- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
borders and entry points to the United States leak like sieves, offering
the nation little or no protection against potential terrorists who can
enter the country undetected, immigration experts have said.
"It should be universally recognised that our borders are out of control,"
said Bill King, a retired senior Border Patrol agent and former head of
the Border Patrol Academy.
King on Tuesday told a seminar organised by the Centre for Immigration
Studies, a Washington think-tank, that there were almost nine million people
illegally residing in the United States.
"They can be job seekers, criminals, disease carriers and now they
can be foreign agents ... Both our borders (with Mexico and Canada) are
sieves. Anyone can cross either border today," he said.
Of the 19 people thought to have carried out the suicide hijackings on
September 11 that killed around 4,800 people in New York, Washington and
Pennsylvania, at least 13 entered the country as tourists, business travellers
or students. The entry of the others cannot be accounted for.
In a recent paper, Steven Camarota and Mark Krikorian of the Centre for
Immigration Studies, argued that "the current terrorist threat to
the United States comes almost exclusively from individuals who arrive
from abroad ... Unfortunately, prior to September 11, a portion of America's
elite had come to see our borders as little more than an irritant, an obstacle
to be overcome by travellers and businessmen."
Peter Nunez, a former U.S. attorney for San Diego, said the Immigration
and Naturalisation Service suffered from a lack of money, manpower and
equipment and low morale. He said special interest groups interested in
securing a source of low-paying labour, consistently thwarted efforts to
control the borders.
DRIVERS LICENSES TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
Some states were not issuing drivers licenses to illegal immigrants, which
they could then use as identification to board aircraft, Nunez said.
"Why are we allowing people to create false identities to hide in
plain sight?" he said.
When Kentucky stopped requiring foreign applicants to take drivers' tests
and delivering licenses on the spot in 1996, the number of foreign applicants
exploded within weeks, coming from as far away as New York to get licenses.
Jessica Vaughan, a former foreign service consular officer, said the State
Department had forgotten its role in national security when it issued visas.
Its officers concentrated on handling the maximum amount of visa applications
in the shortest possible time, rather than trying to weed out those who
could be a threat.
Krikorian said visa officers regarded foreign applicants rather than the
American people as their primary customers and preferred to keep them happy,
rather than keep them waiting.
He also noted that only around 400 agents were responsible for patrolling
the 4,000-mile border with Canada, where "Islamic terrorists are more
likely to slip into the country from the sizeable Canadian Muslim community
that can provide them with cover".
Several speakers noted that the Immigration and Naturalisation Service
(INS) and other law enforcement agencies made no effort to keep track of
visitors, legal or illegal, once they had entered the country.
"If you can sneak past the border, you are home free. Nobody is going
to look for you," said Nunez.
"If illegal immigrants can get through the border, then so can drug
dealers, so can terrorists," he said.
One of the September 11 hijackers entered the country on a student visa
but never attended a single class.
Krikorian and Camarota would like to see every applicant for a U.S. visa
fingerprinted and their prints placed in an integrated system that could
be accessed by every agency involved in the immigration process.
"Visa officers should be empowered to deny visas to people who are
clearly enemies of the United States but who have not actually engaged
in terrorism," they said.
They also urged greater scrutiny of citizens wishing to come to the United
States from countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Students and others
from such countries needed to be tracked once they arrived in the United
States to ensure they were doing what they came to do and did not overstay
their visas.
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