By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--December 10, 2015
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But the program has two serious security gaps. The first is that the U.S. has become wholly dependent upon the competence and thoroughness of the countries that participate. Visitors' eligibility for entry under the Visa Waiver Program is determined by the Electronic System for Travel Authorization. But a 2012 audit by the Government Accountability Office found that roughly 364,000 people reached the U.S. in 2010 "without verified ESTA approval." This security gap, long ignored, has now become enormously important. Over the past two years, thousands of European citizens have gone to Syria to fight with ISIS, and these killers are returning to Europe. Because they travel through covert channels, evading passport controls, in many cases European security agencies don't know who went where. These men and women can travel freely under the European Union's Schengen Agreement, which has done away with border controls among 26 European countries. Getting into the Middle East from Europe--and back again to Europe--without being monitored by a European security agency has never been easier. And if these agencies don't know, we don't know. ISIS today is likely working hard to identify a group of Europeans who can reach America with only a perfunctory security check to launch an attack. That cannot be allowed to happen. The second problem with the Visa Waiver Program is the ease with which Middle Eastern refugees arriving in Europe seem able to assume new identities. Press reports suggest that ISIS can produce forged documents, such as Syrian passports and driver's licenses. We also know that refugees are discarding legitimate documents that would help identify who they really are and where they come from. After Paris, processing these refugees takes on new significance. Asking a terrorist if he has been to a certain country, such as Syria, is a mirage security measure. One of the greatest security vulnerabilities is a "clean skin"--a real passport obtained using forged paperwork. Once a legitimate passport is procured, it is extremely difficult to discover who the holder really is. With the wave of refugees overwhelming European countries, which are struggling to process them and give them Western identification, the possibility of clean skins being granted is at an all-time high.
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