well, i compare with yugoslavia for only one reason, trying to give example that the violation cannot be accepting in one case and not accepted in the other case. if we don't have the continuity, we don't have the same rules of game for everybody, there will be violation. now to the agreement of 1994 which was agreed between the countries. it was to give guarantee of the country of their security.

today nobody want to undermine the security of great. if you remember, it was related with nuclear weapons. if ukraine didn't have nuclear weapons, if you have nuclear weapons in hands ever irresponsible politicians, that is very dangerous. that's why i think this is political speculations of some ukrainian politicians saying maybe we will create again nuclear weapon and we will be stronger. it's not so. they need political settlement and political solution and russia's ready to help. i think that russia cannot help

and i will tell you why. we have so level of mistrust between all of us that anything what russia may do we will be presented in other countries as something against the interests of ukraine. russia also doesn't trust west countries thinking that everything what western countries are doing to ukraine is against russian interests. that's all all the group sitting together as we were doing -- with the case of iran or with the case of south korea nuclear weapon or in middle east, we sit together and we prepare road map for great, how to settle political instability, constitutional reforms, language, all of the issues which we need and we will help ukrainians to implement. then we will help ukrainians and the second help us to restore

some kind of dialogue and trust. >> there is a question down here. second row. >> thank you. my name is james chen. i'm independent scholar here. i'm holding this book. actually i'm reviewing it. in the forward, they said it is rare opportunity for u.s. and russia to develop the new international order. but when i read this again and i didn't see anything happening that way and so how much do you think that the road is developing, the way are you predicting dr. kissinger predicted, if anything new it means international order. some say this is a russia/china excess. how do you comment on that? thank you.

>> well, some people say about russia/china, some about new policies, some american/chinese system. i don't know. i can assure you first of all that, unfortunately, informational community didn't do job to create principles of foundations of new world order. that's why we have this order. second, what we know that there will be no bipolar world. i was one that created such definition but we never developed what it means, the combination between them. in the other book i wrote about -- it's not in this book,

but unfortunately, we only now understand how to beat problems all among us without new understanding in what world we have to live. we are putting -- we started to put under the question international organizations including u.n., international law, where not only you may blame russia but i can blame other countries. all of us, international community in general participated in this destructive exercises. that's why i think we have now with what is happening in middle east, what is happening in other region to understand. we need to see that we have to start next year maybe it will be good year when we will celebrate 70 years after the victory in second world war where we were

aligned and participated together and out of all created u.n. system. maybe now we have to understand, we have the same challenges, the same problems. we have danger for all of us and we need to unite our forces to create this new world order. how we do it, i don't know. it is clear that we need principles. we to respect principles. we need to respect international law. we have to create mechanism only together. looking with during the cold war it was easier to impose in the middle east. it was possible the united states and soviet union, they could stop the war in only speaking by phone. in deciding how to stop. today who is listening. israel is listening to united states.

at least russia. somebody. nobody is listening to nobody. that is why it is necessary to create totally new system where everybody will respect the order and will work together. it's not easy, i understand. maybe you will think that i am something in the other world. not in this world. i don't see any other possibility for otherwise to avoid the more difficult period. if we don't start this work. >> question from the head of the institute. there is an opinion than oftentimes the reason why we can't get started on this approach to a new systeming with to a new type of dialogue, to putting our trust in a new set of rules, is fear, is deep,

latent insecurity. my question is, when it comes to the countries, particularly on russia's periphery, and we know from the latest crisis in ukraine but others, those probl biggest problems with the west. why do you think there is so much fear of russia, and is that fear justified? >> during the soviet period, when some of the same, there is opinion -- very high level. i don't know weather it is your opinion, very high level or not. but maybe there is opinion. i will tell you, in '90s, russia was struggling to survive.

we never had at that moment capacity to create problems for anybo anybody. but in '90s nato started the process of enlargement. it means that it was not fear. it was speculations about fear. what fear had czech republic or hungary or poland. what feeling. it was the intention to enter nato as the first step to be members of european union. and other countries, you're coming tobaltic countries. it was the same issue, baltic countries, what fear they had. they are members now of nato. okay. you have the article 5.

fear? what fear? russia is a stupid country to start third world war? i think mainly they are trying to let us see -- i said about results or relations. i think they also have reasonable people. they wanted to gain creating this impression of russian threat. russian threat -- i will tell you. in latvia be you know perfectly well, 30% of the population without nationality. i was speaking with european union. i was speaking with oc. i was speaking with counsel of europe, please, do you think this is acceptable? what is the reason? why they don't have nationality? because they are not from latvia but this is not their problem. they -- all their life they are living there because they are

russians only. and i said we don't want to impose our conviction. please, impose them only the rules of council of of them an else. this is what we have to discuss normally. there will be no threat. but it's easy to say, this is the threat of russia. threat, what? we need baltic countries. we have a lot of territories, i can ashire ysure you. why we need more small republic? we don't know what to do with sbeer siberia. we have 6 or 7 million people that we don't know how to develop that big region. we need dialogue together. then you will see that everything is possible.

>> ava spolan, retired american diplomat. mr. minister, you said that, if i understood you correctly, that without a sort of strategic framework and agreement on political principles, there's not much point in talking about smaller issues because these don't really lead to dialogue. but apropos that, and also your last comments, do you think it's really possible for us to agree on a set of principles? i think there are so many differences in the way we view the world and what we think is permissible and not permissible to start with nato, whether it's a threat to russia or not. and isn't it sometimes better to start with the small issues? i remember in the soviet period, we spent a lot of time thinking about what are the small issues

we can discuss because we're never going to agree on the big ones. >> if i say, no, it means we have to say that our generation is stupid. if it was signed in '75, during the cold war period, and it was possible to agree ten principles, ten important principles of stability in europe, why we cannot do it now? what is the reason? at that moment we have total incompatibility between our systems. we have two military political groups preparing the strike against each other. during the cold war we signed helsinki agreement on the highest level. with the ten principles. that's why i think if somebody says today's more difficult than

it was at that moment, this is only to avoid from the work and only to cover incapacity of the people to -- i am sure that it is possible. i am sure that it is possible. the other example which i can give you is that after the war in yugoslavia, the nato bombed yugoslavia. in two years we agreed between russia and nato, create of russia/nato council. if you read the statement, it was ratified by only two countries and by russia and we agreed principles, also, lou to cooperate between nato and russia. unfortunately, we failed with that cooperation later but we agreed to principles. that's why it is possible. the main thing is not agree principle. the main thing to agree how to apply, how to implement the

pribpri principles. this is the every day not, not just to sign beautiful documents. >> i'm from afghanistan and here at rumsfeld foundation. my question is, minister, how do you assess the security situation in the region when the nato combat operation ends by the end of this year. while we clearly say that the taliban are not completely dismantled, we have isis or isil and we presently see many corkh coming up. how do you address all the security concerns? thank you.

>> well, the topic of our meeting was russia and u.s. is a real partnership still possible. i think that if we have partnership, real partnership, it will be also important for the stability in the region. because for different reasons it's important for the united states, but not less for russia security situation. and we cooperated quite well during different period. it was during the period of taliban and after september 11th. and that's why we helped make the american troops to receive transit of weapons through russian territories because it's now interest, even without dialogue, we were helping america's troops in afghanistan. this is the demonstration or understanding of the real

situation, how we have to cooperate. unfortunately, as i said before, you cannot select one point and say here, the cooperation is here, we cannot cooperate here. here i trust you, here i don't trust you. you know as normal people, if i trust you, i trust you in everything. i cannot trust you today and tomorrow i don't trust you again. that's why i think the future of afghanistan will depend mainly from the international cooperation. israel interests, china interests, all regional countries. we have, as you remember, the group of eight, the border countries and main other players working very closely. with iran also it is necessary to work. means we all that countries who has the real interest and capacity and possibility. we have to cooperate. and if we cooperate, we can avoid the negative consequences. if not, there will be gain, we

don't know from there. >> there's one in the back. start with this gentleman here in the middle. >> center for the initiative for belarus. i was happy to hear abandonment of former soviet union countries. since the cold war russia insists it has rights for privileged interests in these countries of the former soviet union. can you specify what exactly does this mean, "privileged interests." and could it be the reason why ukrainian crisis has started that russia wanted to employ this -- some kind of veto power over decisions on national development of ukraine. thank you. >> look.

i am professional diplomat. 40 years of my experience. and i know how to read papers and i know how to read statements. give me one statement -- i was minister for four years, then i was three years secretary of security council. give me one statement, my statement, speaking about some privilege interests of russia in that countries. if you give me, i will answer you. but you cannot give me -- this is you read in mass media, in pres press. let us use statements, documents, and then i will answer you. we don't have any privilege interests in the countries. we have to expect -- i ratified this one. i was presenting the so-called big treaty among russia and ukraine. saying that we are equal players

of international -- in international arena. only equal on the basis of equality or equal rights we can construct new kind of relations. and i think that we -- with belarus, we are trying to give such example. that is why i think that if you ask me, in theory, we don't have any privileged interests. we have national interests. this is true. this is different. national interest than privilege interests. national interests, because we have common border. it's clear that we have more interests, national interests there than many european countries or even the united states, because we have the common history. we have the common recent history. we have common economic interests. we have common security interests. we have common humanitarian interests because many families

there are leaving there. that's why we have international interests. that's why we recognize it. but national interest and privileged interests is big difference, as we say in odessa. >> that is what explains why russia is worried about nato on the border. you say it is not a privileged interest in those countries but you are worried about your own strategic defense interests in that region along that border. is that correct? >> look. we started to speak with nato during the first enlargement. i was speaking with four seco secretary generals of nato. trying to understand what is the policy of nato or the enlargement of nato. what is the policy of the

enlargement part of nato. if i don't understand your policy, i cannot believe you because i suspect -- i misterrorist yomistrust you. because if you don't explain me the situation -- i told you before, this is not political organization. we are not against the enlarge. of european union. this is logical. but nato is not political organization. it is military organization. and if it's military organization, the enlarnlth mea enlargement means that you want to assure your security. and if you have enlargement towards russia, it means security's coming from russia.y. and if you have enlargement towards russia, it means security's coming from russia. in political documents they put nato. now russia is not enemy for nato. but the enlargement is coming to russian borders.

where is the logical of these decisions. that's why we created russia nato council precisely, not to stop the enlargement, because it was clear that it was not our possibility to stop the enlargement. but we wanted to create new mechanism trying to say, let us seek together. what was the russia nato council? all countries in national capacity. it was not nato countries and r russia. but it was countries, each country, in national capacity sitting around the table discussing common problems and tried to find common solution. but unfortunately, we failed. >> okay. we have about eight, nine minutes to go. let's get the gentleman in the back who's been waiting patiently. then we'll move to the front. identify yourself. >> dick rosen with the council for community of democracies.

mr. minister, in your remarks you said we should study the lessons of ukraine. the president of ukraine, poroshenko, has studied those problems and he thinks the solution is to correct a situation which is politically corru corrupt. that kind of reform, is it the basis for a partnership between russia and the united states in advancing it, or to return to that question, do the russians fear such reform. >> i'm not quite sure either of us understands the question. reform in ukraine that poroshenko is talking about reform in ukraine? >> yes. >> and the question is, that would be the basis for some type of cooperation? >> well -- >> i didn't listen to speech of

poroshenko in the congress. that's why maybe i don't know details of his plan of settlement. but you spoke about corruption. yes or no? >> yes. >> about corruption. well, corruption, i think that is one of the problems which was reason of explosion one year ago. that's why it's clear that you have to -- corruption is one of the problem. but i think that ukraine -- it is not only problem of ukraine, the corruption. corruption is one of the main problems, but, unfortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately for different reasons, after the disintegration of the soviet union, the creation of ukraine as independent state, not only

corruption but the principle -- pillars of democracy, democratic country, were not created. new institutions, parliament with being judicial system and economic system. that's why i don't think it is so easy to say only with corruption. first of all, if you don't have the whole system, you cannot struggle against corruption. because to battle corruption, you need institutions. without institutions, you cannot battle corruption. that's why when i said before we need the whole road map which we can propose or elaborate with ukrainians, not without ukrainians, but with ukrainians and help them, political, economic, social, and also including corruption. this is the big job for many years. this is not -- you cannot battle corruption in one year.

it's quite difficult in the society of ukraine which exists today. we have time for a few more questions. let's do the gentleman in the middle standing up, then we'll come down here. >> thank you. i represent georgian television station in washington, d.c. let me remind you of the statement of poroshenko appeared in 2008 when it started the confrontation in georgia. the question is about russia/georgia relations. how do you see this when government declared policies to join nato. thank you, sir. >> well, i read with satisfaction the statement of the georgian prime minister in new york during the general assembly of united nations that the policy of georgia is to step

by step normalization of relations with russia. i think that this is the same attitude from moscow and it's clear we have problems, we have history. we -- and we need for both sides work to restore the normal relations between our two states. i think that it is possible we have a lot of -- we have good and important history, long history, among our people, among our cultures, and i think that moving ahead with this political will i think that the normalization will be -- it is possible but it will need time.

>> okay. i think this will be our last question down here. one of the fellows here at the wilson center. >> my name is audrey. i'm one of the fellows at the wilson center this year. i'd like to return to the question about the right to protect and my question specifically is what russia's policy in particular is on right to protect, if it construes it as being appropriate to intervene when cultural rights are being threatened, whether an existential threat would have to be presbyterian. in other words, russia's policy and the way it construes the idea of right to protect. thanks. >> well, i think that for the first time we started to speak about this when the military force was used against syrian population. i don't think that we can today

define in all details whether you can use this right or whether ywhen you don't use this right. but it was the real violation of human rights with killing civil population. and it was considered important to use this right. how it can be used on other occasions i don't think can be defined exactly. i don't think you can use that right as -- it's not no but it has to be something exceptional. that in ukraine we had exceptional situation and that right was used. >> well, on that note, which reminds us that a lot has not been defined in this area. but i really want to thank you

very much for a wonderful explanation. it's very rare that we get the view from moscow directly. i'm very appreciative -- >> this is not view from moscow. this is my personal view. that's why i don't think that everybody in moscow agree with it. >> in fact, that's true. do you feel lonely in your position? >> oh, i don't know. maybe. >> but thank you very much. it is definitely not an official but it is a very educated opinion based on years of stellar diplomacy. and thank you very, very much. >> thank you.

coming up later today on our companion network, c-span, a conversation about the u.s. response top ebola with a former health official from the bush administration at the heritage foundation. live on c-span at noon eastern. c-span has coverage of over 100 campaign debates this fall. more debates tonight starting at 7:00 eastern on c-span with the second ranking democrat in the senate, illinois's dick durbin. he debates his republican challenging jim oberweis. then the debate for governor of massachusetts. we'll look for your reaction via facebook and twitter. at 9:00 eastern, david perdue debates the daughter of former senator sam nunn.

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america's past. our new series, "real america," featuring archival government and educational films from the '30s through the '70s. c-span3, created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter. the u.s. visa waiver program allows some foreigners to travel to the u.s. without a visa. we'll hear from former homeland security secretary michael chertoff and poland's ambassador to the u.s. let me add my welcome to everyone. i think we have a good program for you this morning and hopefully we'll all come out of this a little better informed than when we got leehere. the program will go as follows. i will introduce secretary

chertoff. then he will speak, answer a few questions, then he has to depart and we'll bring the panel up. i'll introduce them. we'll do the panel piece of it. finally we will wrap up with closing remarks by the ambassador. so without further ado, i'd like to introduce secretary michael chertoff. he is the executive chairman and co-founder of the chertoff group. probably even more significantly, he was the secretary of the department of homeland security, took that job at a very difficult time, and, frankly, sort of remade the organization and brought it up to a status where it was extremely effective and i say that as having been the department of defense counterpart to dhs during my time as deputy assistant. i had the opportunity to work extensively with secretary chertoff's folks and quite a few rather interesting events, both

natural and man-made. he is also a former federal judge for the u.s. court of appeals for the third circuit and was a federal prosecutor who, among other things, prosecuted the -- or conducted the investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks. with that, i will ask secretary chertoff to join us. >> thank you, steve. it's good to see some familiar faces in the crowd, including some veterans of government during my tenure. one of the things i did when i was secretary of homeland security is i was engaged in the process of expanding the visa waiver program. in 2007-2008, i expanded it to incorporate a number of nations in central europe. in 2008 i actually had the opportunity to go around and

meet with the leaders of those countries and it was a remarkable experience. in fact, in many ways one of the highlights of my professional tenure at the department, because i was made aware of how meaning it will that inclusion into the visa waiver program was to the citizens of those countries of central europe. time and again i was told, whether it was the baltics or the czech republic or slovakia, the inclusion of these countries in the visa waiver program was the final step in recognizing their migration from being under the control of the former soviet union into becoming full members of the association of freedom loving and democratic states. it was not just an economic travel issue but it was a moral and political issue for these countries. by the way, if you ever want to experience real gratitude, it's to go to a country which has been admitted into the program

and to see how even every day people react to being told that they're finally in the category, equivalent to that of western european allies that we have had within the program for a long period of time. in fact, even my barber here in the u.s. who is from korea made a point of saying the next time i wanted to get my haircut, thank you very much for admitting korea to the visa waiver program. so it was very, very meaningful. but i'm leer to talk about the program not in light of my experience in 2008, but in light of where we are flnow. and obviously we are in a dangerous place in the world, perhaps more dangerous than at any time in the last ten years. that's to say, past a couple years after the events of 9/11. that's, frankly, because of the proliferation of terrorist groups really ranging from parts of africa all the way east into

afghanistan and pakistan. a notable element of what we've seen in the last year or so has been the rise of groups like isis in syria and iraq that deliberately recruit foreign fighters, westerners, americans and europeans, in order to have them not only train and participate in terrorist activities in the middle east or in africa, but also to prepare people who may come back to the united states or western europe at some point and carry out attacks in those locations. in fact, just recently, the person who attacked the embassy in belgium engaged in activities with syria and iraq. this obviously raises the question of security with travel and the security with respect to visitors and put it on the front

burner. i know that some have suggested that maybe we need to revisit the visa waiver program. i'm here to say that i think that would be a huge mistake. i think it would be the equivalent of trying to conduct an operation that requires a scalpel by using a chainsaw. all that happens is you don't achieve your mission and you wind up killing the patient as well. i think there are things we could do to enhance our security, but i actually think within the visa waiver program we can be more effective in doing that. so i want to take a few minutes to lay out what i see as the benefits to the united states of having a vigorous and effective visa waiver program, and then talk about a few of the things we might do to make sure that we can continue to protect ourselves even within the framework of that program. first, it needs to be clear that the visa waiver program is not a program that allows anybody willy-nilly to come into the united states, whether or not

they pose a risk. whether we inaugurated the expansion of the program several years ago, we added an element called the electronic system of travel authorization. esta. this is a very simple and straight frooforward system tha requires visa waiver participants, requires their citizens periodically to file online with the u.s. government a brief statement about their particulars, the kinds of things we normally collect at the border itself, but to do so in advance. and what that does is it creates an opportunity for our government to look at the details of someone's birth date, address, things of that sort, and determine whether, based on what our intelligence is, this person poses perhaps a risk that requires a closer look at the time that they arrive in the

united states. so it is a very unobtrusive and convenient way to collect information in advance that we used to collect only when someone arrived in the u.s. and that gives us the opportunity to analyze that kind of basic data so that we can determine whether people are maybe red flagged for purposes of further inquiry. added to that we have the capabilities now through our ability to review and analyze passenger name record information which is basic travel data about people's address, contact information, and travel route, by combining this with esta, we are able to take a deeper look at the kinds of connections or contacts that might suggest someone is a risk that we can then pull into secondary when they arrive in the united states. these programs have proven very powerful over the years in allowing us to avoid the problem of people coming in as

operatives from overseas because we had an early warning. and that applies with respect to western europeans as well as those from other parts of the world. now, there are some other benefits that we get from the visa waiver program that are maybe a little bit more broad than simply our better visibility than who's coming into the country. one of them is the increasing solidarity that the program gives us with countries in europe, and in particular central europe. it will not have escaped your notice that we're at a time now, maybe again for the first time in many, many years, that there is a serious national security issue on the european continent. of course i am talking about what's going on in ukraine and the various threatening noises that have been made from time to time from mr. putin with respect to the baltics and central europe.

from a strategic standpoint it would be a problem of the first order if the countries in the balti baltics. one of the thinks the visa waiver program allows us to do with these countries is re-affirm our solidarity and our belief that the new democracies of europe are every bit a part of the western enterprise as the familiar democracies such as england, france and germany. and i think maintaining that sense of solidarity, particularly at this moment, is of critical importance to american and indeed to the whole nato national security alliance. finally, there's of course economic benefit. the ability for central europeans and koreans and others to travel to the u.s., and for us to travel to their countries without the need to get a visa and go through a cumbersome

proce process. facilitates trade, economic activity and even cultural exchange. and particularly at a time that the global economic climate remains fragile, and recovery is uneven, to say the least, promoting economic development has a positive benefit for. country, as well as for the countries that we travel to or that have citizens that travel to us. now, what do we say in light of these new threats with respect to foreign fighters. well, of course, one point to be made is that obviously with respect to americans who go to iraq and syria to fight with isis, or who go to -- who went to somalia to fight with al shabab, that's not a visa waiver issue because these are american citizens who are entitled to come back to the u.s. and they don't need a visa under any circumstances. what we need to do to identify these returning fighters and the

same principle applies to fighters who are coming via perhaps western european countries and then traveling into the u.s. what we need to do is to have a judicious and analytically sound collection of information about travelers that allows us to identify patterns of behavior and connections that suggest we need to take a closer look. that may be, for example, e-mail contacts that turn up connected to e-mails of terrorists. it may turn out to be telephone contact numbers that we've previously identified as associated with terrorist groups. it may be behavior in terms of travel patterns that suggest someone has gone perhaps through the middle east, been there for several months, and then emerges and we don't have a clear picture of where they were. that's not to say that that is necessarily proof of guilt, but it is proof that you need to look a little bit more closely. and the ability to use programs like esta as a way of collecting

that information, the ability to use what we've been doing with respect to passenger name record information as a way of identifying patterns that require a closer look. this is exactly the kind of scalpel that we need to use in order to identify those who might be at risk in terms of terrorist activity and to then take a closer look at them. you know, just to give you an idea of how effective this kind of thing can be, we look back at the 9/11 hijackers after we had put this program into effect. we wanted to see if we had had the current programs we have in place prior to september 2001, whether we would have picked up connections among the 19 hijackers. when we ran the current programs retrospectively, we discovered that 15 of the 19 hijackers we would have found connections on and we would have found some of

those connections then taking us back to individuals we knew and had identified as al qaeda operatives or supporters. so we have really validated this concept and it has served us well and i submit to you it can continue to serve us well even while we maintain the visa waiver program going forward. finally, i think there are a couple of other things we can do. one is we have begun to expand preclearance overseas. we have preclearance in shannon, in ireland. i know that the department of homeland security's looking at preclearance in other areas. now to explain what preclearance is, it's a program where with the agreement of a country overseas we are able to place our customs and border protection officials in an overseas airport and effectively they conduct immigration and customs before people board the plane. now that's a convenience to the people who come to the u.s. because they no longer have to

come through a gateway that has a customs presence in the u.s. they can travel directly to other cities. but it's a benefit to us because we get again an early look at the people coming in to the united states. we get not only to look at the paper record and whatever we're able to collect using esta and pnr, but we're able to have trained officers look face to face and examine the people who want to come into the u.s. to determine whether their behavior suggests questionable activity. that is an extra level of protection for us. it is also a convenience for the traveler because if you have a traveler that has a problem, we can catch it before the person gets on the airplane. that creates an extra level of security with respect to aviation security. so preclearance is a win/win/win for the u.s. government, for the traveling public that's on the

airplane and for the country that's hosting our preclearance program. a second thing we can do in order to make sure that we get the full benefit of what our current protective programs with respect to visa waiver is to continue to support what is being done in our intelligence community to correct information about telephone numbers and e-mail addresses overseas that are potentially connected to dangerous terrorists. you don't need to look at the contents to recognize that when you have a particular ip address, or particular phone number that you have previously seen related to terrorist financing activity, or even operational activity, that anybody who connects with that number you need to take a closer look at. could there be an innocent reason to connect to it? yeah, there could be. but, at the very least, it puts you on notice that you ought to be asking more questions. one of the things i try to say

when the subject comes up about how to we deal with isis and the increased risk of the foreign fighters is, this is not the time to handicap or dismantzle our intelligence collection programs using nsa and other intelligence agencies that have been literally the cornerstone of protecting the united states since 2001. it has made it much more difficult for the enemy. it has yielded concrete results. and at a time that we need this more than ever because of what's going on out there, we do not want to reduce the capability in this area. so in conclusion i will take a couple minutes of questions. i think the visa waiver program is a plus-plus for our national security. and for our economic security. i think that we have constructed a program that makes it a reduction of the vulnerability very powerful. there are some additional things we can do and are doing to enhance our ability to protect ourselves, and the way to deal

with the issue of foreign fighters is to use the scalpel of identifying them with precision and taking them out, and not the chainsaw of dismantling the program that has served not only the united states well, but our foreign friends and allies overseas. so with that if you identify yourself i'm happy to take two or three questions. yes? >> penny starr with cns news. thank you for speaking here today. what else is there that they look at that can help identify the bad guys for lack of a better word, than e-mails and phone numbers? is there any other data that this program allows the government to look at? thank you. >> yes. i'm not going to get here and tell you all the stuff that's looked at. i would be pretty silly if i did that. so the answer is yes. but it's all completely legal and legitimate. yes?

>> tom curry with the cq roll call. mr. secretary, you mentioned the value in the preclearance program. looking at the person face to face. go back to the -- to the visa process. what purpose if any does the traditional interview to get the visa serve in a counterterrorism role? and is that the value of that face-to-face interview lost because not everybody goes through this preclearance process. many visa waiver arrivals do not. so what value, if any, does the traditional visa interview have in counterterrorism? >> the interview is supposed to actually look at a number of different things. it obviously has value in terms of counterterrorism. but it actually arose in a different context. what it was designed to do is to protect people who would come to the u.s. and overstay and not

leave. a lot of it was focused on what are your roots back home. what's your reason for coming. things of that sort. often what happens these people show a kind of evasiveness or nervousness. it doesn't tell you exactly what threat they pose. but it tells you that there's something you need to look at more closely. there's no question that the visa interview adds a certain dimension. but on balance, in the end it doesn't really give you the kind of granularty you get with the data and the data analytics which have really far advanced where we were 12, 13, 14 years ago. so again if i look at the tradeoff, the positive benefit of the program and the marginal issue in terms of protection, i think the marginal cost is very small and easily compensated for. and the benefit remains very powerful.

>> brad clapper from the associated press. when you see efforts in congress right now some democrats and some republicans have even signed on to these to suspend the visa waiver program. how do you go about talking to them about what you said today? i mean, would you even be able to fathom suspending something that's letting millions of people in, i think 3.8 million brits last year. do we have staff that could do the type of work that would replace esta? if we don't, how long would that take to establish? how much money are we talking about here? so, could you go over some of those alternatives? however bleak they may be. thanks. >> i think you've actually laid out some of the problems. if you try to visualize what the consequences of terminating the program would be, it's hard to calculate the cost is. first as you point out, there

would be an immediate drop-off of travel both to the u.s. and from the u.s. that would not only affect the tourism, it would affect economic activity. and you have people going over to conduct business. or to sell products. all those people would want to go to the visa process. as you observe quite rightly, we have to staff up tremendously in terms of putting people overseas in order to manage the demand for visas, assuming people wanted to go through that process. that would have a serious impact on the federal budget. if you didn't do that we would be shooting a torpedo right at our tourism industry and our economy. i think under any circumstances, i'm confident you would see a measurable impact on the global economy and the u.s. economy almost instantly. we would irritate our friends and allies who we go to for help, for example, when we put together a coalition as we have in iraq and syria. and we would really give a boost to mr. putin.

who would turn to the central europeans and the baltics and say, you know, they told you that you were friends of theirs, but the west pitches you over the side at the first sign of trouble. i would say that you almost can't calculate the cost in our national security and the cost in our economic benefit and our federal budget in terminating this program. one more and then -- >> paul, power line. your kwer -- i mean your answer regarding the face-to-face interview and the importance of that makes me think that perhaps we would be best off making the continuance of the program for the particular country contingent upon them implementing the preclearance within a reasonable period of time, so that we would be sure we had the visa -- the

face-to-face interview on an ongoing basis. >> well, you know, preclearance can be a useful addition. not -- we don't have the money, frankly, and the capability to really go into preclearance in ought the visa waiver countries. i mean, again, for people worried about the budget, there's a limit to how much money you have to spend to put people overseas and maintain them. and again, while that face-to-face element is a useful element, it is by no means essential. the most important tools you have are the tools of intelligence collection and analysis. i mean if you get a nervous person, that face-to-face is helpful. but, again if you're looking at the marginal benefit versus the marginal cost, i think the cost of doing it for every visa waiver country is far exceeding the benefit. >> thank you. >> okay. >> thank you, mr. secretary. [ applause ]

okay, i'd ask the panelists to come forward. i think secretary chertoff has done a great job of establishing the issues that we're attempting to deal with here this morning. i guess it's afternoon now. sorry. we have a lot of well-meaning people over on capitol hill and some of the commentators who are opining that perhaps the visa waiver program needs to be terminated, suspended, something like that. and that was the genesis of doing this event. we now have a panel. or two of the three panelists. the third one will arrive here shortly. but i would like to introduce them and get them started. you'll notice when the third panelist pops up, he's kind of a big personality. we're going to start with my

colleague, david inserra who is a research associate specifically tasked with doing all of the homeland security issues for heritage. he specializes in cyber and immigration issues. but he's responsible for all of it. he works for me and gets to do all the work. i get to take the bows. he will be followed by adam sacks. adam is the founder of the -- and president of tourism economics, which is dedicated to analytically-based consulting for the tourism sector. he is an expert and a consultant dealing with hard numbers of the costs and benefits, and in some cases liabilities of certain programs, and how they affect that very large economic sector to us, which is the tourism sector. and then the missing third

panelist is stewart baker. stewart is a partner with stepto and johnson. but he was the first assistant secretary of the department of homeland security for policy. and he's the guy who set most of these programs up there under secretary chertoff. and is a leading commentator on many of these issues and for those of you that know stewart i noticed a few laughs when i mentioned the size of his personality. he is a very outspoken person about whatever he chooses to speak about. so, we will do the same thing. each of the speakers will go for about five to seven minutes and then we will go through all three of them and then take questions. at the end of that, i will moderate that. we want to get as many questions as we can. so ask short ones with an actual question mark at the end of them. that's good. we'll get through as many as

possible and then go to our final speaker. with that, we will start with david. >> thanks, steve. so what i want to do today is just really quickly describe what the visa waiver program is, describe some of the benefits that were laid out before by secretary chertoff, deal with some of the concerns, and then discuss what are the next steps forward for this program. first what is vwp? the visa waiver program allows residents from member countries to visit the united states without a visa for up to 90 degrees for business or pleasure. to be a part of vwp, the country must meet several criteria. first a country must have a nonimmigrant refusal rate of less than 3%. a visa refusal rate is simply the percentage of visa applications that are denied by the state department for any particular country. second, it must issue its citizens security, machine readable and biometric passports. and third the country must represent no discernible security or law enforcement risk to the united states.

currently there are 38 countries that are participating in visa waiver, with chile being the most recent to join just earlier this year. as required by visa waiver program and other laws that amended it, these nations have agreed to other stipulations and obligations to join vwp. they must share intelligence with us on known and suspected terrorists. they have to exchange biometic, bigraphic information about criminals that could be coming to the united states. they have to share information on lost and stolen passports. they have to increase their own airport security requirements. and they have to provide u.s. citizens with reciprocal ability to travel to that country without a visa as well. now, these features greatly enhance security by providing u.s. law enforcement and security agencies with more information and more intelligence on potential terrorists and other bad actors. the visa waiver program makes it easier for u.s. officials to know whether an individual presents a security threat. the visa waiver program also

allows the state department to focus its limited consular resources on those countries and individuals about which less is known and who could be high risks to the united states. furthermore, the visa waiver program is not without screening and security procedures. as secretary chertoff mentioned every traveler from the u.s., coming to the u.s. from a visa waiver program country, must be prescreened through esta which checks various data bases and does the data analytics which secretary chertoff mentioned and checks to make sure they're not a security risk and eligible for entry into the united states. additionally at every step along the process from buying a ticket to checking in for their flight, to showing up at the gate, to landing in the united states, there are a series of checks that are going based on the most updated information that we have in our systems. at any point along the process if a u.s. official believes that there's a security risk, they can dive in deeper, take a deeper look, and if necessary,

deny the person entry into 9 united states. so in terms of benefits, clearly the first is security. the more information sharing, better airport security abroad and being able to focus our finite consular resources on higher risk countries and individuals. these all improve u.s. security. second, the u.s. has had and continues to have major economic benefits. vwp makes trade and tourism easier and brings individuals to the united states where they can spend their money here and also enables businessmen to come here and engage in business transactions. adam will probably be talking more about that since he's the expert on that. and lastly, vwp gives an important tool for foreign policy and public diplomacy. allowing individuals to come to the united states and enjoy our country can improve foreign public's understanding of america and our culture. by extending the privilege of vwp to other nations, we also deepen the diplomatic ties that we have with friendly governments, as well.

now with these major benefits, we should address some concerns, specifically the threat of isis. european passport holders becoming foreign fight ners syria and iraq. making the issue worse in 2012 there was a gao study that found a lot of the information wasn't occurring. certainly this is a valid reason for concern, if the vwp is premised on increasing sharing and the information sharing isn't happening, that's bad. in 2012 heritage wrote it was time to hold these countries accountable if they do not share their information. since then the information sharing has increased dramatically. the crs did a study just earlier this year and found that nearly all countries were sharing nearly all the data they had that was required under the law. more recent conversations i've had with officials point to the fact that all countries are sharing all information and now it's just a question of working out some of the particulars about the data automation piece and how the information is actually being shared. but it is occurring.

now, while radicalized britons or germans or anyone from europe is certainly of a great concern to any of our nations, which are threatened by islamist terrorism, this is not a good reason to cancel the visa waiver program. vwp promotes security through the security sharing arrangements and the other arrangements i've talked about. by canceling or suspending it not only would we have the immediate trade and economic harm that secretary chertoff mentioned we would also have less information available to us with which to make visa decisions and to watch out for suspected terrorists. so what should the u.s. do going forward? first of all, the u.s. should be looking for -- always should be looking for ways to enhance information sharing arrangements, improve the type of information that we get off of esta forms. and make sure that we use the appropriate mechanisms to expand our ability to screen individuals and connect intelligence dots. these types of improvements do not require a chainsaw.

they require the scalpel and they can all be made within the existing program and we don't need to cancel or suspend it. second, the u.s. should be looking to judiciously expand the visa waiver program. the more friends and allies that are contributing information of potential terrorists, the better able we are to look out for individuals who could be a threat to the united states. expanding visa waiver would allow us to better focus our finite visa and consular resources on other nations and individuals. the way to make this expansion happen is to replace the visa refusal rate, which i mentioned earlier, with something called the visa overstay rate or use some combination of these metrics. the visa overstay rate is exactly what it sounds like, people who overstay their visa when they come here to the united states. it's a better, more accurate metric for determining the immigration risk that someone poses to the united states. using this better metric would allow more nations to join the visa waiver program without threatening u.s. security or

immigration procedures. it's worth mentioning that visa waiver reform and expansion has gotten caught up in the immigration, the contentious immigration debate. there's no reason why this commonsense changes and reforms and extension of this program should be held hostage to more controversial elements. congress should be considering visa waiver program on its own merits and not on the merits of amnesty. yeah. so with all these benefits the visa waiver program is more valuable than ever. the threat of isis and radicalized westerners is real and the u.s. should be using all of its intelligence tools at its disposal to find and stop these terrorists. the visa waiver program is one of those tools. and to stop it now would make the u.s. less secure, less prosperous and less engaged with friends and allies. instead we should be looking to improve and expand the program. thank you. >> thank you, david. adam? >> thank you. good afternoon.

as the head of a company that does economic analysis for the travel industry i'll be taking a decidedly economic centric view of this issue. the u.s. economy last year ran a trade deficit of $500 billion. amidst this, one export sector stands out in contrast, and that is the travel sector. the travel sector in this context is an export because it purchases of locally produced goods and services by foreign markets. that sector enjoyed an $80 billion surplus last year, or for the 12 months through july. and the broader context of trade as globalization has continued, and manufacturing has shifted to low-cost areas of production, even though the u.s.

has found key areas of manufacturing competitiveness, the travel sector continues to compete at the highest level across the board. ultimately, it's in this sector that we see the united states as eminently competitive. now, it's not just that we have a trade surplus of this $80 billion. tourism is actually one of our largest exports, hands down. $180 billion spent in the country last year by foreign tourists, it compares as larger than auto and auto parts exports at $152 billion or food and beverage products at $136 billion. why? why is the u.s. competing at such a high level? well, if we work with clients around the world, tourism offices, and governments on every continent, we see the way that they view the united states as a competitor. and their research, the research

that we use in developing their tourism development strategies, shows that 9 u.s. is one of the most aspirational destinations in the world. showing up within the top two or three bucket list destinations for travel markets from everywhere that you'd want to attract this market. now, if you want to put that into context, how good are we at this? that $180 billion that's spent in the u.s., that positions us as the number one source of foreign visitor spending in the world. who is number two? it's spain. and spain is at just about a third of that, at $60 billion. so that's how much better we happen to be at this in terms of competing. but there is nonetheless an enormously competitive global market.

yet somehow within this the u.s. enjoys this intrinsic competitiveness and it's fundamentally, and say this with the view of the way that markets view us and the way that survey respondents talk about the u.s. and their experiences, is that the u.s. offers a product of diversity and quality, with stunning beauty, myriad attractions, experiences, culture and entertainment that is arguably unrivalled. there's another reason, and it's the topic that we're discussing today, which is the visa waiver program. it is a significant part of why the u.s. travel industry has been and is as successful as it is. if you want proof of this, let me share with you some case studies of what has happened when countries have entered into the visa waiver program. so taiwan was accepted in the fall of 2012.

in 2013 visits from taiwan to the united states increased 33%. then in november 2008, under secretary chertoff, a number of countries were granted access. czech republic, estonia, hungary, latvia, lithuania, slovakia, republic of korea. they met the criteria. well over the following three-year period, the collective group of these markets increased 46% to nearly -- nearly half -- nearly 50% increase over that period of time. if you look at where they traveled elsewhere, maybe these markets were just growing at a faster rate, actually their travel to other parts of the world grew fractionally. if you want to look at specific countries within the group, south korea who joined in late 2008, grew 46% over the following two years. the czech republic grew 31% the year after. hungary 15%, slovakia 44%. clearly this program has a significant impact.

within the competitive environment though, resting on our laurels, much less stepping backward is clearly a bad option. there is serious marketing and product development going on around the world to compete for these visitors. the establishment of brand usa, to market the united states a couple of years ago, has been a major step forward in being able to compete. but they're competing against a global budget of destinations marketing themselves that tallies $4 billion. so other destinations are competing very strongly. though the tide has been turned over the last two years in terms of market share, if you look at since 2000, the united states has actually lost market share of global travel. it's lost market share from south america, from europe, and from asia.

and some of the products that we've been involved in as a firm have actually been helping governments around the world and consortiums of regional groupings, countries such as apec, asean and the organization of islamic cooperation, look at how can they begin to adopt more sensible and inclusive travel facilitation policies, including visa waiver where appropriate, so that they can compete at a higher level? now, other countries are certainly on this track. canada allowed the czech republic to enter canada visa waiver in 2007, arrivals increased 36% to canada from czech republic in the following years. russia opened up to hong kong in 2009. the volume of arrivals to russian federation from hong kong, china, jumped 184% in the following three years.

so we can then with this background ask ourselves what would happen if the visa waiver program were reversed or curtailed? you could reasonably assume that it would be the opposite of the benefits that were realized when it was introduced but there are also case studies of what has happened when countries have perhaps ill-advisedly restated visa requirements. and there are a few examples of this. canada renewed the visa requirement on the czech republic in june of 2009. so after liberalizing for two years, they decided to reinstate that requirement. well, arrivals over the next three years from the czech republic to canada declined 70%. canada also imposed a visa requirement on mexico in june of 2009 and over the next three years mexican arrivals to canada dropped nearly 50%. and then the uk, also another case study here, imposed visa requirements on south africa in march of 2009, then ensued a

decline of 30% from that market. so the reality is with this background that visa requirements are fundamentally a self-imposed barrier to trade on our own economy. the visa waiver program benefited 31% of our overseas visitors last year. amazingly even as these countries have been added over the last five or six years, the share of visa waiver countries that are represented in our total overseas volume has declined from 45%, to where it now stands at 31%. the reason for that is because emerging markets and high-growth markets are the very ones that still require a visa. and requirements are still imposed where growth opportunities still remain to be the greatest. china, brazil, india, latin

america, and poland. so in conclusion, there's no question that security must be paramount, but the need for security must not be seen and is not in conflict with the economic value and opportunity that the visa waiver program affords us. so if it's in reference to trade shows, we assessed the market a few years for the center for exhibition industry research and found that about 2.5% of potential delegates, international delegates to trade shows and exhibitions hosted here in the u.s., were refused entry. and that equated to, because of trade that takes place at these events, a loss of $2.5 billion. and when it comes to leisure travel, when leisure visitors come they experience the realities of the united states

of america, and not a caricature. so what this leads us to is the really unavoidable conclusion that investments in the visa waiver program should be made to make it as inclusive and secure as possible. and those investments will pay massive dividends. well, in my remarks i sort of unapologetically focus on the economics of this issue but perhaps i will and with a higher level of prose from one mark twain. travel is fatal. its prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. thank you. >> thank you very much, adam. and now appearing just at precisely the right moment -- is my esteemed colleague stewart baker. >> you need a visa to use massachusetts avenue. apparently.

>> and we talked security, we've talked economics. now you get to wrap up the panel here. >> tell stories hopefully. >> yeah. >> the headlines about the possibility of people with misusing western passports are obviously quite pointed these days. and the risk of terrorists coming back from syria and iraq has never been more of a concern. and that led the u.n. security council to adopt a unanimous resolution, and not easy to get anything unanimously out of the security council, on terrorist travel, asking, telling member countries to address foreign terrorists, fighters by doing a variety of

things. preventing suspected fighters to entry are transiting their territories, implementing legislation to prosecute foreign terrorist fighters, to undertake the recent steps to improve international cooperation such as sharing information on criminal investigations, interdictions and prostitution. i dwell on that because that turned out to be a surprisingly easy thing to get international agreement on. and the reason it was surprisingly easy is that the united states, using its vwp leverage over the last five to ten years, has more or less imposed those kinds of measures on our vwp counterparts around the world. so that we now have arrangements in which our vwp counterpart provide us with information that

was never available before because we used the leverage of possibly withdrawing, in whole or in part, vwp status, to get everybody to do things that they more or less agreed that was a good idea, but which they never would have done without something that drove them in the direction of actually doing it right now. and one of the things that i think that we can be pleased about was the bipartisanship that we saw in 2006, between a deeply democratic congress and president bush in which the 9/11 legislation was adopted, which set standards for what you have to do to be in the vwp, and where we were able to say, we can expand the vwp, but at the

same time set very high standards for security in the program, and in our -- and in connection with our counterparts abroad. that effort turned out to be remarkably successful. the combination of pressure about security inside the united states and the possibility that we would withdraw vwp status from people who didn't, countries that did not cooperate. at the same time we're demonstrating that we were committed to actually have a vwp program by opening the program to eastern europe produced a consensus, obviously the people are coming in new were deeply enthusiastic about pretty much anything that the u.s. asked them to do. wants a have signed on to all of these secured a measures, it became much more difficult for some of the countries where this was a bigger problem either because they were less enthusiastic allies of the

united states, or they had a bigger islamic population. in the long run they had to come on board, too. so we now receive information about criminal convictions from all of these countries, none of which gave it to us before. we also put in place a program of electronic, well, the european commission with whom i had i guess fraught is the nicest word with it, relationship, at one point said to me, look, this esta thing where people have to make reservations to come to the country, and fill out all these forms in advance, and you might tell them yes, and you might tell them no, even though we're a visa waiver country, this is like an electronic visa. and i said wow, you broke the code. the fact is what we have done is in the esta program is take

advantage of the electronic capabilities that the communications that the internet makes possible, the background data processing that allows us to say yes, we are open for business for 99.9% of everybody who wants to come here from these countries. and we'll tell you if you're in the 0.1% before you get on the plane. and that ability to do that background check, even for people who in theory are coming here without a visa, has transformed our ability to protect the united states from occasional bad guys who are coming from countries that are basically allied with the united states. so when they hear people worrying out loud about the vwp, i can't help asking, compared to what? because the alternative would be to go back to -- i won't say the

state department is not in the 21st century. but they are struggling to provide the kind of background checks that are necessary for people who are coming from visa countries. and they are doing personal interviews, which have value, but the idea that we would do personal interviews for everybody from great britain or france who wants to come to the united states is a way of saying we really don't want anybody from france or the united kingdom to come here. as you can imagine, if you had a choice of going on vacation in a place that required you to fly to washington and be interviewed before you could come, and some place that said well just get on the plane and fly here instead, most people would choose the easier route. so what we have done with the esta is made much easier for people to go through the process. we are able to do deeper background analysis on those people because of the data we're

getting from their own countries. we are not relying on our own list of people that we're worried about. we have the list from the folks who are closest to some of these movements in the country that the individuals are coming from. so it seems to me that rather than focusing on taking vwp away, we should be asking what can we do, especially with a u.n. resolution that everybody signed onto, a security council resolution, what can we be doing to take those requirements, and reinterpreting them in the context of a growing vwp, to say, yeah, we are going to implement all of that as part of our visa waiver program, and we're going to bring the rest of the developed world, and some of the countries that want to be part of vwp, along with us, so we can get security and more travel at the same time.

>> all right. microphone people, get ready. all right. we are ready to take questions for the panel. okay, you get to go first again. >> mr. baker, can you -- now wouldn't the people say these foreign fighters that are from france or the uk, just use an example, go to syria, train, come back, and they don't have any criminal record? they're young. a young man who is, you know, there's nothing there to let us know. i think that's a greater concern than people that are known criminals, or there's ties or something with their past because it seems like these are a lot of very young men and might not have something that would be a red flag. what about that? >> first, there is a requirement in the security council resolution to actually prosecute people for doing that. we used to prosecute people all the time for violating the logan

act, or engaging in foreign wars. so that there's plenty of precedent for treating that as a crime. and the other point i would say is, the french government, the uk government, is at least as scared of these people and should be, as we are. it is not a given that they're coming back to france to buy tickets to new york. and so french intelligence, french law enforcement is going to be watching for these folks trying to identify them and keep track of them. we do need and we have pretty good, but i won't say perfect exchanges of information about those folks. we now have a u.n. security council resolution that says you should be sharing information. we should take that and say as part of our expectations with respect to vwp, we want you to be sharing that information, and we will share back to you the same kinds of information about

americans who have traveled to syria for the same purpose. >> right there. >> hi. zoe o'hairen senate judiciary minority. so in the house hearing on september 10th discussing this visa waiver program mr. miller and mr. wagner from cbp said that 300 esta applications had been denied this year alone for security related reasons. but 400 that were previously approved were later denied. would you recommend expanding the data points that we are requesting from these countries? because you just said that we had told these countries that before their passengers get on the planes we've already screened them and we've approved them but more of them are being denied after the fact than before the fact. >> i think we should look hard at that and we should also look hard at expanding the kind of information we get from people so that we can do a better job of using our own intelligence

capabilities to identify people who shouldn't be coming here. there are times when you said okay we want them to come here so we can arrest them. but those are rare. and absolutely. you know, the vwp gives us lots of leverage. but it's leverage you want to use sparingly because it's a little bit of mutual shared destruction. if you actually take somebody's visa waiver status away from them it's going to hurt you as much as it hurts them. what you need to do is find things like exchanges of information that most governments recognize they ought to be doing but they need some incentives. they need to be able to say to the opposition, people say don't share any information with the americans, they will just and all these people to guantanamo, which is what the usual rap is on the united states. they need to be able to say, well, we can't afford not to.

we have a resolution, and we don't want to put visa waiver at risk. so if you recognize your leverage and use it sparingly, you can get more information both from governments and you can change the esta, start requiring more information. >> i was going to add to that, which is that, as circumstances change, as cbp sees it needs certain types of information there's no reason not to look at changing information we ask for on esta, threats change and data points we need might change so that's something we should take a look at. >> from polish press agency. so as i understand, if you are from the country that is not a member of visa waiver problem like from poland, you have to go for the visa interview, and then if you are allowed to, you have visa for ten years and then you can travel to u.s., whenever you want without any procedure. and when you are member of the country that is a member of the waiver program you have to each

time when you want to go you have to pass through the esta procedure and delivering the information about you, yes? so in terms of security, actually which system is better? >> so it's a close call. you don't actually have to do esta every time. you do it once for a couple of years, usually. the main difference between the two is that there is an interview but that could be very short interview and it doesn't necessarily produce a lot of information. to my mind if the choice is between having good cooperation from the intelligence services and the interior ministries of a country so that they're telling you who they are worried about, and they know more about who is dangerous in their country than we do, if the choice is between that and being able to do interviews of people in that country, i'd like the data cooperation every time. >> also just add to that, not only are their information sharing and cooperation aspect

but also we talked about budgets have come up a little bit here and there. state department only has so much money that it can spend looking at doing these interviews and the such. if more people are part of visa waiver program that means the same number of visa consul officers are able to focus more intently on countries where we think there are greater risks. so there's also security benefits from being able to shift towards higher-risk targets. >> right there. >> thank you. i'm dino drury and i'm on the board of advisers for the federation of american immigration reform. i have two related questions. one is, if you waive people from having to have visas, how do you keep track of whether they

overstay the visas they don't need? and the second related question is, if the united states is in effect a net benefactor from foreign travel, more people coming here than going someplace else so we make $80 billion more, why would a country which is having more of its residents go to the united states for business or pleasure, than come from the united states to that country, have any incentive whatsoever to facilitate and increase the incidence of that happening? >> let me try that one. >> all three of you may comment. >> that would be great. so first, a visa waiver doesn't mean you just don't come here without a visa and stay for as

long as you want. it is really a visa. it's a 90 day visa, if i remember right, and if you stay to day 91 you're overstaying. we know you have come here because we've got your entry data, and unless you sort of do something weird like drive in and fly out, or fly in and drive out, we will also have records that show you departing. so it's not at all impossible, although it's obviously a big data job to match up the information on the manifest coming in and the information on the manifest coming out, which ought to be the same passport information to see whether people came and stayed longer than they should have.

our usual approach for most people, and this by large has a pretty good disciplinary effect, is to say a few overstay, you ain't coming back on the visa waiver program. you're going to need to get a visa next time, and i vividly remember some poor woman from iceland who came to the united states. i picture her as a matron in a nice sweater. she arrived and they said, you know, 20 years ago you overstayed your vwp status by two days and she said, oh, well i was in love. and they said sorry, we have to send you back because you don't have a visa. and before we send you back, of course we have to keep you overnight because the next flight to iceland isn't until tomorrow. and because of our standard procedures for dealing with people who are unlawful immigrants who have to be sent

back, we're going to have to put you into detention. and because of our rules for how we do detention, we are going to have to shackle you arm and leg to ride in the bus. she will never forget -- all of iceland will never forget that experience. so there are ways of deterring that. but you also have a number of checks when people, in that allow you to do security checks on people on the way in. so i think there are mechanisms. we have a particularly, if there's reason to be concerned about an overstay, there are folks at i.c.e. who make a priority to track down the people who are particularly -- raise concerns from a terrorism point of view. i'm not questioning incentives. i'll try to be shorter. the -- this is not just a

calculation of, well, who's getting more money? you know, who has got more tourists and richer tourists and what's the net benefit? the real incentive here is that if you were a french official and you told the french public, by the way, i have screwed this up so badly that you're going to have to come to paris and sit down in the embassy to go to disneyland, you would -- you know, you would lose the next election. and the same would probably be true in the united states. it would be viewed as a major faux pas to have screwed up the relationship with europe so that nobody could take their holidays in europe without going through this. so both sides will feel enormous political pain from doing this, as opposed to saying, i think i'm ahead of the game so i'll go ahead and cut off vwp. i don't think it really works that way. >> i think experience bears that out.

there's no incident where someone is granted visa waiver to come to the u.s., and there hasn't been that reciprocity. notwithstanding the fact that in most cases the u.s. has a net balance trade would be the primary beneficiary. i think another interesting example right now is brazil. because brazil, which many within the u.s. travel industry would say should be a candidate for the visa waiver program, actually requires a visa for u.s. travelers to brazil on the basis of reciprocity. it's not, has nothing to do with the security or overstaying issues. it's the fact you're going to require of it of us, we're going to require it of you. they would most gladly lift that visa requirement of american travelers, even though brazil -- travel for brazilian travel to the u.s., that demand is much, much greater than for american travel to brazil. >> i would just add on the

question of overstay, that's one of the reasons why at heritage we recommend that we should move to a system which includes visa overstay. you're never going to stop every single person from overstaying their visa. but if you have a requirement that you have to have a visa overstay rate which is, you know, say lower than 3%, a low visa overstay rate then you are effectively looking for countries which already know their citizens already have good ties. they tend to go back. you're reducing your immigration risk there. that's another reason why you could switch to a metric like that. >> okay. i'm going to have to cut off the questions so we can get to the ambassador. please thank me, or join me in thanking the panel. [applause] >> and as they exit the stage i will apologize ahead of time as a guy whose name gets mispronounced quite often. i apologize ahead of time, mr. ambassador, but we now have ambassador ryszard schnepf. i apologize.

see, it's a good thing i did it ahead of time. he is a longtime representative of the nation of poland for their ministry of foreign affairs. he has been the ambassador of poland to spain. most recently before this assignment and is now the ambassador extraordinary and plenny potent year of poland to the united states and please join me in welcoming him to our stage. [ applause ] >> good afternoon. we've been talking about spain here. so i can confirm that the tourism is -- it's a great deal that spain has enjoyed since many years, thanks to the open

policy to attract all the tourists. let me start by thanking the heritage foundation for organizing this important event, and for inviting me to have the last word, which as you know, presents both an opportunity to leave a lasting mark for those with some additional treasure to deliver. i would like to thank also the panelists. i really enjoyed it. it was very instructive, very interesting. and particularly i agreed with the last opinions concerning the cooperation between two countries, as far as the security is concerned. it's much more important than the interview system that still is being complied with some cases.

my mission reached its midterm surprisingly fast, after two years' stay in washington. some journalists in poland say i'm the most experienced member in the polish foreign service, which is a subtle diplomatic way to remind me that retirement is on the horizon. before one drives away into the sunset, one can have dreams. and mine is quite a simple one. to get rid of the last obstacle in the u.s. posed bilateral relations and get poland to the visa waiver program. polish citizens deserve to feel welcomed when visiting the homeland of their friends and allies. a resolution once and for all to this issue should mean a lot to all of us.

having said that, i would like to draw your attention to a couple of important facts. and the first one is that despite not being in the vwp, poland has fulfilled all the legal requirements demanding -- demanded by the program. we have signed and abide, by all bilateral security agreements that are needed to be a part of vwp. second, we are one of the closest u.s. allies in europe. polish soldiers have fought alongside their american colleagues in iraq and afghanistan, and we are part of the anti-isil coalition. the poles don't pose a terrorism threat to the united states. in fact, our attitudes toward

terrorism and what is happening in the world today are in line with that of our american friends. our cooperation as far as security, as i mentioned, goes really far. and third, the hassle and embarrassment associated with having to stand in line to obtain a visa has turned many polish businessmen and entrepreneurs who look for business opportunities elsewhere, rather than the united states. when asked why, the reason is simple. the delays and hassles visa applications have on their business models. finally tourism, which was mentioned so frequently here. an area where the united states is missing out greatly. with 10 million americans of

polish backgrounds calling the u.s. home, there is plenty of places where poles have a reason to visit. yet in the recent years, they prefer going to disneyland in paris rather than disneyland in orlando or los angeles. why? simply because of the stigma associated with having to stand in line to ask for permission to travel to the united states. i think you will agree with me when i say that we are both losing out in the current environment. but no one more so than the united states. not only is it missing out on tourism revenue, but more importantly our relations miss out on the critical people to people contacts, the bedrock of our strong relations.

last week, secretary of commerce led an official vis delegation to poland to promote greater economic links between the countries. during the visit she highlighted poland's extraordinary political and economic transformation since the cold war. what president obama recently called, and i quote, an economic mirac miracle. my country's incredible progress has placed poland among the top 20 economies in the world, enabled poland to avoid a broader european recession, and made poland the sixth largest, as well as the fastest growing, economy in the european union. as secretary pritzker stressed this is part of the reason we have seen u.s./poland commercial connections grow at such a rapid pace in recent years.

among the 100 largest u.s. companies, 56 operate in poland. more than 300 u.s. companies are invested in poland across all sectors, from retail, to services, to manufacturing, with a top investment of over $30 billion over the last two decades. at the same time, polish companies invested half a billion of u.s. dollars in the united states in the last year. i stand here before you to make it clear that these numbers can and should be greater. the vwp expansion is essential in allowing for this to take place. over the past two years, my staff and i have worked closely

with our friends in the administration and on capitol hill, to get poland into the visa waiver program. this bill would pave a way for poland to enter the program, and it has passed in the senate earlier this year. the house version in turn has 165 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle. but the house version has been stalled for months. i know, i speak for many when i say that we want the bill to see the light of the day, and be placed on the house floor for a vote. as all the indications suggest, this is broad bipartisan support that would lead to its passage in the house.

let me conclude by thanking and applauding the heritage foundation for their ongoing support for the visa waiver program expansion over the years. and encourage our business friends, those who are already heavily invested in poland as well as those who are just taking the opportunities our marketplace provides. to contact members in the house, but especially the house leadership and members of the judiciary committee to underline the importance of poland's inclusion to this program. this bill is a great starting point. as far as i'm concerned, when we wait for the new congress to be sworn in next year, and wait for hundreds of bills to be lost, that it can get done in the lame

duck are session. a collective security depends on it. transatlantic relations depend on this. so i remain hopeful the house acts, then congress follows suit, and then that this bill reaches the president's desk. and i'm counting on your support. thank you. [ applause ] >> well, mr. ambassador, i have to say, as a member of our military who fought next to your men and women, both in iraq and afghanistan, i thank you. and i thank you for the continued friendship that was there before you became a formal ally, until now. and we at heritage stay firmly behind the getting your country into the visa waiver program,

and hopefully expanding it further. thank you. i'd like to thank all of you for being here today. hopefully we've increased an understanding of the visa waiver program. and i will put out an invitation to those of you in the press, and those of you from over on the hill. if your members have questions about visa waiver and why we support it, staying in place and actually expanding during this time, rather than trying to get it to recede, we'd be happy to chat with you, and give you those reasons, in even more depth than were elaborated on here. we think it's very important for the security of the united states, and for our relations with our friends and allies that we do this. and with that, i thank all of you that are here. those of you who are online and with us through c-span. and we wish you a wonderful afternoon. thank you. [ applause ]

coming up later today on our companion network, c-span, a conversation about the u.s. response to ebola. with a former health official from the bush administration, at the heritage foundation. live on c-span, at noon eastern. c-span has covered more than 100 campaign debates this fall. and coverage continues tonight at 7:00 eastern on c-span with the second ranking democrat in the senate, illinois's dick durbin as he debates jim overweiss. and live at 8:00, we'll bring you a debate from the massachusetts governor's race. we'll be looking for your reaction to that debate. via facebook and twitter. at 9:00 eastern, from the senate race in georgia, republican david purdue debates michelle nunn. after that, we head to minnesota, where democratic senator al franken is running

for a second term. he debates his republican challenger mike mcfadden. we'll look for your reaction via facebook and twitter. at 11:00 eastern, in hawaii neil abercrombie lost the democratic primary. the 2015 c-span student cam video competition is under way. open to all middle and high school students to create a documentary on the three branches and you, showing how a policy, law or action by the executive, legislative our judicial branch of the federal government has affected you or your community. there's 200 cash prizes for students and teachers totaling $100,000. for a list of rules and how to get started, go to studentcam.org. earlier this month a congressional hispanic caucus hosted a legislative conference in the nation's capital. thomas perez spoke to the group,

addressing immigration and workers' rights. this is about 20 minutes. >> many of us were thrilled when we got word that tom petis, who did a magnificent job working in the civil rights division of the department of justice, was nominated by our president, president barack obama, to serve as secretary of the department of labor. and he has gone on not only to become the secretary of labor, but to actually be over the last several months probably the cabinet member on president obama's team who's traveled most often with the president over these last several months, as i've mentioned. at the same time, he's done something very important. he's focused in ways that have to make all of us proud. he's making sure that we work hard to make it possible for everyone who works, to make sure they get a fair day's pay for a

fair day's work. he's connecting ready-to-work americans, ready to fill jobs. he's promoting gender equality. in the workplace. he's ensuring that people with disabilities and our veterans have access to equal employment opportunities. and he's insisting on safe and level playing fields for all americans at the workplace. he's transforming what we think of as our secretary of labor. and he's doing this all in a way that makes us so proud that he's an american, and a member of our country. but a lot of us think that that's just one step along the very successful path of tom bettes. many of us believe that following the great work of eric holder as our attorney general for the department of justice, that we have a great name of someone who could be nominated to replace attorney general holder. i, for one, would place my vote

with tom bettes. it sounds really good. attorney general bettes. [ applause ] i don't know if you agree, but perhaps what you could do -- [ applause ] perhaps what you can do is help me acknowledge the secretary of labor by giving him a warm round of applause and encourage him to become the next attorney general of the united states of america. our secretary of labor, tom bettes. [ applause ] >> all right. good afternoon. it's an honor to be here. and i had a little bit of throat surgery ten days ago, so if i sound a little raspy, or like vito corleone, i apologize. my support for this institute and for the cause of opportunity, i assure you is full-throated. and so it's an honor to be here. javier becerra i think is one of

the most effective public servants i've ever met. i want to say thank you to you, congressman, and friends for all you're doing. lucero continues to great work. and does great work leading this fantastic organization. congrats to all of you. thanks for having me. and sometimes i start walking a little bit, so if you see me walking from side to side, it's because i can't help it. you know, i was in new york yesterday, actually, with bill de blasio. bless you. bless all of you for that matter. okay? and we were talking about opportunities for everyone. we were about 15 minutes from where my mother grew up in washington heights. my family were dominican. here we go.