Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) said on Friday that she plans to introduce legislation to address security vulnerabilities that put international travelers at risk.
Miller, the chairwoman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, made the announcement following a hearing on international passport screening procedures.
“American citizens traveling to and from the U.S., as well as within, can take a great deal of confidence in their safety,” Miller said. “Since 9/11, the U.S. has vastly improved its procedures by screening against terror and watch lists, immigration databases and records of lost or stolen passports. However, citizens who are boarding flights emanating from one foreign country to another need to realize that the same level of security is not there.”
The United States is one of only three countries that check flight manifests against international records of stolen passports, Miller said, which results in more than 1 billion travelers boarding international flights each year without having their passport screened.
“Over the coming weeks, I plan to introduce legislation that will incentivize our allied nations to improve their screening procedures by utilizing the INTERPOL database and routinely reporting lost and stolen travel documents,” Miller said. “Hopefully, with more international cooperation, we can address this vulnerability.”
In 2001, the international community established a lost and stolen travel document database that allows countries to send information to a central repository and check it against a database to ensure that nobody boards a plane with a lost or stolen passport.