300 million Americans live in 'a border state'

If you think you don’t live in a border state, you’re probably mistaken. That’s because 95 percent of all Americans do: Every state that has an international airport is a border state, and over 150 million foreign visitors arrive at those airports each year.

You think 500,000 or 800,000 illegal aliens crossing our southwest border illegally might pose a security risk? Then you should also think about the tens of millions of foreign visitors arriving at our international airports each year without a visa.

Not possible, you say? Wrong, again.

Citizens from 38 foreign countries enjoy the freedom to enter the United States without a visa through “visa waiver agreements” with those countries. Most of the countries are in Europe, but the list also includes Taiwan, Singapore, Chile and Australia. People using the visa waiver program must also pass through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), meaning they are not known to be terrorists and not on any “no-fly list.”

The purpose of the visa waiver program, obviously, is to encourage and facilitate international tourism, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the program’s most enthusiastic advocates. Other newly enthusiastic supporters of the visa waiver program are Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaida and ISIS.

Since the U.S. government has not yet managed to acquire the alumni lists for the many terrorist training programs across the globe, we really do not have a good list of “known terrorists.” Mohammad Hussein Al-Fatah is more likely to be on a “no-fly list” for owing child support than for participation in a six-month terrorist training camp – especially if he is a Canadian citizen.

Americans must wake up to the fact that a veteran of the ISIS military operations in Syria or Iraq – or al-Qaida operations in Yemen, Somalia or Libya – who holds a valid United Kingdom or French or Greek passport is probably not going to be denied entry to the United States. That trained, experienced, motivated terrorist is free to travel to Tampa, Dallas, Salt Lake City or any American city with an airport...

So, what is the point of this excursion into the vulnerabilities of the visa waiver program? Do we want to shut down all foreign travel? No, of course not. But we do want our lawmakers and government agencies to start taking these problems seriously and stop dismissing them as far-fetched...

It also means all of us need – urgently – to change our thinking about the “border crisis.” Our border crisis is not in Texas or Arizona; it is in Washington, D.C. Our border crisis is in the naïve and short-sighted way the officials of both political parties think about the national security aspects of both physical borders and immigration law...