Lawmakers push for more scrutiny of foreign visitors

Lawmakers are taking an expanded look at the various programs allowing foreigners to come into the United States, on the heels of new fears about the multiple ways that extremists might be able to slip into the country.

What started a month ago as a somewhat partisan focus on Syrian refugees has now morphed into a sprawling demand for new checks on foreign tourists, people abroad who are engaged to Americans and, potentially, new scrutiny on every one of the dozens of other ways that people come through the nation’s borders.

{mosads}Conservatives in particular are seizing on the moment, sensing a demand for tougher checks at the nation’s border in the wake of attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., that were directed or inspired by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

“It has to be a very thorough, top-to-bottom review,” Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), a leading conservative voice and founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, said after a briefing with federal officials on Thursday. 

“All of them have to be looked at in light of what’s just happened,” he added. “What we don’t know, to me, is a lot more unsettling than what we do know.”

The issue came up during Thursday briefings in both the House and Senate, lawmakers said, and members of both parties appear willing to dive in — to varying degrees.

“We’re looking at every visa program that we have,” said Sen. Tom Carper (Del.), the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Officials from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center discussed “the visa process, whether there are holes in that process that need to be plugged [and] some other ways that we can strengthen that process to prevent either the marriage visa or the fiancée visa or any other visa program to enter the country for the purposes of ultimately carrying out an attack,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the house Intelligence Committee, told reporters.

The widening aperture for congressional action comes amid a new fear that Islamic extremists are trying to seize on vulnerabilities in the country’s borders to launch deadly attacks in the U.S.

Indications that at least one shooter in the Paris massacre posed as a Syrian refugee prompted calls for a clampdown on President Obama’s plan to let 10,000 of the refugees into the country over the next year.

The White House vigorously opposed GOP leaders’ call for new demands on the certification of refugees from Syria and Iraq, but dozens of Democrats nonetheless broke ranks.

Other demands have been more bipartisan.

The fact that all of the Paris attackers were European nationals — and could presumably have used that status to easily enter the U.S. — led to a bipartisan push for new restrictions on a program allowing tourists from 38 countries to visit the U.S. without a visa. The bill overwhelmingly passed the House this week, with the support of the White House.

Carper, however, appeared to oppose major reforms to the tourist program, calling it “an information-sharing program that enables us to gain incredibly important information about potential threats to our country,” 

The name of the visa waiver program “implies that it’s a gaping hole,” he added. “But it’s not. It’s gotten to be very secure and incredibly valuable to our country and our security.”

Last week’s shooting in San Bernardino raised alarms about the K-1 visa, which allows fiancées of American citizens to enter the country. 

The wife of the couple at the center of that rampage is originally from Pakistan, and officials apparently failed to raise any red flags during the review she underwent. Tashfeen Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, discussed jihad and martyrdom online at least a year before she came to the U.S., FBI director James Comey told a Senate panel on Wednesday.

The Obama administration has already begun a review of that process, and suggested on Thursday that action from Congress could help.

“Someone entered the United States through a K-1 visa program and proceeded to carry out an act of terrorism on American soil,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. “That program is, at a minimum, worth a very close look.”

“We got to make sure that we’ve got the right things in place that give us the highest degree of assurance that we’re not letting terrorists in,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said on Thursday.

Yet at the same time, Burr warned against faulting intelligence officials for missing potential signs of the coming violence.

“If you don’t have any reason to suspect an individual or a couple, then it’s pretty hard to know where to look at in the haystack,” he said.

Before coming to the U.S., Malik underwent three separate interviews, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) told reporters on Thursday, after the briefing with Comey and other officials.

“This incident has revealed that we need to do additional work,” he said, “particularly in the areas of how these interviews and what other types of gathering of data of various kinds can be accomplished when people apply for visas to enter the United States, and what kinds of questions should be asked that would trigger further investigation that didn’t reveal what needed to be revealed in this particular unfortunate incident.”

Many Republicans are already chomping at the bit to force the various reforms to President Obama’s desk.

Conservatives have been pushing for the reforms to be included in a massive federal spending bill set to be unveiled in coming days. The measure on refugees could be a stumbling block, however, given the White House’s determined opposition.

On Thursday, No, 2 Senate Republican John Cornyn (Texas) said he didn’t know whether or not the refugee or tourist visa waiver programs would be included.

If they aren’t, conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus would “absolutely” oppose the bill, Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a member of the caucus, told The Hill.

“That’s what I’m watching in the omnibus: if the minimalist bill doesn’t even get through, the American people are going to be scratching their head — and most likely more, yelling at us,” he said.

“I think the American people are just crying out for action on just commonsense, across the board everything.”

– This story was updated at 5:29 p.m.