European business travelers on 48-hours notice
Transatlantic visitors required to register plans before departure to the U.S.
Financial Times, 8/3/2007 (excerpted)
Western European business travelers will be forced to give 48-hours notice of their plans to visit the U.S. under legislation signed on Friday by President George W. Bush.
The bill, aimed at bolstering security against terrorism, also requires the screening of all air and sea freight at foreign ports before being allowed into the U.S.
The measures were among the recommendations made by the commission set up to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S.
Visitors from 22 western European countries — including the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — will be affected by the rule requiring travel plans to be registered online 48 hours before departure for the U.S.
The measure, already in force for Australians, is designed to increase scrutiny of visitors from the 26 developed countries whose citizens do not need visas to enter the U.S.
Congress has become increasingly concerned about the potential for terrorists to exploit the relatively lax checks on visitors from members of the visa waiver program, which also include Japan and Singapore.
Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who was convicted of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, and Richard Reid, a British citizen who attempted to blow up a transatlantic airliner with a shoe bomb, were both able to travel to the U.S. without visas.
The attempted attacks in London and Glasgow in June heightened U.S. concern about the presence of terrorists in the UK and other European countries.
"After Madrid, London and Glasgow, there can be no doubt that there are lethal and committed Islamic terrorist cells active all across western Europe," said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "Many of these terrorists are citizens of those countries and under the visa waiver program they can easily enter the U.S. with no prior screening."
Michael Chertoff, U.S. homeland security secretary, has vowed that provisions will be made for visitors who need to visit the U.S. at short notice. But the 48-hour measure is likely to increase concern among business travelers and tourists about the greater inconvenience surrounding visits to the U.S. since the September 2001 attacks.
"Obviously, it's a big inconvenience" said Filippo Pandolfini, a London-based investment banker at JPMorgan, referring to the 48-hour measure. "You never know when you have to travel for business, plans can change". He later added that many would support the measure if it helped shorten queues at immigration on arrival.
Visits to the U.S. from countries other than Canada and Mexico have fallen 17 per cent since 2000, in spite of a 20 per cent increase in cross-border travel elsewhere in the world.
The legislation represented a compromise between domestic demands for greater restrictions on the visa waiver program and international pressure on the U.S. to welcome more countries into the scheme.
New eligibility rules included in the bill will allow visitors from 12 more countries — including South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, Greece and the Czech Republic — to enter the U.S. without a visa.