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Center for Immigration Studies

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|i Center for Immigration Studies Officers Need Backup The Role of State and Local Police In Immigration Law Enforcement April 2003 By James R. Edwards. Jr. Download the .pdf version

In the midst of a war against Islamist terrorists, the United States remains woefully — and frighteningly — at risk. Even with the enactment of new laws such as the USA Patriot Act and the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act and the reorganization of major parts of the federal government into a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, the American homeland is not secure. Not only are the borders themselves still porous, frequently crossed by criminals, smugglers, terrorists, and other lawbreakers, but the interior has very little federal enforcement presence. The federal immigration service has just 2,000 investigators (the agents engaged in enforcement) out of its 37,000 employees. The Border Patrol is deployed almost exclusively along the border. And the Clinton administration's implicit policy of "we'll make it a little tougher for you to sneak across the border, but once inside our country, we won't touch you" remains in force. Therefore, while the borders get some attention, the country's interior is its exposed, soft underbelly. Untold hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens live, travel, and quietly undermine U.S. national and economic security within our borders every day. Among the rogues in the gallery of criminal illegal aliens are Ingmar Guandique, the suspected killer of Chandra Levy; Lee Malvo, the suspected Washington, D.C., sniper; four homeless Mexicans accused of brutally gang-raping a woman in New York last December; Rafael Resendez Ramirez, the serial "Railroad Killer;" and Mohammed Salameh, one of the 1993 World Trade Center conspirator/bombers. Other illegal aliens provide the infrastructure by which the worst ones go about undetected, like the Latin American illegal aliens who assisted some of the September 11 hijackers to exploit loopholes and fraudulently obtain driver's licenses. Yet, hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers patrol every community, every mile of road, 24 hours every day. They know their area and can spot people, things, and behavior that are out of the ordinary. But when it comes to enforcing immigration laws, these lawmen largely remain an untapped human resource.

http://www.cis.org/articles/2003/back703.html

2/25/2004

Biometrics and the Border Management Challenge Testimony of Dennis Carlton Director of Washington Operations International Biometric Group, LLC To the House Select Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Infrastructure and Border Security "Integrity and Security at the Borders: The US VISIT Program" January 28, 2004

My name is Dennis Carlton and I am the Director of Washington Operations for International Biometric Group of New York City. On behalf of our company, I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to talk to you about the technology called biometrics and some of the likely the issues associated with introducing biometrics into the border management system. Let me begin with a brief description of International Biometric Group so that you better understand who we are and our unique position in the world of biometrics. International Biometric Group, or IBG, provides independent consulting services to government and private industry customers interested in implementing biometric technologies. Our organization focuses on three primary functions: (1) evaluating and reporting on biometric products and vendors, as well as the markets in which they compete, (2) advising clients on how to implement biometric systems, and (3) integrating a wide range of biometric hardware and software to meet the security needs of our customers. We take a practical, hands-on approach toward biometrics. We have conducted extensive comparative performance testing of more than fifty different biometric solutions so that we know how they're likely to perform in the real world. IBG holds to a strict vendor-neutral policy, which enables us to maintain close relationships with biometrics vendors while ensuring that our clients receive accurate and independent advice on which biometric systems can best meet their needs. I'd like to take a moment to review some of the basics of biometrics. A technical definition of biometrics is the automated measurement of behavioral or physiological characteristics of a human being to determine or authenticate their identity. In other words, it's the use of computers to confirm who a person is by matching a behavior or a permanent physical characteristic with similar records in a database. Biometrics alone can't determine an individual's identity but they can effectively distinguish one person from another. There is a wide range of products in the market that can acquire and match a person's biometric data to perform a quick and accurate identification. With respect to border management, the U.S. has focused its attention on

Statement of Kathleen Campbell Walker on behalf of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Foreign Trade Association, Inc. of the Paso del Norte Region on Integrity and Security at the Border: The US VISIT Program Before the Subcommittee on Infrastructure and Border Security of the Select Committee on Homeland Security January 28, 2004 Washington, D.C. Mr. Chairman and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, I am Kathleen Campbell Walker, Treasurer of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). I am honored to be here today representing two organizations, AILA and the Foreign Trade Association of the Paso del Norte region. AILA is the immigration bar association with more than 8,500 members who practice immigration law. Founded in 1946, the association is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and is an affiliated organization of the American Bar Association (ABA). AILA members represent tens of thousands of: U.S. families who have applied for permanent residence for their spouses, children, and other close relatives to lawfully enter and reside in the United States; U.S. businesses, universities, colleges, and industries that sponsor highly skilled foreign professionals seeking to enter the United States on a temporary basis or, having proved the unavailability of U.S. workers when required, on a permanent basis; and healthcare workers, asylum seekers, often on a pro bono basis, as well as athletes, entertainers, exchange visitors, artists, and foreign students. AILA members have assisted in contributing ideas for increased port of entry inspection efficiencies and continue to work through their national liaison activities with federal agencies engaged in the administration and enforcement of our immigration laws to identify ways to improve adjudicative processes and procedures. The Foreign Trade Association of the Paso del Norte region was originally incorporated in 1985 as the El Paso Foreign Trade Association. The mission of the Foreign Trade Association is to enhance and advance bilateral trade in the Paso del Norte region, which includes El Paso, Texas, southern New Mexico, and the northern part of the State of Chihuahua in Mexico, which includes Ciudad Juarez. The Association's membership includes maquiladora executives and service industry leaders from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The Association has a history of working with federal, state, and local officials on both sides of the border to implement projects for the improvement of cross-border trade and commerce. For example, the Association spearheaded a four-year project partially funded by the El Paso community to construct the first dedicated commuter lane in Texas using Secure Electronic Network for Travelers Rapid Inspection (SENTRI) technology. It also helped to implement the first FAST lane on the southern border for commercial traffic in the past few months.

TESTIMONY OF ASA HUTCHINSON UNDER SECRETARY DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY DIRECTORATE OF BORDER AND TRANSPORTATION SECURITY BEFORE THE HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY, SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFRASTRUCTURE & BORDER SECURITY JANUARY 28, 2004

Chairman Camp, Ranking Member Sanchez and other distinguished Members, it is a pleasure to appear before you today to discuss the Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT program and how this fits in with our commitment to protect the homeland. US-VISIT represents yet another major milestone in enhancing our nation's security and our efforts to reform our borders. It is a major step towards bringing integrity back to our immigration and border enforcement systems. US-VISIT procedures are clear, simple, and fast for foreign nationals. Upon arrival at the air or seaport, visitors will see signage that clearly explains the US-VISIT procedures. This signage, as well as explanatory boarding cards that many airlines are distributing to their passengers, is translated into multiple languages and features the campaign iconography to ensure people understand what to do when they get to the primary inspection booth. For foreign visitors traveling with visas, the additional US-VISIT steps are simple. First, the officer directs the visitor to place his or her left index finger on the small red window of the digital fingerscanning device. Next, the visitor places his or her right index finger on the scanning device. Finally, the officer takes a digital photograph of the visitor. These procedures add, on average, 15 seconds to the overall inspection process. There is no ink involved in the digital fingerscanning process. The officer will then ask the visitor standard, routine questions about his or her visit. The biometric data and biographic information are compared to a series of watchlists and databases, and within seconds the officer has the information he or she needs to admit the visitor into the country or refer the visitor to secondary inspection for further review. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deployed US-VISIT on time, on budget, and has met the mandates established by Congress as well as the challenge by the Secretary of Homeland Security to include biometrics (fingerprints) ahead of schedule. Senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection management has hailed it as the biggest improvement to border inspection in more than three decades. By January 5, 2004, US-VISIT entry procedures were operational at 115 airports (covering 99% of all foreign visitors entering the country by air) and 14 seaports, and we began pilot testing biometric exit procedures at one airport and one seaport. As of January 23rd, more than 600,000 foreign visitors have been processed under the new US-VISIT entry procedures.

Statement of James C. May President and CEO, Air Transport Association of America, Inc. Before the Subcommittee on Infrastructure and Border Security Select Committee on Homeland Security United States House of Representatives January 28, 2004

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, my name is James C. May and I am President and CEO of the Air Transport Association of America (ATA). ATA is the trade association for leading U.S. airlines. Our members transport over 95 percent of all the passenger and cargo traffic in the United States. Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today to discuss the United States' Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology Program - more commonly known as "US-VISIT". Congress mandated the US-VISIT program in the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act of 2002. This statute established the requirement that all foreign national visa holders be photographed and fingerprinted upon arrival and prior to departure from the United States. The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) broad Congressional mandate to create an integrated, automated entry/exit system, recording the arrival and departure of travelers is both ambitious and important. Because the airline industry transports 51 million international passengers each year, it is essential to our industry, and our passengers, that this program improve overall border management while further enhancing our Nation's security. We support DHS in its efforts to create and implement US-VISIT. While the airline industry is pleased to work with DHS and our national security leaders to participate in these programs, we believe it is critical that DHS adhere to the planned schedule for deploying US-VISIT at the northern and southern land borders. This is especially important since airline passengers make up only 4% of all U.S. entrants subject to US-VISIT requirements while land borders make up 37% of such visitors. Until US-VISIT is deployed nationwide at all border crossings, the system will not be effective in enhancing our national security We compliment the Department of Homeland Security, and specifically, Undersecretary Hutchinson and the Office of Border and Transportation Security, the US-VISIT Program Office, and the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), for working together to carefully and completely plan for a successful implementation. Their attention to careful planning, in full consultation with all interested parties has been first rate. We look forward to continuing this cooperative approach.

First, I will offer some lessons learned and observations about the entry portion of USVISIT. Second, I will address on-going concerns with the exit pilot program. Finally, I will briefly mention some overarching screening program concerns.

Center for Immigration Studies

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Center for Immigration Studies How did the terrorists get in? By Mark Krikorian and Steven Camarota The San Francisco Chronicle Autumn 2001, Vol. 11 No. 4

As we consider our response to last week's horrific attacks, we must be careful not to seek scapegoats among foreigners who live among us. But if immigrants in general aren't the problem, a broken immigration system almost certainly is partly to blame. While much attention has been focused on the failure of intelligence and airport security, it is also clear that we have failed to properly police our borders - borders being any place where foreign citizens enter the United States. It would be a grave error if we did not ask ourselves the fundamental question: How did these terrorists get in? Despite all the cant about globalization, borders are not irrelevant in today's world, nor are they unenforceable. In fact, the need to secure them is more pressing than ever, given ease of travel coupled with very real terrorist threats. Most Americans understand that our border is not an obstacle to be overcome by travelers and businesses, but instead is a critical tool for protecting America's national interests. Unfortunately, much of America's elite doesn't get it. Most notorious among the cheerleaders for open borders have been libertarians such as the Cato Institute. The Wall Street Journal has frequently called for a five-word amendment to the Constitution: "There shall be open borders." Even minimal efforts to strengthen border controls have often been stymied. Congress in 1996 directed the Immigration and Naturalization Service to record arrivals and departures of foreigners at border-crossings so as to identify people overstaying visas. Business interests prompted Congress to postpone this requirement several times and ultimately to eliminate it. If we take the physical safety of our people seriously, we cannot continue to allow libertarian ideologues, immigration lawyers, cheap-labor business interests and ethnic pressure groups to hobble our ability to manage our borders. What, then, is to be done? — The Border Patrol, despite recent increases, remains almost laughably inadequate — at any given time, there are only about 1,700 agents patrolling the southern border, an average of less than one agent per mile, and the northern border is even less defended.

http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/markoped091901.html

1/28/2004

Center for Immigration Studies

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Center for Immigration Studies Immigration News

Immigration and Civil Rights in the Wake of September llth Testimony prepared for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights October 12, 2001 By Mark Krikorian Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies

"Immigration is not a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution to everyone and anyone in the world who wishes to come to the United States. It is a privilege granted by the people of the United States to those whom we choose to admit. " — Barbara Jordan, August 12, 1995 Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this briefing on immigration and civil rights in the wake of the September 11 jihadist atrocities. We are faced with two questions relating to civil liberties: First, Is immigration a civil right? And second, What is the best way to create an environment respectful of immigrants living among us?

Immigration Is Not a Civil Right Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to establish a "uniform Rule of Naturalization." From this has developed the "plenary power doctrine," which holds that Congress has complete authority over immigration matters. The Supreme Court has said that "over no conceivable subject" is federal power greater than it is over immigration. As a consequence, as the Court has said elsewhere, "In the exercise of its broad power over naturalization and immigration, Congress regularly makes rules that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens." This is as it should be, since control over immigration is fundamental to national sovereignty. If "We the People of the United States" have ordained and established the Constitution, then we by definition retain the power to determine who is, and is not, a member of the American people. Thus, the decision to admit or exclude foreign citizens is a matter solely in the hands of the elected representatives of the people, and any one from abroad who is admitted to travel or live among us does so as a guest, remaining here at our pleasure, until such time as we agree to permit him to become a member of our people. In effect, foreign citizens, even if they are here illegally, enjoy the human rights endowed to them by God, but they remain here at our discretion and the specifics of their due process rights are determined by Congress. This is relevant in assessing many of the measures to tighten immigration control

http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/msktestimonyl 001 .html

1/28/2004

Center for Immigration Studies

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Center for Immigration Studies Immigration and Terrorism Testimony prepared for the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Government Information October 12, 2001 By Steven Camarota Director of Research, Center for Immigration Studies

Introduction The nation's responses to the horrific attacks of September 11 will clearly have to be in many different areas: including military retaliation, freezing terrorist assets, diplomatic initiatives, improvements in intelligence gathering, and expanded security measures at airports, utilities and other public places. But one aspect of increased preparedness must not be overlooked — changes in immigration and border control. Though all the details have been released, it seems clear that the 19 terrorists of September 11 were foreign citizens and most entered the United States legally as tourists, business travelers, or students. This was also true of the perpetrators of previous terrorist acts, including Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Mir Amal Kasi, murderer of two CIA employees the same year, and Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted in 1995 of plotting a terror campaign in New York. While it is absolutely essential that we not scapegoat immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants, we also must not overlook the most obvious fact: the current terrorist threat to the United States comes almost exclusively from individuals who arrive from abroad. Thus, our immigration policy, including temporary and permanent visas issuance, border control, and efforts to deal with illegal immigration are all critical to reducing the chance of an attack in the future. Much has been written about how we are involved in a new kind of war. In this new kind of conflict, America's borders are a major theater of operations. This is because the primary weapons of our enemies are not aircraft carriers or even commercial airliners, but rather the terrorists themselves — thus keeping the terrorists out or apprehending them after they get in is going to be an indispensable element of victory. The simple fact is that if the terrorists can't enter the country, they won't be able to commit an attack on American soil. The president implicitly acknowledged this fact in announcing the creation of a new Office of Homeland Security, which "will lead, oversee and coordinate a comprehensive national strategy to safeguard our country against terrorism." In a very real sense, we already have a

http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/sactestimonyl001.html

1/28/2004

Center for Immigration Studies

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Center for Immigration Studies Immigration News

Immigration and Terrorism Panel Discussion Transcript November 6, 2001 National Press Club Washington, DC

Moderator: Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies

Panelists: Jessica Vaughan, former foreign service officer and former assistant director of the Center for Immigration Studies Bill King, retired Border Patrol Agent Mark Reed, former INS agent Peter Nunez, former U.S. Attorney from San Diego Ed Grant. Board of Immigration Appeals MR. KRIKORIAN: My name is Mark Krikorian. I'm executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. We're a think tank here in Washington on the web at cis.org and we examine and critique the impact of immigration on the United States. Before September llth, examining the economic impact of immigration, the fiscal impact, social and political impacts. Since September llth, the whole debate has shifted to focusing on the security aspects of immigration control. These issuing overseas, the inspection of foreign citizens at our airports, preventing unauthorized border crossings, tracking foreign students, what have you. And there's been a lot of legislative activity on this, at least a lot of sound and fury. And there's been a lot of discussion of this sort of the kind of panel discussions that we're going to have today. The problem is that all the discussion up to now has been by politicians, by pundits, policy analysts and I can say this as a policy analyst myself and a want to be pundit at some point, that there's nothing wrong with people like that. But the people who actually do the work that is being discussed have not really been consulted or haven't really had an opportunity to air their opinions, their experiences, and their insight up to now. Certainly not publicly, and

http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/terrorpanel.html

1/28/2004

Center for Immigration Studies

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Center for Immigration Studies Immigration News

Immigrants from the Middle East A Profile of the Foreign-born Population from Pakistan to Morocco August 2002 By Steven A. Camarota Download the .pdf version

In the aftermath of September 11, there has been heightened interest in the Middle Eastern immigrant population living in the United States. Their integration and incorporation into American society has come to be seen as increasingly important. Based on an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies of just-released data from the Census Bureau, this Backgrounder is one of the first to examine the socio-demographic characteristics of Middle Eastern immigrants in a systematic way. For the purposes of this study, the Middle East is defined as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Turkey, the Levant, the Arabian peninsula, and Arab North Africa. Among the report's findings: • Middle Easterners are one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in America. While the size of the overall immigrant population (legal and illegal) has tripled since 1970, the number of immigrants from the Middle East has grown more than seven-fold, from fewer than 200,000 in 1970 to nearly 1.5 million in 2000. The INS last estimated that 150,000, or about 10 percent, of Middle Eastern immigrants are illegal aliens. Preliminary Census Bureau estimates show a similar number. Assuming no change in U.S. immigration policy, 1.1 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) from the Middle East are projected to settle in the United States by 2010, and the total Middle Eastern immigrant population will grow to about 2.5 million. These figures do not include the 570,000 U.S.-born children (under age 18) who have at least one parent born in the Middle East, a number expected to grow to 950,000 by

http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back902.html

1/28/2004

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Center for Immigration Studies

Center for Immigration Studies Immigration News

How the Terrorists Get In by Steven A. Camarota The Public Interest Fall 2002

In the aftermath of September 11, a host of federal agencies have come under intense scrutiny. The Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Central Intelligence Agency have all been charged with responsibility for failures leading up to the attacks. In each case, the culture within the agency, as well as its mission, policies, and procedures, has been examined in a variety of public forums. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has also been excoriated for several spectacular gaffs — most infamously, for sending notification to a Florida flight school that two of the hijackers had been approved as students six months after their deaths. But there has been no comparable effort to examine the failures of our immigration system. For example, all of the September 11 hijackers were issued visas, but there have been no extensive congressional hearings or investigations by the General Accounting Office or the Office of the Inspector General to determine whether the State Department, which issued the visas, erred in any way. Given the fact that the current terrorist threat to the United States comes primarily from foreign-born individuals, immigration services would seem to be an obvious area of inquiry. Of course, no immigration system can be completely foolproof, but it does not have to be. Even if only some of those individuals can be detained by our immigration system, it is possible that whatever conspiracy they are part of could be uncovered. While they were the most destructive in American history, the attacks of last September were not the first carried out by foreign terrorists on U.S. soil. To gain a more complete picture of the threat and of the holes in our immigration system, we must examine acts of terrorism in this country over the last decade. Including the September 11 hijackers, 48 foreign-born militant Islamic terrorists have been charged, or convicted, or have admitted their involvement in terrorism within the United States between 1993 and 2001. In addition to September 11, the plots examined here include the murder of employees outside of CIA headquarters in 1993, the first attack on the World Trade Center in the same year, a plot to bomb the Brooklyn subway system in 1997, plots to bomb New York City landmarks in 1993, and the Millennium plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. Almost all of them have now been linked in some way to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization. To be sure, other terrorist threats exist. However, because the threat it poses dwarfs that of any other terrorist group, foreign or domestic, the emphasis here will be on al Qaeda.

Entering Every Which Way

http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/sacpiarticle.html

1/28/2004

USAO/CDCA Press Release

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DEBRA W. YANG United States Attorney Central District of California Thorn Mrozek, Public Affairs Officer (213) 894-6947 [email protected]

December 18, 2002 EX-I.N.S. OFFICIAL PLEADS GUILTY TO ROLE IN SMUGGLING RING THAT EXPLOITED TRANSIT WITHOUT VISA PROGRAM A former supervisor with the Immigration and Naturalization Service pleaded guilty this afternoon to charges of smuggling aliens from the Philippines into the United States through Los Angeles International Airport. Maximiano R. Ramos, 53, of North Hills, a former supervisory immigration inspector with the INS, pleaded guilty to six federal charges, including conspiracy, bringing illegal aliens into the United States and transporting illegal aliens. Ramos resigned from the INS in July, about one month after his arrest. Ramos pleaded guilty to charges contained in an indictment that outlines a scheme in which he and others conspired to meet the aliens at their arriving flight, divert them from their connecting flight and escort them past airport security. The aliens smuggled into the United States were entitled to be in the country only briefly and solely because they were passengers on international flights who were making connections at LAX as part of the Transit Without Visa (TWOV) program. Ramos and five others are named in a second superseding indictment that was returned by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on December 12. The additional defendants are: Rita A. Cunanan, 42, of North Hills, an employee of Hilltop Aviation, a company that provides ground support to airlines at LAX; Vinzon S. Perez, 57, of Los Angeles, an employee of Aviation Safeguards, a company that escorted TWOV passengers for airlines; Eshraga E. Nugud, 41, of Torrance, another employee of Aviation Safeguards; Gloria E. Acosta, 47, of Los Angeles, who escorted TWOV passengers for Aviation Safeguards; and Agusto David Garcia, 52, of Panorama City, another Aviation Safeguards employee. Perez, Nugud, Acosta and Garcia are scheduled to be arraigned on the superseding indictment on Monday. Cunanan is a fugitive being sought by federal authorities. Another defendant in this case, Agnes Cunanan, 47, of Canoga Park, who is Rita Cunanan's sister, pleaded guilty on October 15 to one count of conspiracy to bring aliens to the United States. The scheme involving Ramos and the other defendants exploited the TWOV program. Under the program, aliens from certain countries, such as the Philippines, are not required to obtain a visa if they are only stopping briefly in the United States. Typically, such TWOV aliens are passengers who have arrived in the United States on international flights and are connecting to another international flight. Airlines are responsible for completing paperwork for TWOV passengers and providing it to the INS. Airlines contract with private airport security companies, such as Aviation Safeguards, which provide TWOV escorts who meet the passengers when they deplane and ensure that they board their connecting flight. According to court documents, Ramos and Cunanan accepted payments for aliens to be brought into the U.S. The aliens would fly from the Philippines to LAX, arriving while Ramos was on duty. Nugud and Acosta allegedly met the aliens at their connecting flight, and then escorted them past security and out of the terminal. Perez would pick up the aliens and drive them to an apartment in Panorama City, where the

http://www.usdoj .gov/usao/cac/pr2002/l 80.html

1/28/2004

Center for Immigration Studies

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Center for Immigration Studies Asymmetrical Warfare and Immigration By Mark Krikorian In The National Interest October 16, 2002

The phrase "Home Front" was a metaphor that gained currency during World War I, with the intention of motivating a civilian population involved in total war. The image served to increase economic output and the purchase of war bonds, promote conservation and recycling of resources, and reconcile the citizenry to privation and rationing. But in America's wars of today and in the future, "Home Front" is no longer a metaphor. Our enemies have no hope of defeating our armies in the field, and therefore explore asymmetrical methods to attack us. And though there are many facets to asymmetrical warfare — as we saw in the pre-9/n assaults on our interests in the Middle East and East Africa — the Holy Grail of such a strategy is attacking the American homeland. As long as this is true, blocking the enemy's ability to carry out such attacks is essential to successfully prosecuting our wars. To this end, as of October i all men ages 16 to 45 from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Yemen visiting the United States are fingerprinted, photographed, and questioned upon their arrival. They also have to report to the INS periodically during their stay, and their departure must be recorded. Visitors from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and Libya are already required to undergo such registration, and potential visitors from Egypt and Jordan have been advised that they might have registered as well. These measures aim to fix the enormous problems in our immigration system that became impossible to ignore after the September 11 attacks. A Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the immigration histories of 48 foreign-born AlQaeda operatives who committed crimes in the United States over the last decade (The report can be accessed at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2OO2/terrorpr.html) found that nearly every element of the immigration system has been penetrated by the enemy. Of the 48 (including the hijackers), one-third were here on various temporary visas, another third were legal residents or naturalized citizens, onefourth were illegal aliens, and the remainder had pending asylum applications. Nearly half of the total had, at some point or another, violated immigration laws.

http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/msknil016.html

1/28/2004

Center for Immigration Studies

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Center for Immigration Studies Immigration News

Visas for Terrorists: What Went Wrong? Panel Discussion Transcript October 31,2002 The National Press Club Washington, B.C.

Panelists: Steven A. Camarota, Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies; author of The Open Door: How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered and Remained in the United States. 1993-20Q1. Michelle Malkin, nationally syndicated columnist and author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores Joel Mowbray, investigative reporter, National Review Nikolai Wenzel, former U.S. Foreign Service Officer, now with the Atlas Foundation

STEVEN CAMAROTA: If everyone would be seated, I think we'll get started now. Everyone. Okay. I am Steven Camarota and I'm director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies here in Washington DC. We are one of the cosponsors of this event. We would also like to thank our other co-sponsor of this event, and that's National Review Magazine. They are Joel Mowbray to my left, they are his employer, and they are the ones who provided the applications of the hijackers, of the September 11 hijackers, their visa applications that we are giving out today. I should point out that we didn't ask them how they got them. We actually don't want to know. Now, in your packet is the actual visa applications of the hijackers. Also in your packet is a newly released GAO report. Or some of you have the executive summary, but for the press we actually gave them the whole report on how the hijackers got their visas and the problems that still exist in our visa issuing system. Also in your packet is an executive summary of a report done by the Center for Immigration Studies. The entire report is available at our website: www.cis.org. The report is entitled The Open Door: How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered and Remained in the United States '93 through 2001. Now, this is one of the most important panels I feel that the Center for Immigration Studies

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Center for Immigration Studies

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Center for Immigration Studies Immigration News

Falling Behind on Security Implementation of the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 December 2003 By Rosemary Jenks and Steven A. Camarota Read the panel discussion transcript Download the .pdf version

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, exposed numerous weaknesses in the nation's immigration system, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, which the president signed in May 2002.J The visa tracking law, as it is often called, and the USA Patriot Act, were the two primary legislative responses to the attacks. While the USA Patriot Act has been the subject of intense debate, implementation of the visa tracking law has received relatively little attention. This Backgrounder is the first report to systematically examine the implementation of the law so far, and specifically the Bush Administration's compliance with the deadlines it laid out. We find that, although a number of important reforms were implemented by the mandated deadlines, many others were implemented well after their deadlines passed, and still others have not been implemented at all. Among the findings: • Of the 22 mandated deadlines that already have passed, more than half (13) were missed. • Of those 13 deadlines that were missed, four of the required reforms eventually were implemented, while nine others still have not been implemented as of this writing. • One of the most important missed deadlines is the Administration's failure to report any progress on the development of an integrated biometric-based database, dubbed Chimera, that would give the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security real-time access to law enforcement, immigration, and intelligence information on every alien who seeks admission to the United States. The Administration has failed even to establish the required nine-member commission to oversee the development of Chimera, thus indefinitely stalling any progress on the system.

http://www.cis.org/articles/2003/backl903.html

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The Open Door How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered and Remained in the United States, 1993-2001 By Steven A. Camarota

Center Paper 21