Welcome to America, everything is terrible. Or, rather, not welcome to America, should a recent US proposal to radically modify the visa waiver programme successfully pass. All signs point to yes, illustrating how viciously isolationist the nation has become even as it protests that it is a key member of the global community. This insistence on exceptionalism is heavily rooted in the country’s social and cultural tradition, but it’s been reinforced by the manufactured threat of 21st century terrorism.
In a country wracked with gun violence, drastic cuts to social programmes, an ongoing war on reproductive justice, police brutality, a dismal education system, and a host of other public ills, the federal government is an ongoing quest to invent even more, and one of the most looming threats, according to authorities, is terrorism. Since 2001, the United States has been embroiled in a ‘war on terror’ that has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives worldwide, including not just US armed forces and allies but innocent civilians caught up in the violence. Thanks to US intervention in the Middle East and subsequent political destabilisation, hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing Iraq, Syria, and nearby regions, and rather than welcoming the product of our own political system, we are instead repelling refugees, insisting that they pose a political threat so significant that we have to overhaul our entire domestic security system and jeopardise our international diplomatic standing to keep them out.
It is worth noting, of course, that the vast majority of acts of terrorism committed in the United States since 2001 have been domestic in origin — the Boston Bombing is one of the few incidents that stands out as going against this rule. Setting aside the massive number of deaths (which included citizens from all over the world) that occurred in September 2001, the United States has experienced relatively few deaths as a result of terrorism. It has, however, witnessed thousands of deaths due to gun violence, inadequate health care, transphobic attacks, police killings, child and elder abuse, and other social ills.
Yet, it’s ‘terrorists’ that the United States wants to attack, and along the way, it’s also taking down perfectly reasonable travelers, including refugees. 38 nations participate in the visa waiver program, which identifies nations considered to be ‘low security threats’ and permits visa-free travel for personal and business travelers entering the United States (this does not include asylum seekers, who need to go through a different and more stringent immigration process). The program is reciprocal, allowing people holding US passports to travel to most of Europe along with Australia, Japan, and select other nations without needing to go through the painstaking and sometimes expensive process of securing visas.
This programme is an example of international cooperation and collaboration, encouraging the free exchange of beliefs and ideas — travelers from around the world can easily interact with each other through a simple measure that reduces barriers to entry. However, the waiver programme is under threat from a Congress that wants to restrict entry for those who have been in Iraq, Sudan, Sudan, and Syria within a recent period by requiring those travelers to apply for full visa status, regardless of citizenship — and under some interpretations, people with origins in those countries, regardless of current citizenship and residence, would also need visas. Conservatives claim such measures are necessary to ensure that those who may have become ‘radicalised’ cannot easily enter the United States, which is both incorrect and deeply Islamophobic. The nations in question all have rich cultural heritages and there are numerous reasons to travel to them, including the conduct of business, attending cultural events, visiting historic sites, seeing family, or simply exploring — and none of these things intersect with terrorism. Historical evidence strongly suggests that terrorist ‘training camps’ are few in number and Westerners are quite rare among the ranks of their trainees. In effect, the United States is creating a fictional threat and using it to crack down on entry into the nation, taking a dig at international travel and people who may be attempting to flee war zones.
Of course, one consequence of these restrictions is probably going to be inevitable: In protest, participants in the programme may either withdraw their cooperation altogether or put similar limitations in place as a retaliatory action, for which they can hardly be blamed. After 11 September, Brazil did just that when the United States became more aggressive about admitting Brazilian nationals. The bill before the House, and just referred to the Senate, suggests that member countries should be forced to install advanced biometric and other security measures on their end simply to accommodate the demands of the US, which is unconscionable and unreasonable, especially given the burdens the US has already created for other nations when it comes to air travel — carriers requesting entry to the US must be able to demonstrate that passengers have undergone screening considered acceptable by the TSA, FAA, and DHS, regardless of domestic policies.
The move also puts the United States in a stark position diplomatically, highlighting again that it refuses to cooperate with its fellow global citizens, and wants to concentrate on keeping people out rather than addressing social issues. Diplomats from the US and the European Union have already expressed concern, as have members of the House. Tourism and business alike will drop off in the US as a result of restrictions on the fee waiver programme, and diplomatic relations with some member nations are likely to become more tenuous, especially in the instance of countries already frustrated with harmful international policy. The decision to promote legislation that actively fuels hatred and discrimination across international borders is one of grave concern, as is the probability that the president will sign such legislation into law, as it may be attached as a rider to an omnibus bill that he’ll be forced to approve in order to maintain government functionality.
Even as news breaks that the US wants to restrict entry, the DHS is threatening yet another repressive step for those seeking to travel to the US: Checking social media records. While such a measure would prove highly costly and inefficient, DHS evidently believes that poring through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts to tease out incriminating information will be worth taxpayer dollars — regardless of the fact that this intrusive violation of privacy acts not as a deterrent to potential terrorists, but to legitimate travelers with no interest in being treated like criminals.
This increasingly hostile climate in the US is deeply worrying, reflective of prior eras in the nation’s history when the government severely restricted travel and immigration to weed out ‘undesirables,’ ignoring both law and precedent. Lest we forget, the vast majority of the population in the United States is descended from people who immigrated to seek their fortunes, escape persecution, or explore a new world.