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Guest Commentary: October 15, 2001
Weaknesses of the U.S. Visa System The Honorable Dianne Feinstein
The Department of Justice released information indicating that 13 of the 19 terrorist hijackers had entered the U.S. legally with valid visas. Of the 13, three of the hijackers had remained in the U.S. after their visas had expired. The INS had no information on 6 of the hijackers.
Clearly, something tragically went wrong in our immigration system.
[We should] determine the extent to which gaps in our visa and admissions systems have frustrated our efforts identify and bring to justice the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks. More importantly, we [should] determine the extent to which these vulnerabilities will expose us to future terrorist attacks.
[We should] examine the lessons learned from September 11, and to discuss how we can use the technological resources available today to plug the holes in our system and prevent these types of atrocities from occurring again.
This is not an opportunity to find scapegoats, rather it is an opportunity to learn from the lessons of the pass and develop sensible procedures to restore confidence in the immigration process.
Today, I see three areas of vulnerability in our immigration system:
An unregulated visa waiver program, in which 23 million people arrived with little scrutiny in FY 2000 from 29 different countries.
An unmonitored nonimmigrant visa system, in which 7.1 million tourists, business visitors, foreign students, and temporary workers arrived. To date, the INS does not have a reliable tracking system to determine how many of these visitors left the country after their visas expired.
Among the 7.1 million nonimmigrants, 500,000 foreign nationals entered on foreign student visas. The foreign student visa system is one of the most under-regulated systems we have today.
I believe most foreign students legitimately come to the U.S. to study and, indeed, they provide a great contribution to our institutions of higher learning.
However, I do have a concern that in the last 10 years, mor than 16,000 students came from such terrorist supporting states as Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, and Syria. Let me give you an example of why this is a problem for me:
The Problem
Overall, more than 30 million temporary visitors enter the U.S. each year. That number does not take into account the 500 million entries at our land borders and ports of entries each year. Two thirds of those entrants are non-U.S. citizens.
What these numbers show is that without an adequate tracking system, our country becomes a sieve, creating ample opportunities for terrorists to enter and establish their operations without detection.
This is not a new problem. We have had plenty of warning of the serious weaknesses in our immigration system that led to the horrific September 11 attacks.
In fact, vulnerabilities in the Immigration and Naturalization Service's monitoring system, for example, have been documented as far back as the 1970s.
In 1979, during the Iranian hostage crisis, the INS was unable to locate 9,000 of an estimated 50,000 Iranian students studying in the United States.
In 1991, the Washington Post reported that the United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq discovered documents detailing an Iraqi government strategy to send students to the United States and other countries to specifically study nuclear-related subjects to develop their own program. One of those students, Samir Al Araji, received his doctorate in nuclear engineering from Michigan State University and then returned to Iraq to head its nuclear weapons program.
In 1998, the Richmond Times and New York Times did extensive reports on Rihab Taha, the mastermind of Saddam Hussein's germ warfare arsenal. Also known as "Dr. Germ," Taha studied in England on a student visa.
England is one of the participating countries in the Visa Waiver program, which means if she could have gotten a fraudulent passport from England, she could have come and gone without a visa in the United States.
In the early 1990s, officials at six colleges, which of which were in California, were convicted of taking bribes, providing counterfeit education documents and fraudulently applying for foreign student visas so that more than100 foreign nationals could gain easy entry in to the U.S.
The officials from the six colleges were convicted; some served time in jail, others paid monetary fines and restitution. It is unclear what steps the INS took to find and deport the foreign nationals involved in this scheme.
These instances should have provided a wake-up call that something in our system was clearly broken:
The porous nature of our borders along with the INS's unreliable record keeping, have contributed to the agency's inability to keep out criminals and terrorists--and to track their whereabouts once they are here.
In an era in which terrorists use satellite phones and encrypted e-mail, the INS -- our nation's gatekeeper -- is considered by many observers to still be in the technological dark ages. The agency is still using paper files and archaic computer systems that are often non-functioning, do not communicate with each other, and do not integrate well with other law enforcement systems.
About 40 to 50% of the estimated 7 to 9 million illegal immigrant population are visa overstayers -- people who entered the U.S. legally, but later violated the terms of their visas by staying beyond the permitted period of time.
Unlike most countries, the United States does not require exit visas -- only a form filled out by the visa holder that is often not entered into an INS database for months and, in some cases, a year later.
The names of applicants are fed into a "lookout" system, a computerized database of some 5.7 million names fed and reviewed by the INS, U.S. Customs and the State Department. This system is hardly failsafe.
Because the look-out system used by American consular offices is based on a name check, alone, it is vulnerable to evasion, not to mention document fraud and identity theft.
For example:
Two of the alleged hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Hawaf Alhazmi, made the watch list only after they had gained entry into the United States. And the watch list has not always helped: Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a spiritual leader of the men involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, legally entered the country on a visa, although he was already on the "watch list" of suspected terrorists.
We [should] examine the ways in which existing technologies could assist these agencies in preventing those who are intent on carrying out the goal of mass destruction from entering and staying in the United States.
Note: The above commentary has been adapted from a statement Sen. Feinstein made at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Government Information, October 12, 2001.
