The End of Visa Waiver?
Global Politician
03/05/2007
The End of Visa Waiver?
Dominic Whiteman - 3/5/2007
We Britons are used to getting questioned by offensive immigration officers at US airports, who presume that deceitfully we are making a permanent move to the US whenever we enter America using the well-established visa-waiver scheme. It's fair to say it doesn't help the "special relationship" to be confronted after an eight hour flight by some pistol-carrying, shaven-headed failed police recruit with an inferiority complex the size of Lake Michigan and an IQ no higher than a tennis score.
Why should they think we are trying to surreptitiously invade? They have rarely if ever traveled outside their state, let alone US borders. They know for a fact that America's "the greatest country on earth" and so a life in the US must be better than elsewhere – in spite of the fact that very few of us Brits would ever give up our very comfortable and civilized lives here in Britain, let alone our warm ales and pork scratchings in exchange for their (very particular) lives of Ford Exhibition brochures, well-used membership of certain sites and breakfasts for one at Denny's.
Alas (I hasten to add, some are nice, intelligent folk, like the one I am to meet next month at O'Hare), their experience of all things British is more often than not limited to negatives - what they see on TV bulletins about "Londonistan", images imprinted on their brain of scruffy, fanatical Richard Reid the shoe bomber and the blindingly handsome Abu Hamza. (Negative opinions no doubt hardened by their training on the general danger to the US of visa-waiver-holding citizens / subjects of European countries).
Perhaps they have read a copy of the Philadelphian Steven Grasse's fast-selling recent work entitled, "The Evil Empire: 101 ways in which England has ruined the world", in which Britain gets blamed for world poverty, Islamic terrorism (Britain created Saddam), even the Vietnam war (because Britain set the world trend for colonial expansion and the war would never have occurred had the country not been a French colony). As one commentator here in London noted recently, "A book seemingly created by a bunch of Philadelphia bar bores conjuring up insults against Britain ….. merely demonstrating that they have not studied History past sixth grade. The equivalent of a bunch of numbskull Brits getting together over a pint in the Dog and Duck and commenting on how the Yanks never get involved in wars until the hard bit is over and play a brand of football that looks like giant turtles mating. Steven Grasse is no more worth getting angry about than Mel Gibson's risibly anti-English version of the Battle of Stirling in Braveheart, or Steven Spielberg's film Saving Private Ryan, a portrait of D-Day without any Brits."
The current blog backcloth does not help. There are innumerable lies doing the rounds – "Europe is in the process of rapid Islamicisation", "Britain has a huge Muslim population (and they are all 911 fans)", "the UK Government is soft on terror", "Brits hate America", the 7/7 atrocity "is the tip of the iceberg" and the "special relationship" between Britain and America is "on the verge of destruction". The true answers – Muslim population less than two and a half percent and, as a percentage, decreasing (of which a maximum 7% are a danger), the most draconian anti terror laws in the world, Anglo-American co-operation at its highest level since Christmas 1942 etc) are rarely heard amidst the crazed cacophony caused by those duct-tape buying individuals who spiral off into headless lunacy where they imagine a phantom enemy so organized and lethal overrunning Britain and Europe that only trusty Atlantic waves protect the States from this perceived Islamist leprosy.
When we all calm down and – long may this special relationship last – get to chat to each other face to face either in pubs off Leicester Square or bars off Times Square (more often than not these days in far-flung destinations like Cambodia or MySpace), we realize that we speak the same language (well, kind of), both laugh at bits of Monty Python and bits of Roseanne, both pay homage to "The Queen", love each other dearly (especially after that fifth beer) and surely have many years of unreserved friendship ahead.
But "special" relationships do require a chunky element of ongoing mutual honesty. Just as one tells a good but sweaty friend headed for a date that he could perhaps do with a shower, so one should make reference to dreadful immigration officers as above, or failing systems of immigration (while I have you American friends focused, also watch for Hizb ut Tahrir recruiting members and radicalizing at your colleges, Minneapolis-based Somalis funding the Al Qaeda-friendly Islamic Courts, extremist Islamist literature audio and video doing the rounds amidst your jails and mosques, and other areas which are being missed by your Homeland Security).
Britain should be more honest to its special friend America too and – with the best possible motives - admit some bad mistakes in its more recent past. After all, everyone makes mistakes. America should listen and adjust accordingly. So, what are these mistakes? What are the consequences of these mistakes? What should be the changes in the circumstances of the relationship if any changes are necessary to ensure its prolongation?
The first mistake Britain should admit to dates back to the 1980's when the British Government – then led by Margaret Thatcher – let a series of Islamists (regarded as too extreme for their own countries) into the UK as "asylum seekers". These included Omar Bakri Mohammed (founder of Hizb ut Tahrir London, and later Al Mujahiroun), Yasser Al-Siri (already convicted Egyptian terrorist and murderer), Abu Qatada (Al Qaeda's ambassador to Europe), Mohammed Al Massari (Saudi dissident and member of Hizbollah) and Abu Hamza (Radical preacher and founder of Supporters of Sharia). Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's current prime minister, has said he does not understand how people "whose hands are drenched in blood" could gain political asylum in Britain.
The second mistake Britain made was in 1989 - when Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa was passed on Salman Rushdie for his book "The Satanic Verses" - to permit these men to gain media attention and thus a prominent following amongst the hitherto integrating, peaceful British Muslim population. As a consequence of the rise of these men, Britain has a greater proportion of radical Islamists than any other country in the West. These radicals have been allowed to preach openly and often break the law. Their negative effect on Britain's Muslim minority has resulted in a British Muslim population more contemptuous of Britain and the West than any Muslim population in any other western country. A survey by Populus in July 2006 found that 7 percent of UK Muslims thought that, in some circumstances, it was justifiable to allow suicide attacks against British civilians; 13 percent felt that the suicide bombers who killed 52 people on 7 July 2005 should be viewed as "martyrs"; 16 percent thought the 7/7 attacks were wrong but happened for right reasons; and 16 percent said that if a family member joined Al Qaeda they would be "indifferent".
The third mistake Britain made was to introduce the Human Rights Act in 1998. This enshrined into British law the details of the European Convention of Human Rights, which Britain and other members of the Council of Europe had signed in 1950. As a consequence of the law's introduction by Tony Blair, suddenly sensibly flexible interpretations of the Convention were made impossible. Article 3 of the Convention states that no person should be subjected to torture so British Home Secretaries were now unable to deport these radical Islamists like Bakri and Hamza to their countries of origin, which were all suspected of torturing prisoners. Article 5 of the Convention states that no-one shall be deprived of their liberties unless tried by a "competent court" – in July 2006 a High Court judge ruled that control orders (curfews) imposed by the Home Secretary on six Islamists were illegal and should be removed. Nine Muslim terrorists in Afghanistan hijacked a plane carrying 173 passengers in the year 2000. They carried AK-47 assault rifles and grenades and forced the plane to fly to Britain. For four days they kept the passengers hostage, threatening to kill some of them, and also threatening to blow up the Boeing 727, before surrendering. The nine terrorists were jailed for five years for hijacking, possessing guns and explosives, and false imprisonment. Because of the Human Rights Act, and Article 3 of the ECHR, Justice Sullivan ruled on May 10 2006 that the nine terrorists were free to stay in Britain indefinitely.
The fourth mistake Britain made (and is continuing to make) was to allow its banning laws to continue without reform. As soon as groups like Al Ghurabaa and the Saviour Sect were banned, they simply changed brand and continued their activities in new guises without their leaders or members suffering as a consequence. These laws are not fit for purpose and fail to disrupt extremist and terrorist groups operating in Britain – take the example of the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) who were banned in the UK in 2001 and have raised millions of pounds for terrorism since, through extortion and criminal activities taking place actually in the UK.
There have been other mistakes made by the British Government but these four are the key mistakes Britain must confess to, so as to keep the special relationship going. Britain does not need American help to sort out these issues – Britain is more than capable of sorting out these issues by itself, and finding solutions to the wider struggle against terror as it achieves these solutions – but Britain does need to be more honest about its recent own goals (all made honestly, if a bit naively).
The consequences of Britain's mistakes are there for all to see: British-based Islamist terrorists have carried out operations in at least fifteen countries, going from East to West ... Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Algeria, Morocco, Russia, France, Spain and the United States. 7/7 shows that Britain's 1980's hospitality to Islamist radicals is now spawning consequences few ever imagined possible. The 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot was an alleged terrorist plot to detonate liquid explosives carried on board several airliners traveling from the United Kingdom to the United States – the clearest evidence, since Richard Reid the shoe-bomber, of Britain's problems in controlling its Islamist residents; of preventing the export of terror to its greatest ally, America.
The visa waiver scheme – allowing any British passport holder to climb on board a boat or plane to America without a visa – is no longer a sensible system. The visa waiver scheme allows the likes of Richard Reid to get on planes, whether in the UK or anywhere else for that matter, without a visa. Similarly, millions of other European citizens – some of whom actually hate America and wish the country harm – can travel without visas. One hardly needs reminding that boats and planes – after a lull - have proven themselves over the last six years as useful suicide canisters for the Islamist enemy.
There are plenty of individuals with US passports who would not be welcome in the UK if they had to apply for even a visiting visa.
It seems only logical in an age of biometric data, retina recognition and increased co-operation between the intelligence and security services of Britain and America that visas should be applied for by the passport holders of both states.
The US is Britain's largest single market and is the leading destination for British overseas investment. The UK-US political/economic relationship is extremely close. The UK has strong links to both the Administration and Congress. Following the events of 11 September 2001, the UK made a commitment to stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with the US in the campaign to defeat terrorism. The United Kingdom's support for action against Iraq and the subsequent commitment of substantial forces to fight alongside those of the US underlined the strength of the transatlantic relationship. The US and UK are close partners in addressing a wide range of issues, including counter-terrorism, the Middle East Peace Process, and counter-proliferation. Long may this special relationship continue.
It is time for visa waiver to be replaced by a system of visa application which makes us all safer. It will cause a lot more paperwork and a lot more hassle for travelers between the US and Europe – but anything is better than another 911. Who knows? It may also present an excellent opportunity for US immigration officers to learn some manners.
Dominic Whiteman is spokesperson for the London-based VIGIL anti-terrorist organization – an international network of terror trackers, including former intelligence officers, military personnel and experts ranging from linguistic to banking experts.
