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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: joseph krinsky who wrote (14436)	3/26/2002 9:23:30 AM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27786

Latest visa slip-up may spell end of INS Bush reportedly furious that Pakistani sailors allowed to leave ship Jan Cienski National Post WASHINGTON - Four Pakistani sailors, who disappeared last week after being improperly allowed ashore from their ship, are the object of a massive federal manhunt in yet another blow to the United States' ramshackle immigration system. The four were aboard the Maltese-flagged freighter Progresso when it docked on March 16 in Norfolk, Va., after sailing from Russia carrying a cargo of chemicals used to make fertilizer. Despite a new ruling prohibiting Pakistani nationals from being granted visa waivers for shore leave, the local Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) inspector granted waivers to all four men. The vessel left when the men failed to return. The men, who are described as not dangerous, caused a panic in Washington when it was mistakenly reported that one of them had turned up on a terrorist watch list. George W. Bush, the U.S. President, was fed hour-by-hour details of the hunt for the four and was reportedly infuriated by the latest slip-up by the INS, said Tom Ridge, the Homeland Security Director. John Ashcroft, the U.S. Attorney-General, has called for a "very substantial" investigation of the INS. "I believe that these visas were granted in a way which violated the regulations, that appropriate precautions were not taken," Mr. Ashcroft said. The snafu comes just weeks after the INS issued notices approving student visas for Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shahi, two of the suicide hijackers who flew airliners into the World Trade Center. "I tell you, what's happened in the INS is enough to drive a man to drink," Mr. Ashcroft said. And the blunders are not likely to end, warned Steven Camarota, director of research at the non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies, which favours reducing the level of immigration. "I expect more spectacular gaffes," he said. "The INS remains an overwhelmed and incompetent agency." The reason is not hard to find. As becomes obvious in almost every INS waiting room in the country, the agency is swamped. Immigrants spend hours just waiting for their paperwork. Interviews with INS officials take months or even years to arrange. During the past few years, the number of student visas has doubled to half a million, legal immigration has soared to its highest level ever, and the INS now handles many of the tasks that used to be performed by State Department officials in foreign embassies. A backlog of more than four million cases waits for INS attention and half a billion people cross U.S. borders every year. The failures are legion: - More than 40% of the millions of illegals in the United States came on legal temporary visas which they overstayed. - The INS is so swamped that for a time it released illegal immigrants after making them promise to voluntarily show up at their own deportation hearings. - The agency has been unable to keep track of schools issuing student visas, allowing even non- existent schools to issue immigration documents. In a recent congressional hearing, Representative Darrell Issa told James Ziglar, the head of the INS, that his agency was "worse than useless." A big part of the problem for the INS is the schizophrenic nature of its mandate: It is required to keep undesirables out of the country while smoothing entry for millions of immigrants and temporary workers demanded by politically powerful industries. The agency's spasmodic attempts at enforcement have fallen afoul of this approach. In 1999, the INS tried to root out illegal workers in Nebraska's meat-packing industry, but immediately drew fire from the sausage barons and local politicians who demanded the program be halted. A further complication is that the INS is only one of a host of agencies that have some say over who can enter the United States. Most border posts are also manned by agents from the Customs Service. Officers from the Border Patrol make sure no illegal aliens sneak across the frontier while the Coast Guard performs a similar function at sea. The White House is considering a plan that would amalgamate at least the INS, Customs and the Border Patrol into a single agency, probably within the Justice Department. Mr. Ridge was hoping for a more ambitious plan that would have pooled all the agencies, including the Coast Guard and part of the Department of Agriculture, into a single new entity, headed by a Cabinet-level official. Some members of Congress, fed up with the endless list of INS woes, want to simply eliminate the agency and replace it with two separate bureaus, one for immigration enforcement and one for citizenship and immigration services. Legislation to that effect is up for discussion on April 9.