington later in December for a holiday recess.
"Surely over the course of the next three weeks, they should be able
to do something that actually would strengthen our national
security," Earnest told reporters.
A task force in the House of Representatives plans to meet on
Tuesday to discuss the program and wants to craft legislation to
pass "by the end of the year," Republican Representative Kevin
McCarthy, the House Majority Leader, said on Monday.
McCarthy told reporters that lawmakers were interested in requiring
all countries in the waiver program to issue “e-passports” with
chips and biometrics. One change would be to make sure that
passengers were screened against a database of lost and stolen
passports.
After the Paris attacks, the House passed a bill that would bar
refugees from Syria and Iraq from entering the United States until
security officials certify that they are not threats. The bill would
cripple Obama's plan to accept 10,000 refugees in the next year and
he has vowed to veto it.
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But the White House has decided to give regular updates to state
governors about refugees who resettle in their states, Earnest said.
U.S. officials have quietly acknowledged that they are far more
worried about the possibility that would-be attackers from the
Islamic State or other militant groups could enter the United States
as travelers from visa waiver countries rather than as Syrian
refugees.
The U.S. government routinely takes 18 to 24 months to screen
would-be Syrian refugees before they are allowed to board flights to
the United States.
In contrast, an estimated 20 million people fly to the United States
each year from visa waiver countries such as France and Britain.
Officials have acknowledged that a European traveling to Syria to
train with a group like Islamic State might be able to later enter
the United States without significant scrutiny, if they are not
already known to U.S. intelligence or partners such as Britain’s
domestic intelligence agency MI5 or France's DGSI.
(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Paris and Susan Cornwell,
Patricia Zengerle and Julia Edwards in Washington; Editing by Doina
Chiacu and Grant McCool)
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