Posted on 08/08/2008 11:38:36 PM PDT by smokingfrog
August 8, 2008 - 08:20:00 - United States immigration and State Department officials fear that their newly developed, high-tech visas are being sold on the Mexican black market. Jim Kouri
The US government hoped the newly designed visas would help in curtailing rampant illegal immigration at the Mexican border, but investigators believe many of them are being bought or rented by Mexicans seeking illegal entry into the US.
Well over 11,000 of these Laser Visas, issued to Mexicans for legitimate travel into the United States were reported stolen or "lost" in just two border cities. Government officials claim this is a 15 percent jump from previous figures.
The ATM card-sized documents, which include the legal holder's photograph and scanned fingerprints, were actually developed for use in 1998 hopefully to increase security and standardize documents used by Mexicans to cross the border since so many different types of documentation made the screening process cumbersome and confusing.
"While many may have been legitimately 'lost,' it seems probable that quite a few are either 'stolen' or 'reported stolen' in order to sell them," a U.S. consular official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
"There appears to be a healthy market for both buying and renting laser visas on the border," she added.
Mexicans call these visa cards "Micas," which allow bearers to cross into the US without other supporting documents. The card also allows them to travel up to 25 miles inside California or Texas and they may remain in the US up to 30 days.
(Excerpt) Read more at borderfirereport.net ...
The ones who can afford to buy the “lost” but now converted to fake IDs/Visas are the ones who have lots of money and need a false identity.
And these folks are not your Mother Teresa types.
These cards use 1998 technology-—
How pathetic is that?
The cards have a fingerprint scan but are crossers actually asked to submit to a fingerprint scan? I’ll bet not
Ping.
If they can forge the cards they can encode the bearers prints. Build the damn fence!
Yeah but the finger print reader should be reporting back to a cenrtal computer that has all cards, all card bearers, and all card bearers fingerprints on file.
IOW there should be a triangle of verification of the
the cards fingerprints
the computers fingerprint file
the card bearer’s fingerprints
All 3 must match
Lets say there are 12 crossing points that take these cards. How hard is it to wire all 12 to a central computer?
“Real ID” must itself be understood for what it is, in light of this news: something else which has a security shelf-life no longer than it takes the criminals to forge it.
Been to an airport lately? Encounter the Do Not Fly list? And you expect this Government to put the correct verification procedures in place from the get-go?
Our vaunted inJustice Department won't deport most of the illegal aliens they catch now -- its turned into a cash-cow to expropriate funds from our pockets for their self-perpetuation.
The poor Mexicans can't afford to pay the price of a laser visa so they borrow one so they can cross and go to Walmart.
Because the border crossing is so busy, and card readers are so few, the border agents tend to let them thru based on visuals.
So they aren’t checking the fingerprints on the card with the person who crosses......Just as I thought
BTT!
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