By: Ben R. Williams

Concerns that Syrian refugees immigrating to America could be terrorists distract from a more legitimate threat to national security, according to Sen. Mark Warner.

Warner granted the Martinsville Bulletin an exclusive interview Friday at New College Institute’s facility on the Baldwin Block in Martinsville, shortly before touring the building with acting executive director Dr. Leanna Blevins and Patrick Henry Community College President Dr. Angeline Godwin.

Warner, who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that he has been frustrated that some politicians have latched on to the perceived threat of Syrian refugees when the refugee program is heavily regulated and processing takes two years to complete.

“All of the terrorists we’ve identified have not been migrants, they have been people with French passports or Belgian passports,” Warner said. “They have lived in those countries. … You turn on the news, and you see these boatloads of people landing on a Greek island, and you think that same thing is happening here. It’s not the case.”

If there are weaknesses in the refugee program that can be tightened, Warner said, he certainly is in favor of doing so, although he believes those suggestions should come from intelligence and law enforcement professionals.

However, he said, the greater threat to national security lies in the Visa Waiver Program.

“If you’re an American and you want to go to a country in Africa or you want to go to China, you’ve got to go get a visa and go through a whole process,” Warner said.

However, there are 38 different ally countries – many of them in Europe – that an American can travel to without requiring a visa, only a passport. The program works both ways, he said.

“The flipside of that is, if you’re French or if you’re Belgian or if you’re German and you want to come to America, you … don’t need to get a formal visa, you basically just buy your ticket and go. We screen to see if you’re on the watch-list, but it’s not a very extensive process.”

The vulnerability, Warner said, stems from the fact that there are no real controls to prevent European citizens from traveling from one European country to another without passport controls.

Last year, he said, about ten million European citizens traveled to Turkey for vacation. The country is the sixth largest tourist destination in the world, he said.

“You’ve got all these people going to Turkey, and once they get to Turkey, we don’t know (where they go),” Warner said. “Are they ending up (vacationing) on the beach, or are they going across the border to Syria or Iraq and getting radicalized? Thousands of people have gone to the war region, been radicalized, and come back to France or Belgium. Many of the terrorists, both in the Charlie Hebdo (incident) and the Paris attacks, had been to that region and then went back to France.”

One generally thinks of terrorists as having little formal education, Warner said, but this is not always the case.

“I think that people don’t realize that 30,000 foreign fighters have gone to join ISIL,” he said. “Many of these are people who grew up in France, or grew up in Belgium, or grew up in Germany. I think in those countries, the Muslim population has been so marginalized at times that they have grown up angry and they are seduced by this radical philosophy. … Often, they are fairly well-educated people.”

The danger, Warner said, is that a European citizen – perhaps someone from France, Germany or Belgium – could travel to Turkey, travel from Turkey to Syria or Iraq and become radicalized by ISIL, travel back to their home country, and then travel to the U.S. without the need of a travel visa.

The Visa Waiver Program, Warner said, is a far greater concern to American safety than Syrian refugees. However, solving the problem is not easy.

“We don’t want to say, ‘Well, we should shut down all of our travel and business with Europe,’” Warner said. “That’s $200 billion dollars worth of trade. But if you want to do something other than just score political points, what you should do is say, ‘Anybody that’s been to Syria or Iraq in the last five years – even if they’ve got a European passport – you need to flag them and not let them through this Visa Waiver Program. … Anybody in the intelligence community, if you ask them where we’re vulnerable, they’ll say, ‘That’s where we’re vulnerable.’ Instead, people are jumping on this other issue that isn’t where the vulnerability is.”

Since last weekend’s terrorist attacks in Paris, Warner said, there has been wall-to-wall media coverage of ISIL, including the organization’s threats against different parts of the U.S. However, he said, the FBI and other agencies seem to agree that there are no formal plans in place to back up those threats.

“Part of the war (ISIL) is waging is a psychological war,” Warner said. “They’re trying to scare people. That’s one of the reasons I give the French credit. Basically, the people said, ‘You’re not going to terrorize us. We’re going to go back to the cafes and the restaurants this weekend.’ … We have to be safe, but we can’t be cowed into changing our way of life.”

Warner said that he is working to draft legislation that would help to close some of the more dangerous loopholes in the Visa Waiver Program.

In the meantime, he said, ISIL presents a serious threat, and there has never been a greater need for an end to partisan politics.

“If there was ever a time when it shouldn’t be Democrat versus Republican, it’s now,” he said. “What I hope we can have is a little less shrillness and a little more responsible policy suggestion.”