The Statue of Liberty stands in New York Harbor, lifting the lamp, as the poem goes, "beside the golden door." In its more modest way, the Aloha Tower symbolizes a kind of beacon to overseas arrivals, too.

Many would-be visitors to the nation and this state, however, find the golden door barricaded, if not locked, by seemingly interminable waits to get even a tourist visa for entry into the U.S. In Hawaii, worried observers in the tourism industry feel most frustrated by the unrealized promise of the burgeoning China visitors market. The average wait time at the five U.S. State Department posts in China is 48 days — 64 days in Shanghai and 60 days in Beijing.

The sought-after solution is providing the option of visa waivers for overseas visitors, easing the process of coming to this country. There are 36 countries, such as Japan and South Korea, with that option, but expanding that roster remains a thorny issue. Most of those thorns grew out of the devastating 9/11 attacks a decade ago and its attendant security concerns. Before then, in-person interviews weren’t the norm for visa applications; now they are, and there are fingerprint checks and other measures besides.

That clampdown has come with a cost. The U.S. share of global travelers now stands at 12 percent, down from 17 percent before 2001, statistics that mean lost economic gain at a time when America is hungry for an influx of cash from overseas.

Hawaii and the rest of the U.S. recently got good news with the nomination of Taiwan to become the next to join the U.S. Visa Waiver Program. An American delegation is due to visit Taiwan in the early months of this new year to finalize the review.

The big concern about throwing the visa door wide open is that without more scrupulous checks, people can easily come in as tourists and simply never leave. That’s a particular worry if the person in question has a history that flags them as a security risk.

However, there has been progress on the security front, and further development of technological solutions should be pursued. Since 2004, the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program was launched as a protective screen for visitors, including those from visa-waiver countries. Federal officers collect digital fingerprints and a photograph when visitors apply for a visa or arrive at a U.S. port.

This information is checked against law-enforcement and other databases, winnowing the chances of a terror suspect slipping through. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security has just started a pilot program testing voluntarily gathered facial and iris-recognition images, which could become part of a later refinement of US-VISIT.

Of course, funding restrictions have put another component of the screening on ice: a checkout system at ports, which would help the government know when a tourist may have overstayed his or her legal time limit. Closing the loop would be an important part of a more robust border-security program and should be moved to the front burner.

While that’s being pursued, the recently established U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board should continue pressing for reasonable reforms, such as making it easier for China and some other countries to qualify for visa-waiver status. Currently China exceeds the 3 percent maximum of visa application rejections so it can’t qualify for the waiver; that ceiling should be raised to 10 percent.

While identity-screening safeguards are being improved, there’s no rational, risk-assessment basis for maintaining the current visa logjam for many countries. Freer access to travel would be a benefit to all countries, including our own; enabling it should be a facet of U.S. policy.