S. 653 (110th): Secure Travel and Counterterrorism Partnership Act

Introduced:
Feb 15, 2007 (110th Congress, 2007–2009)
Sponsor:
Sen. George Voinovich [R-OH]
Status:
Died (Referred to Committee)

The bill’s title was written by the bill’s sponsor. S. stands for Senate bill.

GovTrack’s Bill Summary

We don’t have a summary available yet.

Library of Congress Summary

The summary below was written by the Congressional Research Service, which is a nonpartisan division of the Library of Congress.


2/15/2007--Introduced.
Secure Travel and Counterterrorism Partnership Act - Expresses the sense of Congress that: (1) the United States should modernize the visa waiver program by enhancing program security requirements and extending visa-free travel privileges to nationals of foreign countries that are allies in the war on terrorism; and (2) such expansion will have positive security, economic, and bilateral effects.
Amends the Immigration and Nationality Act with respect to the visa waiver program to authorize waiver of low visa refusal rate requirements for a country that meets security and counterterrorism cooperation requirements and has a sustained reduction in visa refusal rates.
Authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security to consider: (1) specified security-related issues in determining whether to waive low visa refusal requirements; and (2) visa overstay rates in determining program eligibility.
Provides for the following program security enhancements: (1) implementation of an electronic travel authorization system which shall provide biographical information; (2) participant country reporting of lost and stolen passports to the U.S. government; (3) participant country acceptance of its citizens or nationals removed from the United States; and (4) security-related information exchange about a country's citizens or nationals traveling to the United States.
Requires the Secretary to establish an exit system that records the departure on a flight leaving the United States of every alien program participant. Requires that such system: (1) match an alien's biometric information against watch lists and immigration information; and (2) compare such biometric information against air carrier manifests to confirm departures.

House Republican Conference Summary

The summary below was written by the House Republican Conference, which is the caucus of Republicans in the House of Representatives.


No summary available.

House Democratic Caucus Summary

The House Democratic Caucus does not provide summaries of bills.

So, yes, we display the House Republican Conference’s summaries when available even if we do not have a Democratic summary available. That’s because we feel it is better to give you as much information as possible, even if we cannot provide every viewpoint.

We’ll be looking for a source of summaries from the other side in the meanwhile.

The bill contains the following citations to other parts of U.S. law:

United States Code

The United States Code is the compilation of permanent laws enacted by Congress. Temporary and other non-permanent laws do not appear in the United States Code. (About half of the United States Code is the law itself, called positive law. The other half is merely a compilation of the laws but has no legal significance.)