00:00Thank you, Dr. Kelly. Members will be recognized in the order of seniority for their five minutes
00:04of questioning, and I recognize myself for five minutes of questioning. Mr. Freeman,
00:10have we ever reached, I know that we had the pandemic, and then what was the highest year
00:17that we had international passengers in the United States? The highest year for international travel
00:22was 2018. We have gone down or remained below that every year since. We, at the end of last
00:28year, were only at about 90 percent of where we were pre-pandemic, so the U.S. continues to struggle
00:32to welcome international visitors in the numbers we previously did. Visa, coming into this year,
00:38visa concerns, custom concerns were top reasons for that. We can't ignore the strength of the dollar.
00:44We can't ignore our economy versus others coming into this year, but the issues that were within
00:49our control were 500-day-plus wait times to get an interview for a visa, multi-hour waits to get
00:55through customs. Both of those were big deterrents for foreign travelers.
00:58Was that a reality before the Trump administration, or that just happened in the last 60 days?
01:05We've ebbed and flowed in terms of where we are on visa wait times. The lowest we've ever been was
01:10during the Obama administration. We're all consulates around the world, process visas in two weeks or less.
01:15That has ebbed and flowed ever since. There were successes during the Trump term. There were more
01:21struggles coming out of the pandemic. We have really struggled to get the consular officials
01:27we need around the world and to get these visa wait times down.
01:30How do we end up with wait times of two weeks to 500 days? How did that happen?
01:35When you look at what happened post-pandemic or in the early days of the pandemic, all these
01:39foreign service officers came back home. They were slow to get back out to their consulates around
01:44the world. Processing visas is also the lowest rung on the totem pole of jobs within the foreign
01:51service officer community. It's not the most desired job out there. That's why we've recommended
01:56an alternative approach to doing this. If we want to get all wait times down to 30 days or less,
02:01which is something the United States of America should aspire to do, we need to take a new look
02:05at how we do this. These fees that foreign travelers pay can cover the cost of creating a new service
02:11that processes travelers. There's no need for foreign service officers to do this. There's a
02:15better way to do it. We think we could also use kind of emergency SWAT teams whenever wait times get
02:21high. We could send these officers or these officials into jurisdictions where they get high.
02:27The United States could be the most secure nation in the world and also the most efficient when it
02:31comes to processing travelers. But we lack technology, we lack the manpower, and we have lacked the manpower
02:37and technology for some time in order to do that. And also probably policy, right?
02:43I'm sorry?
02:44Policy.
02:45Manpower has been an enormous issue. Technology is an even bigger issue. I think the will to get it
02:50done is the largest issue, right? Where is the goal, right? We don't have a goal when it comes to
02:55processing visas. At the end of the Biden administration, they established a goal of 90 days or less.
03:00If we achieve that goal, we would have still been last in the world when it comes to processing visas.
03:05This was at the end of the Biden administration?
03:06At the end of the November of the Biden administration. We need to have greater
03:09aspirations when it comes to how we welcome travelers into this country. They want to do
03:15nothing more than come here, spend their money, and go home and tell their family and friends what a
03:19great time they had.
03:20So the Biden administration was in close to four years. Basically, right at the end of his
03:24administration, he decided, well, maybe we're going to have a 90-day period versus the 500-day period
03:30that some of these visas have taken?
03:31There's no doubt that the wait times peaked coming out of COVID. There were steps taken.
03:37It was a little too little too late. We're hopeful we could find bipartisan support to be more
03:42efficient in the future.
03:43Which, by the way, I agree that the passenger security fee that has been diverted for a number
03:50of years needs to be fully invested in TSA. I don't believe it. You're going to be paying for something,
04:00you're saying, I'm paying a passenger security fee. It should be for passenger security. That's a novel
04:05concept, I think, here in the federal government. I think that that can be said for administrations
04:10on both sides of the aisle. So I would hope, I know that one of my colleagues, Nick Laloa,
04:17had a bill to make sure that the passenger fee went to technology, et cetera, that we need at TSA,
04:25and I certainly support that. And I think we need to do more of that. The fact that we're not going
04:30to be upgrading our systems to the middle of 2040s, all right, that's totally unacceptable.
04:37Mr. Gruen, in terms of drones, and I only have about 30 seconds left, I found it interesting
04:45that you said that even if you put your technology, say, at all these stadiums, et cetera, to protect,
04:51that it would take a federal individual to say, go ahead and knock that drone out of the sky,
04:56that a local law enforcement could not make that call on its own to protect its own citizens?
05:02Correct. The local law enforcement, state and local, do not have the current authorities.
05:06Even federal have it only authorized in temporary durations, and only certain agencies.
05:12Fair enough. Okay. Maybe I'll come back to a second round. With that, I yield back,
05:18and now I recognize the ranking member of the gentleman from...
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