Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson announced this morning that, with immediate effect and with no advance notice or warning, foreign citizens ‘seeking to travel to the United States from countries in our Visa Waiver Program (VWP) will be required to provide additional data fields of information in the travel application submitted via theElectronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA).’
The additional questions which have already been added to the newly ‘Enhanced’ ESTA application include:
Other Names/Aliases Other Citizenships Parents name(s) National Identification Number (if applicable) U. S. Contact information (email, phone, points of contact) Employment information (if applicable) City of Birth As discussed in our comments to DHS when it was first proposed, the ESTA is a a travel permission and exit-permit system of dubious legality. Prior application, payment of the ESTA fee (by credit card only, so that CBP has a credit card number on file to link the travel history of each ESTA applicant to a financial history), and receipt of ESTA approval is required by the US before boarding any flight departing from any other country in the world, with the intention of eventually traveling to the USA.
ESTA approval is not a guarantee of admission to the US, and the US has consistently and explicitly claimed that ESTA is solely a travel-permission scheme, not a visa requirement. (If it were deemed a visa requirement, US citizens would likely be subjected to reciprocal visa requirements to visit VWP countries.) So the sole purpose of adding questions to the ESTA application form is to add them to the inputs to the pre-crime profiling process that determines whether to allow an applicant to travel to the US for the purpose of applying, on arrival at a US port of entry, for visa-free admission to the US as a visitor.
This post was published at Papers Please on November 4, 2014.
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