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Email2005 Border Security Summit
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services
Janice L. Jacobs
Washington, D.C.
June 22, 2005
9:50 a.m. – 10:35 a.m.
It is a pleasure for me to be here today and to have the opportunity to discuss with you some of the efforts of the Department of State to bolster U.S. National Security while continuing to facilitate the travel of legitimate visitors and immigrants to the United States. This is the policy that we refer to as striking a balance between “Secure Borders and Open Doors.”
Security must always be our first priority, to protect the welfare of our own citizens as well as visitors to the United States. Together with our interagency partners, we work every day on the “Secure Borders” Component of this policy while staying true to our heritage as a welcoming Nation.
Secure borders
The last three and a half years have been a time of unprecedented change in visa policy and visa practices. We have expanded the concept of border security to include places that you would not normally consider as bordering the United States. Consular officers at our 207 visa processing posts have pushed our borders outward, often by thousands of miles, to the farthest reaches of the globe. By adjudicating visa applications and determining who is allowed to seek admission to the United States, consular officers serve as our first line of defense in protecting U.S. borders.
Our nation’s consular officers deserve the absolute best support possible to perform their critical role abroad in enhancing U.S. border security. They deserve the best technology, the appropriate resources, the training and the most accurate and comprehensive information available in evaluating visa applicants. To this end, we have made fundamental changes in the way we do business in Washington.
We have greatly increased the level of data sharing between the department of state and other federal agencies and now enjoy a new level of collaboration. The visa-related data holdings in our consular lookout system (against which every single visa applicant is checked) total 21 million records of people who are potentially ineligible to receive visas. This amount is nearly triple what we had prior to September 11. We now have more than 8 million records from the FBI alone in our system. In fact, the majority of the data in the consular lookout system – 70 percent – now originates in other agencies, especially those in the law enforcement and intelligence communities.
We joined with the Department of Justice and others in the establishment of the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) that integrates terrorist watchlists from different agencies and serves as the central point of contact for everyone, from the police officer walking the beat in a small town in the U.S., to a consular officer on the other side of the globe. Our own terrorist database (called tipoff) was used as a foundation for the Terrorist Screening Center and another organization called the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), which has now been superseded by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). NCTC integrates highly classified terrorist watchlists into the principal U.S. government database on known and suspected international terrorists. Together TSC and NTCT provide a more systematic approach to information sharing about known and suspected terrorists.
Understanding that information sharing is a two-way street, we send on a near-real-time basis the visa data, including the photo, on every visa issued worldwide directly to the customs and border protection officers at ports of entry so that they can view the electronic visa files we have of every traveler with a visa entering the United States. We also share this information with the DHS National Targeting Center, which is a 24/7 operation of the bureau of customs and border protection.
Not only have we greatly increased information sharing within the U.S. Government, we have developed robust international programs to exchange terrorist screening information with the foreign governments who are our partners in the war on terror. We already have agreements with Canada and Australia to exchange this information and are seeking to establish agreements with other countries, particularly those that participate in our Visa Waiver Program.
Within the Department of State, we have examined our consular processes from top to bottom to make them as strong as possible. We have issued more than 80 standard operating procedures to our visa adjudicating posts that standardize consular procedures worldwide. We established a worldwide policy for interviews that requires almost all visa applicants to appear for personal interview with a consular officer. We introduced a new, tamper-resistant nonimmigrant visa worldwide. We implemented a system of consular management assistance teams that serve as management consultants to our posts overseas and review management controls and visa processing procedures.
In cooperation with the Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, we have established a vulnerability assessment unit that uses data mining to detect and protect against possible malfeasance. We have lengthened and enhanced the training of our consular officers, placing particular emphasis on interview techniques, counterterrorism, and fraud detection. To address the workload consequences resulting from some of these measures, we have created more than 350 new consular positions.
BioVisas and US-Visit
Information sharing, technical advances and better training all serve to improve the quality of a consular officer’s decision in the visa application process, which in turn enhances border security by making sure that those who are not entitled to U.S. visas do not obtain them. Another advance has been the introduction of biometrics to the visa process. This adds another layer of security by making sure the person who travels to the United States and applies for entry is the same person to whom we issued a visa.
Together with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), we have created a cohesive biometric system to track the entry and exit of foreign visitors by using electronically scanned fingerprints and photographs. The State Department and DHS have signed a memorandum of understanding that highlights our commitment to the sharing of data to assist consular officers in the field who process visas and inspectors at ports of entry. I sit on the US-Visit advisory board where we discuss current and future strategies for effective management of U.S. borders.
The State Department successfully deployed our biometric visa program at all of our visa processing facilities worldwide, well in advance of a congressionally mandated deadline of October 26, 2004. In a little over a year, we implemented this new technology at all 207 nonimmigrant visa processing posts and at all 125 immigrant and diversity visa processing posts around the world.
Our biometric visa system is an essential element of the Department of Homeland Security’s US-Visit program. Consular officers overseas collect electronically scanned fingerprints and photographs which are used to conduct background checks prior to visa issuance. Simultaneously, we are enrolling these travelers in what will eventually be the comprehensive entry-exit monitoring system known as US-Visit. As part of the visa application process, we check the visa applicant’s fingerprints against a database that contains all available fingerprints of suspected terrorists, wanted persons, immigration law violators, and some persons with criminal history records. Upon arrival in the U.S., the identity of the traveler who has received a visa is verified through the US-Visit program. Customs and border protection inspectors compare the biometrics collected at the port of entry to the ones submitted at the visa-issuing post.
Since we began processing BioVisas, we have cleared over 6.2 million fingerprints through the Department of Homeland Security’s ident database. This has produced over 8,390 hits against the watchlist. We are now submitting approximately 25,000 fingerprint checks to the ident database each day. The average turnaround time for all of our posts around the world has been under 30 minutes. This is truly a remarkable technological accomplishment.
Protecting the integrity of the U.S. visa, arguably one of the most valuable documents in the world, has been one of the State Department’s top priorities for decades and the US-Visit program has helped to accomplish this important objective. The U.S. visa is not our only biometric initiative, however. We believe that biometric technology represents a fundamental improvement to the security of our most important identity document – the U.S passport. The biometric we have adopted, in accordance with ICAO standards, is facial recognition technology embedded in a chip in the back cover of the passport. We hope to install biometric passport system equipment domestically later this year, with the goal of deploying this technology at all of our domestic passport issuing facilities in 2006.
Visa waiver program
Improvements in visa processing and passport security are two of the areas in which we are making far-reaching changes to augment U.S. border security. However, our efforts would be incomplete without similar safeguards to a program that some 13 million travelers utilize to enter the U.S. each year: the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). This program enables citizens of 27 eligible countries to travel to the U.S. for a business or tourist visit of up to 90 days without first acquiring a visa. These travelers contribute to the $93.7 billion dollars in revenue garnered by the travel and tourism industry in the United States. The goodwill and other benefits engendered by the people who visit the U.S. through the visa waiver program are beyond measure.
There were legislative changes to the requirements for travel using the visa waiver program that were included in the enhanced border security and visa entry reform act of 2002. This and subsequent legislation require that any passport issued after October 26, 2005, and used for visa waiver program travel to the United States must include a biometric identifier based on applicable standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). It also requires that passports produced after that date, contain biometrics in order to be used to travel on the visa waiver program.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State recently announced that, after extensive consultation with ICAO and congress, DHS will require a digital photograph of the passport holder’s face integrated into the data page of the passport by October 26, 2005. DHS will also require VWP countries to produce passports using the integrated circuit chip, or e- passport, capable of storing the biographic information from the data page, a digitized photograph, and other biometric information in travel documents by October 26, 2006. Valid passports issued by VWP countries before that date will still be accepted for VWP travel as long as they are machine-readable and include a digital photo.
Visa Waiver Program countries are working to resolve significant technical issues, particularly related to global operability, to implement biometric passport programs in a timely way. In spite of the complexity of these issues and the relatively short development timeframe, all VWP countries are in the development process and pilot production and advanced planning has either begun or will soon commence in several countries including, among others, Australia, New Zealand, Slovenia, The Netherlands, and Belgium. Other VWP countries have awarded contracts for production of biometric passports and moved into advanced design phases of biometric passport design and are on track to meet the new, 2006 deadline.
In the interim, visa waiver program travelers are subject to increased security because they now undergo screening upon entry as part of the US-Visit program.
Because of the number of travelers who use the visa waiver program, we are monitoring biometric passport development closely and will continue to do so as next year’s deadline approaches. We meet frequently with representatives from many VWP countries to share information on biometric passport production and to test global operability systems. Our goal is to create systems that will talk easily to each other. There is no advantage for Slovenia, for example, to produce passports that cannot be read by our equipment, or for The Netherlands to produce passports that can’t be read by immigration officials in Singapore. We are also working to make sure that VWP travelers are aware of the requirements and continue to choose to travel to the United States.
Conclusion
In close cooperation with our interagency partners, the Department of State works each day on a comprehensive program to enhance U.S. border security. Using our excellent staff at embassies and consulates abroad, we have pushed our borders outward, creating a forward-based defense to evaluate potential visitors to the United States before they ever get on an airplane. The inclusion of biometrics in the visa process and passport processes further enhances global security by better ensuring that the person presenting the document is the person to whom the document was issued.
We will continue to leverage technology and foster information sharing to better secure the visa application process. And we are leading the international community to encourage the development of more secure travel documents for the safety of all of international travelers. Clearly, we are not finished with this important work, but the steps we have already taken place us firmly along the path to achieving the mutually reinforcing immigration policy goals of secure borders and open doors.
