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Poll

Question of the week: Do you support the VISA Act to strengthen the United States’ visa application screening process?

Washington, D.C., June 1, 2016

Contact: Randy

Over 10 million immigrant and non-immigrant visas were issued by the U.S in Fiscal Year 2015, according to the State Department. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General testified before Congress that,"the present system presents risks to our national security – in that we may be admitting individuals who wish to do us harm, or who do not meet the requirements for a visa.”

The most recent example of the vulnerabilities of the United States’ current visa application screening process was when Syed Farook filed a petition in 2014 for a fiancé visa. Even though Farook submitted an incomplete visa petition, the petition was approved for his then fiancé, Tashfeen Malik, who was issued an U.S. visa, and allowed to enter the country. Farook and Malik would go on to kill 14 and injure 22 others in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, on December 2, 2015.

In order to strengthen the United States’ visa screening process to better combat immigration fraud and identify terrorists who may attempting to enter the US, Congressman Forbes introduced the Visa Integrity and Security Act of 2016 (H.R. 5203). The legislation has various critical components such as: 1) extra scrutiny for applications from countries of concern, like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia 2) utilization of publicly available information on social media to help detect threats 3) requiring DHS to use advanced analytics software to ensure the proactive detection of fraud 4) and requiring officials to immediately deny any incomplete applications.

The House Judiciary Committee passed the VISA Act on May 25, 2016.

Question of the week: Do you support the VISA Act to strengthen the United States’ visa application screening process?

( ) Yes.
( ) No.
( ) I don’t know.
( ) Other.

Take the poll here.

Find out the results of last week’s instapoll here.

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