Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, members of the panel for taking i dont recall time and investing your time and helping us to have a clearer path forward including our tourism, economy and, perhaps, our reputation, as well. F. Y. Appropriations that secure technology that would allow state to conduct visa interviews remotely and provide a convenient solution for foreign access. Can you please give us an update . Thank you, senator. The bureau of Counselor Affairs is kocontinuing to look into whether video can be used. We understand the allure and the attraction of the video interviewing idea. We have serious concerns about the security efficiency and integrity of video interviewing. We believe expanding the pool of lowrisk traveler who is do not require an interview at all will realize far greater efficiencies than would video interviewing. We are focusing technology to help us expand interviews for whom can be waived. That would allow us to focus resources on higherrisk visa applicants. Expansive is for larger, legitimate travelers. The video interview process can work when youre dealing with a known group. But when youre trying to interview several thousand people who are just coming 234 one after another sitting in front of the camera, we think there are serious questions about that process. So youre, perhaps, focused more on identifying lowrisk travelers as opposed to moving forward today on the use of that technology . Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. Assistant secretary stroud, weve heard a little bit about the executive loan program and how dhs is leveraging with six assignments under the program to support some of the departments tourism initiatives. Can you give me a better idea of these roles . Sure. Thank you, senator. Let me first explain that the Loan Executive Program is a program that allows us to take advantage of private sector at essentially no cost. These folks continue to get paid by their private sector employers. We currently have, on the travel and tourism side, weve seven assignments they largely came after a site visit. Their expertise on signage, on literally cueing people was invaluable. So we worked with cbp and tsa to jointly develop these descriptions to basically create a Task Force Team that could go around to our various gateway airports and look at each airport. So this team has to literally go to these airports and look. They will actually dual record to the deputy secretary who, under the law, operates as a chief operating officer for the d. They will be used sporadically during that time frame. Thank you. On the cbps preclearance operations with our strong allies like canada, ireland and the caribbean, this has facilitated lowrisk travel opportunities the canadian preclearance has done a lot of good for our country. Id like to get your opinion . Absolutely. Were looking to expand the program with a lot of different of the gateway airports overseas. But it does help with the facilitation benefits. Certainly, 2 enforcement and security benefits of being able to search someone or inspect someone and approve someone for travel to the United States. So really essential for both the security admission that we do. Before i get into my questions, i just wanted to thank ambassador bond and her testimony for flagging the issue and the opportunities related to expanding the Interview Waiver Program and commit to you that i know for myself and many members of the committee, were anxious to facilitate in any way possible. And if there are legislative changes that need to be made, were pleased to work with you on that. Mr. Wagner, as you probably know, cbp is working on resuming operations at the kona airport. It would add another International Gateway to hawaii. I know there are facility issues, but, from our standpoint, we are not Landing Commercial flights at the kona airport for lack of resources at the state and federal level. Do i have your commitment to work with us to solve that problem . Well absolutely work with you. I can assure you the commercial airlines will come if we can square away our epd of the bargain. Thank you very much. Ambassador bond, i understand the wait program has helped to reduce wait time around that the state department would like to expand that program. Could you put into perspective the benefits of this Waiver Authority . Yes, thank you, senator. The benefit is it allowings us to carefully examine the people bhor aplying for visa applicatio applications and separate the people out that we have a lot of information. An example would be someone who is applying for a student visa. We have information about their travel pattern. We have all of the screening that is done for 100 of travelers. We really dont need to interview that person. And because each application will be examined, if there is something that raisings a question, we can invite that person to come in for an interview. And flr other examples of people wed be able to move along and focus on the folks who we know less. Thank you very much. Mr. Wagner, where are we with the development of metrics. And are we at a point any time soon where were going to have a maximum wait time target as an official policy of the krrksz pb. That information 1 posted on our web site. We take two pieces of information that we have data on, the block time of the aircraft to the time we read that persons passport. And then we subtract out what the average walk time is to get from the plane to our area. That data is tabulated every day. Just yesterday, about, narcly, 75 of the people cleared cbp in 30 minutes or less. It seems to me its not just a question of trying to aggregate the data. But youre creating the out liars for such a statement where people wont come back. Youre actually youre removing people from the sort of likely repeet traveler pool. Even if your 5 00 aggregate dat looks good. Correct. The average yesterday was 20 minutes throughout the day. But its really those peak arrival times. If 15 flights land within an hour and a couple thousand people come at us twunsing at u were finding different ways to settle that. We just have to match them up with that information that. s where the kiosks come in. Thats where global entry come ins and we can remove those people from the queue depletely. We have not looked at a narnl wait times goal. We are looking at the measurements. If travel stays the same and wait time is the same, were proving the goal. Whats the right things to measure in that process. Rather than setting just an acrosstheboard goal. A lot of factors are outside of our control. Its a deeper discussion we need to have. Thank you. My final question for ambassador bond, where are we with negotiations between the United States and china on reciprocal visa validity. As you may know, senator, the current reciprocity is one year. And we are talking to the Chinese Government about extending those visa validities for several categories. In order to make long term plans. So we are in consultation the Chinese Government. Thank you very much. Thank you, chairman. Mr. Hyatt, in your testimony, you talked about reauthorizing whats called brand usa. I appreciate that. Weve actually filed legislation to do exactly that. At the same time, weve included so mu some accountability standards. I want to talk to you about two things. One is the increase in numbers, 2 increase in money spent. What im wondering is what can you do to measure the impact of Marketing Efforts themselves. We think of wroobrand usa as global destination. There are four classic measures that seem appropriate. They are the effectiveness of the Marketing Program them vs themselves. The program they do to market to a country. Second, the intent in which they shape travel. Are people more likely to intend to travel to the u. S. Third, the results themselves, does it create additional travelers. And, forurth, the return on investment. Theyve built a pretty comprehensive dash board and the numbers ewe gave today, the difference in 2012 and 2013 travel . Would you say that brand usa was responsible for some porks of that increase . I think we dont have the data to support what theyre responsible for. We have Marketing Program after Marketing Program where the Marketing Partners talk about the results that brand usa creates. And theres a lot of company by company, december mags Marketing Organization by destination marking. In addition, brand usa also arctticulated the result that i brand usa is creating. So the indications are theres Value Creation from brand usa in its activities. In the first year or so, and i may get back to that as a topic later, largely, the funding is not any taxpayer funding from the United States. Its visa waiver fees, but it still has to be matched. I know in the first year, we were concerned of the real value of any end kind of match. And i wondered what the department has done and can do to more fully value that Senior High School of the match. Thank you, senator, for the question. We spent a lot of time working with brand usa and, also, third party companies. To help determine the most appropriate and effective way. We have built, now, a set of procedures from around the government to value the end kind. Where it is a more ewe nexuniqu difficult to identify. I think both brand usa we are now comfortable that the procedures in place now are efficiently and effective ly measuring the end kind. And are there other monitoring investment that is youve put in place to monitor the way money is being spent by the brand usa board and the people theyve hired to run the program . And, again, as i said, the metric that is we are watching are the metrics of the effect e effectiveness of the campaign, of intent to travel of results, program by program. And, again, theres a dash board thats there that were working with. Thank you. Chairman, if we have more time for questions, ill have more questions. If got, ill have questions for the record. Senator nelson . Mr. Rubio, senator wagner and i are going to tag team on the i shall shoe of miami and orlando. I understand you obviously have this on your radar scope because youve mentioned miami zef rat times. It was curious to me when you specificationly mentioned in miami a fivehour period where some 12,000 people are arriving all at once. Aside from the issue of the number of customs, you know, Border Patrol officers do you consider on a temporary basis shifting the high concentration of need . Yes, absolutely that. s what our local managers will do from other work areas in the environment. Make sure we have enough booths open every single day. Miami is of significant importance to us. Were looking at the wait times every day. Im getting a report every singling day of how were doing. I was just down there on monday walking through with some of the other local stake holders. Its very important to us. So where would you get them . Would you get them from the sea port . Would you get them from ft ft. Lauderdale . We can use they want from other areas in the airport, say cargo processing or afford to take a few hours break from that activity to put into addressing that peak arrivals. Taking from another airport is a little more challenging with their own wait times. So are you doing this now . Were doing it within the airport itself. Not from the sea port . No, we havent really looked at that. Thats also an option. Ill leave the other questions on miami to senator rubio. But just to remind you, there was an ins dent in orlando because of the lack of officers. You all responded, but then the sequester hit. And so i want you to be mindful of that. Now, im curious. I want to come at this fwr another standpoint for all of you. We are facing a situation where it looks like were going to have a lot of area of iraq and syria. At least for in the short run is going to be controlled by an extremely radical terrorist group. And, presumably, there are americans who have gone to syria for training. A floridan was the one who blew himself up recently. But, also, a lot of europeans. Okay. If theyve got a european passport wharks are the extra precautions that you take other than our overall terrorist search. In a visa waiver country, which may very well be one of these home grown terrorists to catch them. Mr. Stroud . I would say that primarily, for using our national targeting center, we begin to look at the travel patterns of folks. We get that information well before they get on the plane. In addition to that, as youve taken a visit for miami international, youll see that customs and borders excutes all of their regular protocol with respect to arriving passengers regardless of who still receives. Its also working with our foreign allies to identify who these people are. Whos associated with them and what he happens we can decipher from our intentions. As prchlt stroud mentioned, its the Airline Reservation data, drawing links to pieces of information we know would give Us National Security concerns and who can be associated to that. But also looking at travel patterns based on prior activities. And whats the right point in that process to intercept this person wfr they get on board that plane. We have officers stationed overseas at about 11 locations, major airports, cbp officers, not so much preclearance, but its called the innovation advisory program. They get a list every day of travels that give us concerns. They make a recommendation to the airline whether or not they should fly this person preclearance gives us another side with travelers that go through there and the amount of National Security activity that keeps us up at night. Having our officers on the ground there to be able to search people and ensure theyre safe before we put them on board that aircraft. Snot xx, thank you for holding this hearing and thanks for taking time. I think weve a hearing on this subject every month. Anyway, if i was chairman, philadelphia be any week. Tourism plays a huge part. You can imagine in the state of nevada, for 20 consecutive years, weve been the number one meeting in north america. This year, tourism supports one in two local jobs. Today, though, im interested in learning what washington, d. C. Can do to continue the hard work on your behalf and on the states behalf. Thats why im pleased youre here today. Im particularly interested in the ways we can open more international markets. Markets like brazil according to the International Visit xxs, they stay longer and spend more money. With that in mind, id like to ask you a couple questions. To expand travel, how are we doing . I think were making some big strides towards it. I think were ahead of where were supposed to be. And one of the things that i would obviously say that the secretary has already testified to is the fact that we believe in expanding and facilitating the travel arrival experience will greatly increase that number. If you just took one percent of that and used the number on a triple 6767, you would see it takes about 124 airplanes off of the cbp linings. We are working towards that together. I would defer to my colleague from cbp to answer that, as well. The passenger arrival is building self kiosks that not only gives them a better experience but helps us be more efficient and secure in what we do. Seeing things like global entry for that frequent, lowrisk traveler. Keeping a program like that. We see were getting 60,70,0000 applications a month. Its been steady at that for the last year, year and a half. Tremendous up tick. So, later in the week, we see those tremendous percentages increase. For the infrequent traveler, for the family travelers, for the casual vacationers, you know, they can use some sort of automated process but still see the officer for a shortened process with that officer. That helps us be more efficient do you need more to streamline the process like youre talking about . Authority wise, yes. We have very good relationships with the stake holders that helped design, build and deploy these kinds of activities. Whats it going to take to open up countries like brazil. Technically, it would be the current visa waiver statute. And, of course, expanding global entry to other countries like japan that we dont currently have. Sir, if i may just to add to that, the point that we did see a significant up tick. When people were starting to get a visa, they started traveling more. So that can also assist. Senator rubio . Thank you. Mr. Wagner, i wanted to focus on the miami thing as senator nelson previewed. Its a real mess. I fly through them all of the time. Its the second busiest port to the United States. This year alone, its going to get a million more visitors than it did a year ago. It should be good news. From january to march of this year, the average wait time has been 59 minutes. But the problem with that, sometimes the wait time is as long as 190 american under the circumstances. Its the longest wait time in the u. S. The average is basically the amount of times thats coming in all day. Sometimes the wait time has been documented to be as long as three hours. So theres a problem with the way thats calculated. The damage isnt calculated. Number one, theres misconnections. And the other is word of mouth. Look, i have here a collection of things people have put up on twitter. Miami airportline is a night mary. First world city, third would airport. Miami airport is a joke. Warning to all continuing passengers clearing customs and immigration through miami. It is a nightmare. If you can avoid this, try to do so. So this is really, really complicated and really problematic. And then i look at some of the models being used to make some decisions here. About 2,0000 new officers have been approved. I knee its going to take 18 months to two years to get them on line. Newark, which is not even on the chart, they got a hundred new agents. Mia miami only got 60. So the second Busiest Airport in the United States got 3 . So the workload staffing model takes all of the activities a cbp officer does at a port of entry. It takes 2 amount of time to do and how many hours a gay. It comes up with a staffing number of what we think is the right number. Its not optimal staffing. This factors in filters such as all that