Remarks by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on the Electronic System for Travel Authorization

Release Date: June 3, 2008

Washington, D.C.
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Secretary Chertoff: Well, I want to thank Chairman Hamilton for that warm welcome, and I appreciate the invitation to be here at the Woodrow Wilson Center. I also want to reciprocate some of Chairman Hamilton’s remarks by indicating how much we appreciate his public service, which of course extends back to his time in Congress, a leadership role he played on a number of commissions of national significance, and also his partnership with us as part of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, through which he renders an enormous public service.

We’re here today to announce an important update to our Visa Waiver Program, including the announcement of our Electronic System of Travel Authorization, which is a 21st-century model for facilitating travel to the United States from visa waiver countries, while at the same time ensuring that we are enhancing our security. But before I get into the details of the announcement, I want to touch on our overall approach to travel security, and discuss the importance of the Visa Waiver Program within that general strategy of enhancing international travel while also increasing the level of our security with respect to those who enter the United States.

Let me begin by describing the threats that we face. Chairman Hamilton knows perhaps better than most the nature of the threat posed to our country by terrorists and others who wish to do us harm, and the related challenges of facilitating efficient travel in the 21st century. It’s very important to us to remain a welcoming country to visitors and business travelers and students from around the world. At the same time, those who remember the events of September 11th and those who remember the events of August 2006, currently unfolding in a trial in the United Kingdom, recognize the importance of maintaining vigorous security standards for those who want to travel globally and particularly those who want to enter the United States.

As we know, potential terrorists do not come easily labeled or identified, and they do not come from a single country or single region. We only need to recall Richard Reid, a British citizen who attempted to blow up a trans-Atlantic plane with a shoe bomb, or Zacharias Moussaoui, a French citizen who was convicted for his role with respect to the 9/11 conspiracy. In both of those instances, the people who were attempting to carry out terrorist operations for Al-Qaeda were citizens of countries which have been traditional allies and which have enjoyed visa waiver status for many years. Recent intelligence has underscored the fact that Al-Qaeda and similar extremists are attempting to recruit operatives who blend into western society, many of whom have been born in Europe or even in North America and who therefore can be seen as better able to mix in with innocent citizens traveling globally in Western Europe and the United States. What becomes very clear is that it would be not only improper but actually unwise to focus our attention in terms of security measures only on people who are coming to the Unites States as citizens from countries in certain regions of the world. In fact, the terrorists understand as we understand that the Visa Waiver Program does create a potential vulnerability if they can recruit operatives who would be permitted under their legitimate identities and without previous records to take advantage of the Visa Waiver Program now extended to over two dozen countries.

That’s why the focus of our security efforts for travelers who want to come to the United States is not simply to look at countries or groups. It is rather to focus on individuals. It is individual behavior, individual biography, individual biometrics and individual travel history that is the fairest and also the most efficient way to identify those who may pose a threat to the United States if they’re permitted to enter.

But the challenge is this: how do we identify those individuals and extract them from the large group of innocent travelers who we still want to have move around the world unhindered? And how do we maintain strong security standards while facilitating legitimate trade and travel for the vast majority of visitors? Well, those of you who have followed our strategy know we principally rely on three types of factors.

First, secure identification and reliable identification. We want to know that the person who presents themselves at the border is in fact who they say they are so we can verify whether they are on a watch list of whether we know them in some form or fashion to be a terrorist or a criminal.

Second, we need a little bit of biographical information. If we know something about the way a person has purchased their ticket or what their contact numbers are, we can find linkages that may not be evident simply by knowing their name.

And finally, of course, biometrics. Fingerprints allow us not only to search records more efficiently than simply using a name base system, but they allow us to match the fingerprint of the traveler against latent fingerprints that we pick up in battlefields or safe houses or training camps all over the world.

Using these capabilities and focusing on the individual when that person presents himself or herself at our border creates the strongest tool that we have to prevent global travel by international terrorists while not interfering with global travel by innocent travelers. Put another way, a terrorist is most vulnerable when he or she travels at the point at which they have to interact with a law-enforcement official or a border guard, present their documents and answer questions. That is the moment when their guard is down. That is the moment where they’re easiest to detect and that is the area or the moment where we have to focus our attention if we are to maximize our security in an efficient fashion.

So how does the Visa Waiver Program function within this dual challenge of both increasing our security and promoting the ability of travelers to enter this country for purposes of tourism, for purposes of business, and for purposes of study? Well, of course, the visa waiver program is a program that’s been around for a long time. And as you probably understand, its purpose was to facilitate the movement of people from countries that we know to be -- first of all, pose a modest threat of immigration overstays, and also countries in which we have a lot of confidence about their own security systems to allow travelers to come from those countries without going through the somewhat more cumbersome formal visa application process.

To qualify for the visa waiver program as it currently exists, countries have to meet certain criteria. These criteria have been designed to minimize immigration overstays and to give us confidence about the documentation presented by travelers when they come into the United States. Among other things, these countries have to issue secure passports, and we’ve elevated the security standards of the passports over the past years. They have to report blank and personalized lost and stolen passports so we can more easily determine whether someone might have obtained a passport under false pretenses and adapted it to illicit travel, and they have to have a low, non-immigrant visa refusal rate showing that by and large travelers from the country to intend to return home, as opposed to stay illegally. In addition, we also consider factors like counter-terrorism and law-enforcement capabilities, immigration and citizenship laws, passport production and issuance controls, and border control mechanisms.

Once a country meets these standards and joins the program, their citizens are eligible to travel to the U.S. without a visa for up to 90 days. Current VWP members include some of our closest international partners and many countries from which we have a high volume of visitors. And we want to continue to ensure that these countries meet the program’s high standards. The Visa Waiver Program is a win/win overall. It’s a win/win because it elevates or encourages the elevation of security standards by those countries who are sending travelers, and it’s a win/win for us because we get more travelers. Let me describe some of the benefits that the United States gets from visa waiver enabled tourism and travel.

First, we get economic benefits. More than 15 million travelers from VWP - Visa Waiver Program countries - arrived in the U.S. last year, and in 2006 visa waiver program travelers accounted for 60% of travel related business transactions. Typically, these visa waiver travelers stay twice as long as domestic tourists when they come to the U.S., as opposed to travelers who are coming from non-visa waiver countries. And besides the obvious economic benefits, there are tremendous cultural and diplomatic advantages to visa-free travel. Cross-cultural exchanges with our allies and friends help our efforts to promote America as a free and peaceful nation. They turn every American citizen in the U.S. into a goodwill ambassador for those who come to visit us. This people-to-people diplomacy strengthens our image around the world and plays and important role in winning hearts and minds and combating radicalization and some of the negative stereotyping which is leveled against the United States.

So we see the Visa Waiver Program has been a positive benefit to security and a positive benefit to the economy and in fact to America’s image in the world. But we also have to recognize, particularly after September 11th, that some elements of the Visa Waiver Program as currently configured have become outdated. After all, the Visa Waiver Program was created in the 1980’s, when frankly what was uppermost in the minds of those who were designing the program were concerns about economic issues. Were immigrants going to come under the guise of being tourists and overstay and thereby increase the population of illegal immigrants in the country? Security, the notion of global terrorists coming from Europe, Japan and other visa waiver countries were simply a secondary thought. But after September 11th, our priorities have to be revised. The most important thing is protecting the security of the country against dangerous people who might come in to do us harm. And so with the help of Congress with a very strong mandate by the President, we’ve aggressively worked to retool the Visa Waiver Program for the 21st century. And there are three dimensions to this.

First, we want to increase the level of security currently applicable to visa waiver travelers to go beyond what we have in place based on the old, pre-9/11 system.

Second, we want to move from the world of paper to the world of electronic communication and electronic documentation. We’re in the 21st century and we ought to operate a visa waiver system that befits the 21st century as opposed to the paper-based 20th century.

And finally, having secured the program, we want to expand its benefits. In particular to countries which are strong and faithful friends of the United States which are eager to have the benefit of visa waiver travel, for whom we would love the opportunity to welcome citizens coming in to visit to further reinforce the ties of family and friendship that we’ve had over the past decades. So let me turn to each of these objectives in turn.

First, let’s talk about strengthening Visa Waiver Program security. While the cornerstone of our new effort as enacted by Congress with the President’s strong support is moving to what we call the electronic system of travel authorization. As you probably know, currently visa waiver travelers complete paper I-94W forms en route to their destination. This is what they look like. And they’re filled out on the airplane and they’re an old 20th century paper-based system that asks for a number of questions. What this paper-based system does for visa-free travelers is place a tremendous burden on our Customs and Border Protection officers at ports of entry to read the forms and to use them to identify potentially dangerous people coming in. That is not only burdensome, but it’s also a cumbersome system to maintain as far as records are concerned. So beginning later this year, we’re going to move away from this paper-based system to an Electronic System for Travel Authorization which we are going to explain in greater detail in the Interim Final Rule that we are publishing today.

And here’s how the system is going to work. Beginning on August 1, travelers from current Visa Waiver Program countries will be able to go to a secure Customs and Border Protection Web site prior to their travel to the U.S. and apply for an authorization online. They’ll be asked to provide basic biographical and eligibility information - basically the same information that’s currently on the paper form.

The information will be compared to appropriate data bases, including watch lists and those that track lost and stolen passports, and within a matter of seconds applicants will receive one of three possible responses. First, ‘authorization approved’ - you’re cleared for travel. Second, ‘your travel is not authorized’ - there’s a problem. And in this case, good news for the travelers. Instead of learning that the visa waiver traveler is unauthorized when they arrive at the port of entry at Dulles, so they have to go back home again, they’ll learn it in advance, and they’ll have the opportunity to go to an embassy or a consulate of the U.S. and see if there’s any way they can straighten out the issue. And finally, some may get the response ‘authorization pending.’ That means we need to do a little further checking and they should come back and check again within 72 hours.

There are a number of clear benefits to this system. First, it improves security by allowing us to know who’s traveling to our country earlier than we do today. This information that’s on the I-94 will not be seen for the first time when the person arrives at the airport at Dulles or Kennedy or some other airport, but it will be seen by someone at Customs and Border Protection at least sometime in advance before takeoff so we can take appropriate action if necessary to stop someone from coming in before they actually get on an airplane and arrive at the United States.

Second, in coordination or complimentary to our move to asses risk based on individuals as opposed to countries or groups, ESTA increases our ability to asses risk because of individual information. We’re not looking at simply country of origin or some gross characteristic such as that. We’re looking at the individual information presented which allows us to do a more precise and specific risk analysis.

Third, it’s going to be easier for travelers because they’re going to learn in advance that there’s a problem if there is a problem with their entering the country, as opposed to finding out when they arrive after a seven or eight hour plane flight. That’s going to be better for the traveler who wants to avoid a problem at the end of their flight and who would prefer to address the issue before they come.

Finally, it’s going to be tremendous to move out of a paper-based, record-based system where this has to all be scanned into a computer into a system where we directly input the information into databases and are they capable of using that information in an electronic form without that intermediate step of having to key it in or scan it in based on the old paper-based records.

I should point out that there’s a couple of important features of this new system. First of all, once you get an approved authorization, it will be valid for up to two years or when your existing passport expires -whichever is first. So you’re not going to have to do this every time you travel, nor, by the way, do you have to wait until you have a trip scheduled. Once this system opens up, regular business travelers may be well-advised to sign up with this system before they have planned travel, and then they’ll be able to rely on that authorization over a two year period. Once you have the authorization, the only additional information you’ll have to provide will be when your destination or itinerary change in subsequent trips. You can either go back to the Web site and update the information, or you will be able to fill out a simple form on an airplane with just that additional destination information going forward.

Finally, of course, all the data privacy protections currently in place with respect to the I-94 form will be applied in full to ESTA. The Web site is secure, and we’ll employ technology to ensure information that’s submitted online is protected. Passengers should rest assured that we are not changing the privacy standards or protections for the use of this data. We’re simply changing the format through which it is entered from a paper form to an electronic form.

This deployment of ESTA is a major step forward in terms of adding to the security dimensions of the Visa Waiver Program. But there are a few other things that we’re going to be doing to strengthen security as well. First, we are beginning to add additional countries into the program and we’re beginning that process. Nobody has yet been admitted. No new country has been admitted, but we’ve now signed Memoranda of Understanding with eight countries that lay out the additional metrics they will have to meet so that they can be admitted to join the existing countries in the program. This will include providing information about serious crimes and known and suspected terrorists, timely reporting of lost and stolen passport date, cooperation on airport and aviation security. These new standards, by the way, are applicable across the board and will be applicable to existing visa waiver countries as they come up for their periodic renewals. In the end, the idea is to have a system that applies to all visa waiver countries that is security-enhanced, but that also allows us to broaden the membership in the Visa Waiver Program to include a number of countries that I think will benefit and are certainly very eager to become part of this.

Finally, let me talk a little bit about the timeline. We’re going to begin this system of enrollment in August. For the new visa waiver countries, we’re hoping that we can meet the various metrics that are required by the law towards the end of this year. So that it is my hope, and I think a reasonable hope, that we can get some of these new countries into the program by the late fall of 2008. What will happen, however, is that we have set a deadline to have ESTA up and running, fully up and running, starting in August. We will deploy it over the course of the next few months and by January 12th, 2009, ESTA will be fully implemented, meaning that by January 12th of next year all visa waiver travelers form new countries and old countries will be participating in the ESTA system. Furthermore, no new country will be admitted into the Visa Waiver Program before January 12th without a requirement being in place that all of its travelers participate in the system.

So we are slowly unrolling this system over a period of months with the understanding that we will not be admitting anybody new into the program until and unless they are participating in ESTA and also with the understanding that by January 12th, all visa waiver countries will be participating in the ESTA system.

The net outcome of all this is very simple. By January of next year, this electronic system with better security and more efficiency and easier convenience will be in effect across the board for every visa waiver country. Hopefully as well by January of next year we’ll be able to welcome new visa waiver visitors form countries that have been waiting years to get that opportunity. And that’s going to be a good new story for them. And the best news of all is this is a 21st century solution to the problem of managing to keep terrorists out of the United States while increasing the ability of travelers to come freely, conveniently and without having to get involved in cumbersome and inefficient travel vetting processes.

So with that, we’re looking forward to working with our partners on the completion of the implementation plan. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to my counterparts in Europe about this and everybody there is fully informed. And I think it’s a big step forward in continuing to increase the level of security with respect to global travel, but in a way that does not cost us the very important and tangible benefits of international tourism and international trade. And with that, I’ll be happy to take a few questions. Of course, maybe I’ve answered everything. Yes?

Question: What’s the cost?

Secretary Chertoff: There will be no cost to travelers. It’ll be free. Yes?

Question: Caroline Bledsoe from the Wilson Institute. You talked about expanding this in terms of the benefits within the visa waiver countries. Is there any possibility of expanding this more individualistic focus toward non-visa waiver countries and it’s extraordinary difficult for us, for example, and Northwestern to get Africans to come for seminars and we almost give up on actually inviting them?

Secretary Chertoff: Of course, the visa process involves not just my department. It involves State as well. I think there are a couple things that Secretary Rice and I are trying to do to make this a little easier. I know the State Department is working to find an easier way to arrange for people to have interviews and go through the process. I know one of the difficulties is sometimes getting people in for the interviews. Sometimes they have to travel distances and it becomes complicated. As we get more information and the capability to use biometrics and these other tools, our ability to deal with the security process which we do together with state does become more efficient as well. Obviously there’s an increase in volume, which strains the system to some extent, but I do think we’re constantly looking at how to make our processes more efficient, but without sacrificing security. The cooperation of the private sector is important in this. When we’re dealing with students, the cooperation of schools is very important. And they’ve got to look to their responsibilities as well. Yes?

Question: Mr. Secretary, Timothy Towell, retired Foreign Service officer. All this modern electronic wonderful stuff -- only very modern, very advanced countries can do that electronic stuff. Is that not the case? Does that mean that only the elitist European countries can be part of this program, and backward, developing countries and people that look different than we are can’t do it?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, I guess that was a question to set me up to say this, so I’ll say it. First of all, I mean, the internet is widely available. It’s hardly elitist. But I will say that there are a number of different ways people can use the system. They can register themselves at home, they can use a travel agent, or they can do it with the airline. So there’s no reason that there should be any constraint on people’s ability to register with the program. There are going to be multiple portals so that it’ll be available to all the visa waiver countries. Yes?

Question: Mr. Secretary, it seems to me that when you -- I thought I had a deep voice. Okay. It seems to me that you would need a significant training budget for this, because on one hand it’s obviously easier. On the other hand, all of those who have filed things online know the frustration when you can’t solve something online so give us some of the layers of -- is there a help desk you can call for an 800 number? As you just said, the visa department? We all have friends who have been frustrated with going to U.S. embassies. Are they going to be trained to solve these problems?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, this is not going to operate through the embassies and it’s not the same kind of elaborate process that’s involved in getting a visa where there’s an interview. It’s actually very simple data fields and we work with this information all the time. We do this kind of analysis all the time. We do it with respect to our advanced passenger information system. We do it with other systems. So this kind of process of analysis has been one that Customs and Border Protection have used for many years. Now, you’re going to get one of three responses. If you get ‘authorization granted’, that’s obviously the end of the issue. If you get ‘check back’ and you check back and you still don’t have an answer, or if you have a no answer, that’s when it will be necessary for someone to get in touch with a consulate or the embassy to pursue that further.

Question: But are they Homeland Security Department people that you go see? Or is it a State Department?

Secretary Chertoff: No, it’s -- the people who are going to -- this information is going to flow into Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which typically does this analysis.

Question: But these people will be sitting in the embassy in Paris? So I can’t get online, I can’t get -- then I go make an appointment with who?

Secretary Chertoff: Then you make an appointment with your embassy or your consulate in wherever your country is. Yes?

Question: It’s wonderful to hear the benefits for visa waiver countries that you’re developing, because as you point out the importance of people-to-people as far as the future of hearts and minds is very clear. However, are you planning the same kind of improvements for domestic travel? I’m thinking of all those people who have artificial hips and knees who have to go through an unbelievable kind of examination every time they travel from New York to Boston.

Secretary Chertoff: Well, let me take that in two parts. About a month ago or three weeks ago I announced we’re going to make some changes on domestic travel so that people who have typically in the past not been able to get their boarding pass or their -- either online or at a kiosk because they were selectees, we’ve now created an opportunity for airlines, by collecting a date of birth, to modify the system so that people will be able to get their boarding pass at a kiosk or online at home and not have that problem that a lot of people have complained about, that their name matches that of someone who’s a selectee, so they always have to go to the check in desk. And we’ve offered this to the airlines. I think a number of them are signing up. The program was going to begin after Memorial Day and we’re going to track it to see. I think it behooves the airlines to sign that up. I think for most people, not everybody, but for most people that’s going to eliminate probably the major hassle with the current system which is inability to get your boarding pass at a kiosk or online. The issue with respect to people who have artificial limbs or hips or whatever, that’s a harder problem to crack and I’ll tell you why. The first suggestion I always get is “why don’t you just give me a card and it will show I have an artificial limb, and therefore you’ll just let me through without checking me.” Here’s the problem. What do you do with a terrorist who has an artificial limb who gets a card and decides he’s going to go through with his limb, but he’s also going to go through with a detonator. That’s not going to be a very good solution. This plays to a larger criticism which we sometimes get, which is why do we -- sometimes we’re seen checking people who are children, or people who are advanced in age. Why are we doing this? Isn’t it perfectly obvious that the terrorists are all fit, young men between 18 and 45 with semi-military bearing? So let me give you some facts that will maybe give you an idea of what we’re facing. In the trial in London relating to the airline plot, I believe it’s a video tape that was introduced in court in which a couple talks about - I guess they’re doing their martyrdom video - talks about how they’re going to go and blow themselves up on an airplane with their infant baby. Or what about the 12 year old? When I was in Afghanistan last week I heard this story of one suicide bomber who stopped a convoy by throwing a 12 year old boy in front of a truck and figuring that would stop them, and then he’d go and he went out and blew up the convoy and also killed the 12 year old. Or what about the two mentally disabled women in Iraq who were wired up and sent into a marketplace to be blown up? I wish I could tell you that the enemy we’re facing plays by some kind of rules. They don’t. They go out of their way to find people who wittingly or unwittingly will carry bombs, taking advantage of disabilities, taking advantage of children. We simply can’t afford to assume that they’re going to play in a certain way. So we always look at the system and try to figure out how we can make it more convenient. But we can’t allow our presuppositions and our assumptions to overwhelm what experience has shown is a very dangerous enemy that deliberately looks to take advantage of our reliance on certain things in order to infiltrate the system.

Moderator: Last question.

Secretary Chertoff: Way in the back.

Question: Robert Lippok from the Woodrow Wilson Center. Could you elaborate any further on the counter-terrorism methods adopted by the countries that participate in this program? You alluded to Richard Reid and the August 2006 -- it’s known that Al-Qaeda is targeting in it’s recruitment foreign nationals holding passports and they will be participants in this program. We know that foreign government reported in the press monitor their nationals going to Afghanistan and other countries of concern, but could you address sort of in terms of the participant state membership what type of tightening of counter-terrorism methods does your department expect to participate in this program?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, that’s a great question. Part of what we are looking for that’s contained in this Memoranda of Agreement are exchange of lists of people who are on terrorist watch lists. Other security measures in terms of aviation and exchange of information about lost and stolen passports which are often a way people sneak in. More generally, the level of our cooperation with our allies, particularly our European allies in this area, has significantly increased over the past several years. There’s a much more robust exchange of information and intelligence and you see the benefits of that from time to time in things like the August 2006 plot or the disruption, for example, of the attempt to set off a bomb in Germany in 2007. We now of course have an agreement with the Europeans which validates our collection of passenger name record information from people coming from Europe. So there’s a great deal of information sharing at both the open level and the intelligence level, and the Europeans are doing a lot more themselves to get visibility into who’s going into Europe. So we are taking these steps, but I have to say we still have to look not only at the possibility of Europeans being recruited, we have to look at the possibility of North Americans being recruited. And that -- so we are alert to all of the possible ways in which people might try to exploit our preconceptions and turn them against us by presenting us with terrorists who are very much unlike what the perhaps prejudiced view of a terrorist is.

Moderator: We’ll have to conclude the conference at this point. Thank you to the Secretary for his remarks.

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