Free Pass [Airport security]

National Review Online ^ | September 12, 2002 | Michelle Malkin

[xsysmgr]

If you’re not an American, you may have no problem getting past airport security — even without a visa.

Michelle Malkin

Flying this week or weekend? Here's something to make your airport experience even more nerve-racking than it already promises to be.

While Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta's minions bully grandmothers, harass Medal of Honor winners, confiscate toy guns, grope toddlers' shoes, and ransack bottled breast milk to protect America from another terrorism attack, millions of foreigners waltz into our airport terminals without even having to bother to get visas. Countless numbers of these foreign tourists then walk out of the airports and disappear.

Such is the bizarre state of homeland defense one year after the September 11 attacks.

It was bad enough that the State Department took nine months to eliminate the so-called Visa Express program in Saudi Arabia, which three of the September 11 hijackers used to secure expedited visas through travel agencies without undergoing the normal consular interview process.

But even worse is the continued existence of the Transit Without a Visa program, available to travelers around the world, which completely eliminates the need for potential terrorists to gain a visa to enter the U.S. Who needs Visa Express when you can go visa-less?

The visa is supposed to be our government's best method for keeping out foreign menaces. Law-enforcement agents consider it the most important screening mechanism for national security. Yet, airline and tourism lobbyists have poked perilous holes in the system and helped facilitate hassle-free travel for outside visitors who fuel the $590 billion travel industry.

WORLD WAR II RELIC
The Transit Without a Visa program was created in 1952 to help with the resettlement of World War II refugees, most of whom had no identity or travel documents to obtain visas. But half a century after its inception, this obsolete humanitarian program has morphed into a lucrative marketing gimmick for airlines. The program waives visa requirements for passengers who are ostensibly passing briefly through the U.S. on their way to final destinations abroad.

During the past three years, more than five million airline passengers — accounting for roughly five percent of all foreign nationals entering the country by plane — were routed to American airport hubs under the Transit Without a Visa program. Citizens from some Middle East state sponsors of terror, including Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Sudan, are not eligible. However, foreign nationals from several terrorist-exporting countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Jordan, can participate.

Airlines are responsible for guarding and escorting passengers in transit, and are supposedly liable for damages when they cannot confirm that program participants have actually departed the country. But the fines are negligible. Moreover, since the Immigration and Naturalization Service does not maintain arrival and departure records on a majority of these transiting passengers — and since the agency's interior-enforcement staff is overwhelmed and understaffed — the airlines are essentially off the hook for passengers who leave the airports and never come back.

The result? A terrorist network's dream: Travelers avoid pesky State Department background checks. Swamped airlines lose track of unknown numbers of passengers in transit. And private security guards assigned to escort program participants are easy marks for bribery and conspiracy.

OPERATION LAX LOUNGE
In June 2002, a federal immigration inspector and two private airport security guards were arrested for allegedly taking part in an alien-smuggling conspiracy that allowed travelers transiting from the Philippines to slip out of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) without visas. The indicted ringleader was a retired U.S. Marine and naturalized citizen from the Philippines who had worked for the INS for 19 years. The operators charged $10,000 per person smuggled.

Authorities found no terrorism links in the Filipino scam. But in July 2002, according to an internal "law enforcement sensitive" memo I obtained, the INS office of field operations informed its regional directors that federal antiterrorism investigators had launched "Operation LAX Lounge" based on information that "four individuals were involved in smuggling illegal aliens, many of whom are Middle Eastern males, into the United States" through the Transit Without a Visa program at LAX (now an unwittingly fitting abbreviation).

Two of the four involved in the alleged smuggling operation are Jordanian nationals who worked as LAX contract security guards. Another is a Social Security Administration official married to one of the guards. Investigators have charged them with collaborating to smuggle transiting passengers out of the airport and helping approximately 1,000 individuals — mostly of Middle Eastern descent — obtain fraudulent Social Security cards between 1998-2000. Some of the Transit Without a Visa passengers allegedly let free by the Jordanians at LAX are on the INS and State Department watch list of terrorist suspects. A few of these fugitive passengers were traced to New York City and arrested in July, but most remain at large.

A little-noticed report by the Justice Department Inspector General issued after the September 11 attacks warned of continuing lapses in the Transit Without a Visa program and concluded that the agency "must take immediate action ... to enhance national security."

However, no action, immediate or otherwise, has been taken to restrict or shut down the Transit Without a Visa program. Representatives of the transportation industry protested to federal investigators that terminating this fast-lane foreign-tourist program would be "inconvenient to the traveler."

Inconvenient? Tell that to our war veterans and nursing moms, waiting patiently in line to get roughhoused, while foreign travelers and suspected terrorists whiz by unmolested.

— Michelle Malkin is author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores.

[3AngelaD]

Around 1995 or so, an effort was made to rectify this and hold the airlines accountable. With Delta Airlines in the lead, the airlines mounted a discreet but MASSIVE lobbying campaign in Congress and managed to stop all talk of reform, let alone actual reform. It was a disgrace and we are paying the price for it daily. Not only do the terror prone and otherwise violent get in, but this is how many, many mentally ill people and those carrying contagious diseases have entered, as well. Thanks, airline industry, for your patriotism and self-less duty to country.

[meenie]

Don't forget to thank our politicians who make this possible. In their zeal to stay in office, they will neglect their duty toward the safety of the public for a campaign contribution or two. Isn't democracy, United States style, wonderful?

[banjo joe]

Thanks, airline industry, for your patriotism and self-less duty to country

An executive of any multi-national will tell you they owe no allegience to any country or flag.

These are the same multi-nationals that shipped manufacturing jobs overseas, and are now doing the same with IT, engineering and other tech jobs. Memorize this phrase: "... ya wanna supersize that?".

[Sabertooth]

Michelle Malkin Growl!

Post here to the thread if you'd like to be on the Michelle Malkin list.

[Sabertooth]

Information on INVASION here

[Dick Bachert]

[Black Agnes]

Sad. It's just depressing that these companies care more about their bottom line than our sovreignty and safety. Once the whole world is poor and socialist, who'll buy their products/services?

[Howie]

Thanks for the article.

[First_Salute]

The barn door, literally wide open ---

Last evening, a friend and I decided to memorialize September 11, by going out to the airport to eat and watch the planes coming and going in the dusk and moonlight.

It was a beautiful evening; unlimited visibility.

Approaching the airfield from the west, along the once-well-travelled access road, we stopped at the intersection west of the airfield, facing both the perimeter fence and Runway 10 Right (100 degrees from north).

The fence was wide open. A perimeter gate for access by "Taxi Cabs" was the defect in the defense system. The gate leads to an airfield road which parallels Runway 10 Right's northern taxiway. The road travels east to an intersection where the cabbies can then turn north, should they so desire, and proceed to the main road leading to the ground floor of the airport terminal.

Or they may not so desire.

We could have driven straight onto the airfield proper without so much as a blink from airfield security.

Because there is no airfield security.
Because there is no airfield security.
Because there is no airfield security.

ETC.

But more than this typical discovery at this typical, major metropolitan airfield in the midwest, is the little matter of nearly 90% of the "Taxi Cab" drivers are from the Horn of Africa --- they are either Somali or Sudanese.

They drive their "Taxi Cabs" onto the airport proper without any security check.
They drive their "Taxi Cabs" onto the airport proper without any security check.
They drive their "Taxi Cabs" onto the airport proper without any security check.

ETC.

Now, if you are anybody else, you cannot park your car within 300 ft. of the airport terminal ... while these mid-African-Easteners drive their un-checked "Taxi Cabs" directly to the ground floor of the airport terminal without anybody even "statistically ... randomly" inspecting their trunk, seats, packages ... bras or shoes.

These "Taxi Cab" drivers face no physical barriers, from ramming their "Taxi Cabs" through the airport terminal doors.

Yet more clearly, they face no barriers from simply driving their "Taxi Cabs" and brethren right on up to the the outside stairway of the aircraft passenger loading ramp extended from the terminal concourse to the aircraft --- pick any airline.

There is no need for the "Taxi Cab" brethren to go through the airport terminal in order to board or take over an aircraft.

When they can do so, easily, from the outside.

Where there is no airfield security.
Where there is no airfield security.
Where there is no airfield security.

ETC.

By order of the President.

 

[Cacique]

This thread might be of interest to your ping lists.

A Must Read by Everyone on the subject of immigration (click on picture)

The Hardcover edition.

[4Freedom]

But, you're insinuating that some poor Middle Easterner (say Egyptian) that might own a struggling limo service here would then enter a terminal (say at LAX) and walk up to a ticket counter (say El Al's) and start blasting and stabbing away.

Don't you believe it's a little far-fetched to imagine that some poor soul, that over-stayed their visa or is completely undocumented, who's only here looking for a job and a better life could do something like this?

You conservative, you.

>sarcasm<

[Reaganwuzthebest]

The result? A terrorist network's dream: Travelers avoid pesky State Department background checks.

Not to rain on the Michelle Malkin parade, but these are not new revelations, this information has been out there for years. Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes did a similar story on the problem several years ago. If the government isn't going to act after what happened 9/11, then who knows what it's going to take?

[First_Salute]

You are correct; my writing is atrocious.

I must, in the future, discriminate between Colonial- African- Americans struggling to reparate the American Dream (mostly by having contempt for those trying to hold down a job) ... versus ... Open- Borders- African- Americans- Presumably- Documented- and- Legal who are struggling to earn the American Dream (mostly by having every other job at the airport).

[dennisw]

bttttttttttt

[joanie-f]

Mike,

A powerful post, for two reasons:

(1) What an incredibly creative way for you and your friend to memorialize September 11th.

(2) Your observations are almost painful in their directness (especially emphasizing each example of the bureaucratic idiocy by repeating it three times).

Thank you!

So, tell me …. Did 4Freedom make your day with his/her ‘You conservative, you’? :)

[First_Salute]

A message will make its way to you.