Posted on 05/20/2011 3:19:24 PM PDT by jazusamo
Almost a decade after Middle Eastern terrorists with expired visas attacked the U.S., the government has failed to implement a security measure to adequately track foreigners like them who enter the country legally but never leave.
As a result nearly half of the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants actually entered the U.S. legally but overstayed their visa, according to a new federal report. That’s because the agency responsible for keeping the nation safe—the Department of Homeland Security—can’t keep track of immigrants who remain in the U.S. after their visas expire.
This clearly creates a huge national security issue because terrorists can plot more attacks from within. In fact, dozens of foreigners convicted of terrorism since the 2001 attacks had overstayed their visas, according to the report, which was published by the investigative arm of Congress known as the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The GAO launched its probe after learning from an independent study that 4 to 5.5 million immigrants had entered the country legally and overstayed their authorized periods of admission. In the course of the probe, GAO investigators interviewed a number of high-ranking Homeland Security officials, visited various field offices and reviewed a mountain of documents.
They found that the Department of Homeland Security’s program to identify visa violators by comparing entry and exit data is inefficient and can only process around half of the potential overstays it detects. Currently, the system has a backlog of about 1.6 suspected foreigners who remained in the U.S. past their visa period, the probe found. Some could very well be Islamic extremists.
This may seem unbelievable, especially since most of the 9/11 hijackers capitalized on this weakness in the system to plan the murder of thousands of Americans. The massive loophole is precisely why the Homeland Security agency (Immigration and Customs Enforcement—ICE) in charge of tracking down foreigners who overstay visas is well funded by Congress to the tune of 70-plus million dollars annually.
The agency doesn’t dispute the findings or the recommendations made by GAO investigators, who suggest establishing a “time frame for completing overstay enforcement planning” and “performance measurement mechanisms,” among other things. In other words don’t wait another decade to implement security measures that actually work.
Alas, it doesn't.
We spent more money and created DHS.
other than that, nothing.
It isn’t unbelievable, it is most likely delberate and desired by this administration.
Correct. The Bush administration wasn’t near tough enough on illegals and Zero/Nappy are worse.
I’ll bet they know where everybody that does not like Barky is though.
This govt. is so corrupt it's starting to feel like Cuba.
Yes, really.
How do you lose track of something you never had track of in the first place?
.....when it comes, and IT WILL,most involved will simply state, well we tried........and the media will after a few weeks start with “can’t we all just get along”, and “it’s time to move on”.
I mentioned the other day to a close friend, if clinton had the balls, we could have avoided a lot of the last ten years.
He started to say, “you can’t say that”...I stopped him and said, with no command, things could have been different, and YOU CAN’T SAY NOTHING!.........he didn’t
Just look for Democratic Party registrants.
That's on purpose
Solution: RFID chip implanted in the left butt cheek of every muslim granted a visa.
And they're all lawyers!
Think about it ~ you have a visitor here on a visitor visa and he overstays.
JD called such a person an IMMIGRANT!
No, people who come here on VISITS are not immigrants. They are visitors or tourists!
Let's hear it for some purity in language. BTW, this one ranks right up there with the ol'gal who described some Africans burning cars and rioting in France as "African Americans".
Some things cry out for "no no no no no no no no".
Ping!
Actually it is closer to 15 years since the US-VISIT program was authorized in 1996 to track visa overstays. It has never been fully implemented. Bush was terrible and Obama is just as bad if not worse, which is saying something.
More Bush bashing. What exactly did you expect him to do? Immigration should be handled by the states not the federal government. If the residents of the states, especially the border states, had taken care of things like they were supposed to, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
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