Angus King: Visa Waiver Reforms Not the Same as Trump's Ban Plan

Donald Trump's call to ban Muslims from coming into the United States presents a "real national security problem," Sen. Angus King said Wednesday, but he does back an increased level of vetting for Syrian refugees or people coming in from the war-torn countries of the Middle East.

"It's an explicit, stated strategy of ISIS to drive a wedge between the West and the vast majority of Muslims who are moderate and who are pro-Western and pro-American," the Maine independent told CNN's "New Day" program. "They want to have people like Donald Trump say what he did. I said the other night, he was a gift to ISIS, because that's exactly what they want to do. They want us to ostracize our Muslim population and push him toward radicalism."

But at the same time, King said, "nobody is saying open the borders, let anybody in at any time, any place. To get in as a refugee, it takes 18 months to two years, a series of background checks, biometric data."

The bigger issue is the visa waiver program, which last year allowed 20 million people from 38 countries into the United States, King said.

"Congress did something yesterday on a bipartisan basis," King said. "The House passed a bill tightening up the Visa waiver program for people who have been to these countries. We need to separate what makes us feel good from what makes us actually safer."

But the bill doesn't mean a ban for all refugees, he insisted.

"It simply says if you've been to those countries, you have to get a visa," King said. "It doesn't say you can't get in. It says you have to go through a much more rigorous process. The visa waiver program is just what it says it is. It's a waiver. You don't have to go through interviews, background checks. You just get on an airplane and come. We're talking about raising the bar. It's not a ban. It is raising the bar."

Talk of bans and monitoring mosques, as Trump has called for, will drive Muslims away and toward Islamic rebels, King continued.

"We're talking about a small slice of Islam," said King. "I don't know whether it's 100,000, a million, but it's a relatively small slice of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Do we really want to push them away from us and into the camp of these brutal characters in Syria and Iraq?"

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