Thai Passport Arrest Another Reminder Why US Visa Waiver Program Should Be Scrapped
Counterterrorism blog
My fellow CT Blogger and former INS colleague Mike Cutler and I have frequently discussed how the US Visa Waiver Program, which allows citizens of some 27 mostly European nations to enter the United States as temporary visitors without applying for a visa, is a threat to our national security. Removing the overseas visa application and in-person consular officer interview process from the border security equation, particularly in the post-9/11 world in which we now exist, makes no sense.
The 7/7 and 7/21 London terror attacks, and the investigative efforts revealing most of the suspects are long-term Islamic British resident aliens or native-born British citizen Muslims, should remind those of us in America that violent Euro-Jihadists are very real and very dangerous. As though shoe bomber Richard Reid (British citizen), likely 9/11 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui (French citizen of Algerian descent) and the Madrid 3/11 bombing suspects (mostly Moroccans who had lived as long-term residents of Spain) were not reminder enough. Such Euro-Jihadists need only obtain a European passport, sans US visa, to effect entry into the US; especially if the identity in such a passport is a “clean” identity unknown to any Intelligence or Law Enforcement organization and not posted in a lookout system.
Agence France Presse today issued a report that an Algerian-born British citizen named Mahieddine Daikh was arrested early today at Bangkok international airport as he attempted to leave the country. The violation? He was found in possession of more than 450 forged European passports. The passports purported to have been issued by France, Belgium, Portugal and Spain. All are Visa Waiver eligible countries. Daikh is reported to have been destined to Scotland, via Amsterdam.
The noted media report stated the suspect claimed he purchased the false documents on the Thai resort island of Samui, which is in the Gulf of Thailand in the southern part of the country, an area experiencing significant problems with radical Islamic extremists.
The potential security threat elements of this sordid crime story are self-explanatory enough on the surface. Had this Algerian-descent Brit successfully smuggled those 450+ bogus Euro passports back to Europe, just what did he plan to do with them? Would any of those false documents have ended up in the hands of Euro-Jihadists destined for New York or some other American port-of-entry where he would have likely been stamped in for a welcome 90-day “visit” to the US? Hopefully, Daikh’s arrest will answer some of those questions. Kudos to the Thai police for making the collar.
This arrest/seizure in Bangkok again demonstrates the global interconnectivity of underworld events that clearly threaten America’s security. It shows why global sharing of intelligence and law enforcement information is so critical to keeping us safe. In this particular case, it also reminds us…yet again…how a US immigration policy that was originally established to develop commercial tourism among friendly nations with few illegal immigration problems is now a major security impediment that should seriously be reconsidered.
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