Dem Sen Manchin: We Have ‘Very Little Background’ on 20 Million People Who Come Through Waiver Program

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) stated that “we have very little background, very little knowledge” on the 20 million people who came to the US last year from favored nations under the visa waiver system on Wednesday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox News Channel.

Manchin said, “early on when I heard that basically we, with all this migration going on, and immigration, and people leaving Syria, the president said we’re going to take 10,000. I sent a letter at that time Neil, and said, Mr. President, you know, the only thing I’m asking is do not short-circuit the vetting process. Now, the vetting process for a refugee is much different than what we talked about, the visa waivers. Once we start looking into everything, we found out that basically we had 23,000 refugees from Syria that tried to go through the refugee status to be considered to come to the country, since 2011. 7,000 were vetted, only 2,300 were permitted to come. We haven’t had any problems there. Then we start looking at our visa waivers. We have 38 countries of favored nation’s treatment, with that, we had 20 million people travel to America just last year, Neil, and with that, we have very little background, very little knowledge.”

Manchin added that people from Pakistan can “absolutely” be a threat, and “we should have a concern” about people coming from there. He continued, “I am not supporting Donald Trump’s suggestion that we close down and stop every Muslim from coming. I do think we have to be smarter. … And that’s what we’re saying with the checks, and with the whole background checks, and the scanning and the biometrics. Use all the technology you have.”

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