it s time to reform if not end the diversity visa program. i mean, i think it s roughly 5% of the 1 million visas that we issue. we would be best to apply our strategy to visa issuance rather than leave it up to chance and to lottery. brian: all right. since 2007. we have 20739 from iran. 70232 from sudan. 812 from syria. i m not saying they are not all great people. we need to know if they re coming here, who they are. they win the lottery and bring over relatives because that s the chain pry migration that we fear. from my experience i don t think shutting down the visa diversity program is necessarily going to be the path to better counter terrorism effectiveness. for three reasons. first of all, we do vetting pretty well. and we do it we apply it for the visas that are issued for the diversity program as well with database checks and personal interviews. and that s important. we also we take a hard look at all these people and
influence over the president who are urging him to reconsider aspects of this travel ban. they may not be necessarily asking him to completely rescind this executive order, but there are certain are that he can coider tweaking, whether it has to deal with visa issuance to individuals seeking to come to the country, people who already have visas, refugees, maybe steppwidening the level o refugees allowed into the country under the refugee admittance program. there are efforts to get him to consider changing this order. but to this point donald trump does not seem to be welcoming those. the white house seems extremely resistant to any effort to change this order as we ve seen through their full force defense of it in the last few weeks. so francesca, to that point, president trump has not ever shown a deference to surrender when it comes to his point of view and what he wants to do. that would indicate surrender. the white house saying they re going to battle this judge s order and hav
saying i strongly urge the new administration to move quickly to tailor its policy on visa issuance as narrowly as possible, saying that the vast majority of visa-seekers represent a promise, not a threat to our nation. house speaker ryan defends the ban. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell so far has been silent. tara, is that a surprise, that mitch mcconnell has not taken a position, or is his silence deafening right now? some might say his silence is deafening, but i would say that his silence is an intended silence. he has to work with this new administration. he has a lot on his agenda in terms of what he wants done. and for him, i don t think this is a fight he wants to pick ten days into the administration. also, a lot of these conservatives are, you know, security hawks, and they think that our immigration system is being penetrated by terrorist networks. and this is something i m sure he s probably in favor of, or else we would have heard about it, or he s just decidi
marriage, so it s more permanent. different than a work visa that is considered probably temporary. the person is probably going to go back to the country that they came from. but in the k-1 process with the marriage at the end of that visa issuance, it s a pathway towards citizenship for people to get that visa so it is a much stricter process. you know, phil, right now, donald trump has talked about not letting muslims into the country, a temporary pause until the u.s. figures out what the situation is here at home. even in the visa process is there any way to even actually tell if somebody is a muslim? you know, i don t think you can. for example, let me give you a couple of ideas. talk to the ambassadors from the u.k., france and germany. ask them a simple question, will you require your citizens to put their religious preference in a passport? i guarantee you the answer will
screening and reporting however, this is the special category we were talking about a couple weeks ago, iraq will be a subject to additional scrutiny to identify possible connections to isis or other terrorist organizations. the new order will exclude legal permanent residents and current visa holders and remove the indefinite suspension of refugees from syria though all refugees will be banned for a period of 120 days and create a system of extreme vetting. unlike the other executive order that went into practice when it was implemented right away, this one s not going to be implemented until the 16th of march. one of the things we should point out to you in terms of the travel ban from the six countries the dates of visa issuance will be retroactive to when the first executive order was released. so anybody who got a visa between the time the first executive order was released and the time this one goes into