Deputy FM to ask US to ease travel for Israelis

Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin is expected to present a list of requests to senior officials in the US government aimed at moving Israel toward participation in the US Visa Waiver Program.

Chief among those requests is to allow Israelis over the age of 30 to travel to the US for business and tourism purposes without a visa, according to the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth. Elkin is also expected to offer an olive branch in promising US officials that, after two years of bureaucratic delays, Israel will implement the Global Entry and E2 investor visa programs, which are meant to expedite entry for American businessmen to Israel, and vice versa.

As of today, 37 countries are part of the US Visa Waiver program, which enables their citizens to travel to the US without applying for a visa prior to their trip and stay for a period of up to 90 days. One of the key requisites for countries wishing to join the program is to have a rejection rate of less than 3 percent for citizens who apply for a US visa. Nine point seven percent of Israeli applicants (12,000 people) were rejected last year, up from 5.4% in 2012 and 2.5% in 2007.

A recommendation for Israel’s entry into the Visa Waiver Program is set to be part of a bill working its way through Congress naming Israel a “major strategic ally” of the United States, a status which no other country enjoys. The measure also calls for expanding the reserve of US weapons stockpiled in Israel. The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the bill unanimously in January, setting it up for a vote by the full House sometime in the future.

There is also a similar bill being formulated in the Senate.

However, the Obama administration and some lawmakers have expressed concern that the legislation doesn’t do enough to eliminate Israeli discrimination against Palestinians and Arab Americans seeking to enter its borders. They also say Israel still fails to meet other legal requirements for the program.

The language in the Senate bill, proposed by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), requires that the Homeland Security secretary grant Israel visa waiver status after certifying with the secretary of state that Israel “has made every reasonable effort, without jeopardizing the security of the State of Israel, to ensure that reciprocal travel privileges are extended to all United States citizens.”

House staffers say that lawmakers, pro-Israel leaders among them, have raised objections to the clause, “without jeopardizing the security of the State of Israel,” because it appears to validate what they see as Israel’s tendency to turn away Arab Americans without giving a reason.

None of the other 37 countries currently in the visa waiver program has such a caveat written into law.

According to former Israeli ambassador to the US Micahel Oren, 142 Americans in all were denied entry to Israel in 2012, while about 626,000 were allowed in. That amounts to a refusal rate of 0.023 percent, or about 1 in every 4,400 people. The American refusal rate for Israelis seeking US visas was 5.4 percent, he noted.

The Associated Press and JTA contributed to this report.