House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was among the Representatives signing the letter. | Getty Visa rules put Obama in a vise The administration settled for a flawed new law — and it's now dealing with the global backlash.

When the Obama administration decided to support a bipartisan push in Congress to change rules covering visa-free travel to the U.S., it did so in part to save the U.S. resettlement program for Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

But since the new visa regulations have become law, they've faced a growing backlash. Civil liberties advocates, European diplomats and Iranian leaders involved with the Iran nuclear deal are livid, urging the Obama administration to find a way to scrap the changes. On Wednesday, House Republicans waded in to the fight, warning the White House not to circumvent the new visa law out of concern for saving the nuclear deal.


The White House has held firm in its support of the new law, which the Department of Homeland Security is determining how to implement. But the growing criticism appears to be frustrating officials in the Obama administration, who only grudgingly accepted a compromise measure that was conceived and driven by Congress.

The new rules prohibit visa-free travel to the United States by citizens of 38 countries in Europe and elsewhere in the Visa Waiver Program if they have visited Iran, Iraq, Syria or Sudan since March 2011. The rules also prohibit visa-free travel for citizens of those countries if they are dual nationals of the four targeted countries — a category that includes hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people, many of whom have never been to Iraq, Iran, Syria or Sudan.

Iranian leaders, as well as some European officials, say the new rules may violate the nuclear deal by scaring off potential investors and damaging tourism in Iran. The nuclear deal's terms state that Iran will curb its nuclear program in return for a lifting of international sanctions, but the visa restrictions, the Iranians argue, essentially serve as a new sanction.

On Saturday, in a missive to his Iranian counterpart, Secretary of State John Kerry said the new visa rules do not violate the nuclear deal because the U.S. can issue waivers and long-term business visas to certain people who travel to Iran. That prompted a retort to Kerry and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson by several leading GOP congressmen — including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce — who insisted such promises were out of bounds.

“We are deeply concerned that the narrowly intended use of the waiver authority will be ignored in favor of applying the waiver authority to those who have traveled to Iran for business purposes,” the Republicans write. “Not only was such an exemption from the law not included in the legislation, it was specifically discussed during bill negotiations with [Obama] administration staff and expressly refused by members of Congress.”

Administration officials have argued that because the text of nuclear agreement prohibits the U.S. from taking actions that are "specifically intended" to harm Iran's economy, the new visa rules are not a violation.

“The clear purpose of this [new visa law] is to enhance U.S. national security, not to affect trade and economic relations with Iran,” a senior administration official elaborated earlier this month. “Iran is under consideration [in the visa law] ... because it is designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, an issue that was not addressed in the nuclear deal.”

Both the Visa Waiver Program and the refugee program have come under intense scrutiny since the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. The stated goal of the new visa law is to prevent terrorists from entering the U.S. on Western passports, and it passed as part of the omnibus spending package.

Iranian leaders, as well as some Iranian American activists, have questioned whether Iran’s inclusion is a quiet way to sabotage the nuclear deal, which Republicans uniformly opposed alongside some Democrats. They point out that the new visa rules don’t target people who have traveled to or are dual nationals of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, both countries whose citizens have been involved in numerous assaults on the U.S., including the Sept. 11 attacks and the recent San Bernardino killings.

The White House actively participated in the negotiations on the visa rules, seeing them as a compromise that would deflect the attempt to bar the admission to the U.S. of Syrian and Iraqi refugees. The changes also drew widespread support from both parties. But over time, a number of lawmakers from both parties have had second thoughts, especially in respect to the inclusion of dual nationals.

When pressed Wednesday, the White House declined to comment on the record or on background on whether it had anticipated the backlash to the new visa rules, referring a POLITICO reporter to Congress. A Homeland Security spokesman, meanwhile, said it would "respond to the members of Congress directly" on the Iran nuclear deal concerns, but that "no determination has been made as to how waiver provision would be implemented."

One of the key provisions that Homeland Security, with some input from State, must interpret covers dual nationals. Dual nationality law is a vague, confusing legal issue, partly because there's no international agreement on how to deal with people who are citizens of multiple countries. Each country basically sets its own rules, which can lead to disputes.

Of the four countries targeted by the new visa rules, Iran appears to have the strictest approach to nationality — it effectively does not recognize that an Iranian can be anything else. And its definition of who counts as an Iranian is broad. A non-Iranian woman who marries an Iranian man can be considered an Iranian national, for example. The German-born child of an Iranian couple also is considered an Iranian national, even if that child has never visited Iran.

Throughout this week, a POLITICO reporter was repeatedly pushed back and forth between the State Department and Homeland Security when trying to get details of how U.S. officials interpret the nationality laws of Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria. Neither directly answered the question. But DHS is expected to rely on such interpretations in order to update documents that citizens of the 38 countries must fill out to try to weed out who does and doesn't need a visa.

Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary for policy at Homeland Security, said the malleability of dual nationality laws gives U.S. officials some room to maneuver in who they would define as dual nationals who must get visas. But he predicted that those same officials would cast as big a net as possible, not make exceptions for people who have no choice in whether they are dual nationals.

"They'll be strict," he said. "They’re going to look at this and say this was passed right after Paris, and if somebody [dangerous] comes in because of my creating a loophole, it’s my name, it’s my career."

The visa rule changes also have drawn protests from the European Union, which says they unfairly target people with legitimate business interests as well as humanitarian workers, journalists and others who have traveled to Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria since March 2011. EU ambassadors in the United States signed on to a letter criticizing the new rules earlier this month. Some European officials also have questioned if the agreement violates the nuclear deal.

This article tagged under: Iran