Closing Visa Loopholes: Congress holds hearings on Visa Express.

National Review Online ^ | June 27, 2002 | Joel Mowbray

[xsysmgr]

At two different congressional hearings Wednesday, Mary Ryan was expected to defend the organization she heads, the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) — but she was nowhere to be found.

In recent weeks, Consular Affairs — the agency within the State Department that oversees consulates and visa issuance — has come under intense public scrutiny for its culture that often sacrifices U.S. border security for the convenience of foreigners.

Ryan evaded public accountability for her implementation of policies that at the very least subvert the intent of the law and for which she is responsible. People wishing to enter the United States on nonimmigrant visas (for travel, business, or school, for instance) have the burden of proof in order to get a visa, but the reality in the field has been that consular officers are under intense pressure to issue as many visas as quickly as possible.

Her absence certainly didn't help CA's cause — that is, the agency's desire to stay within the State Department. The two State Department officials who showed up in her place had no reasonable justifications for CA's "courtesy culture," which resulted in all 19 of the Sept. 11 hijackers getting legal visas.

At the civil-service subcommittee's hearing Wednesday, Undersecretary of State for Management Grant Green — Ryan's boss, but also the boss of several other heads of agencies, and not in control of day-to-day operations at CA — claimed that CA could not have prevented issuing visas to any of the terrorists because "there was no way… that we could have known [the 9/11 terrorists'] intention." Of course, the two-page form and photo and even a two-three-minute cursory interview that all consular officers had to work with in processing the applications of the terrorists cannot tell you if someone without a record is a bad guy; that's why you conduct real interviews.

That CA officials believe to this day that the only way to keep out terrorists is by having names on a watch list is precisely the reason the agency needs to be taken out of the diplomacy-minded State Department and placed firmly into the Department of Homeland Security. President George W. Bush's proposal would hand certain legal authority over visa issuance to the new department, leaving operational control under its current management.

Operational control is like possession: It's nine-tenths of the law. Without the ability to clean house and shake up the culture at the insular agency, it is unlikely that the new department could effectively overhaul the practices in the field — sending memos from Washington just won't cut it.

During the civil-service-subcommittee hearing yesterday — at which I testified — Rep. Dan Burton (R, Ind.) read an e-mail from Thomas P. Furey, the deputy chief of mission at Riyadh, to Ms. Ryan — and it provided shocking proof of the entrenched "courtesy culture." In the e-mail — dated exactly one year to the day before the hearing — Furey beams, "The Visa Express service… started at the beginning of June, and is proving to be a win-win-win-win." Furey notes that the program started with Saudi nationals — whom he amazingly refers to as "clearly approvable" — and then says that Visa Express just had been expanded to include non-Saudi citizens one day earlier, on June 25, 2001.

Despite public statements in recent days attempting to portray Saudi travel agents as mere document collectors, Furey is gleeful that Visa Express will dramatically reduce the face-to-face contact with visa applicants and the workload of consular officers. "The number of people on the street and coming through the gates should only be 15% of what it was last summer," he writes.

Most appalling of all, though, is the four "wins" that Furey — whose catchphrase is "people gotta have their visas" — finds in the fast-track program:

The RSO [Regional Security Officer, an American responsible for coordinating embassy security with local police] is happy, the guard force [Saudi residents who provide embassy and consulate security] is happy, the public loves the service (no more long lines and they can go to the travel agencies in the evening and not take time off from work), we love it (no more crowd control stress and reduced work for the FSNs [Foreign Service Nationals, Saudi residents]) and now this afternoon Chuck Brayshaw and I were at the Foreign Ministry and discovered the most amazing thing — the Saudi Government loves it!

Nowhere in the e-mail does he discuss Visa Express strengthening border security, and admittedly, Americans really didn't think such thoughts pre-9/11. But more than nine months after the attack, the program — which we now know was set up clearly for convenience purposes — is still going strong.

Furey didn't testify at the hearing to explain the e-mail, but it certainly seems to speak for itself. The closing line of the letter, though, is perhaps most ominous with the hindsight of 15 Saudis among the 19 9/11 hijackers, including three who came in via Visa Express: "This place really is Wonderland."

— Joel Mowbray is a Townhall.com columnist and an NRO contributor.

[3AngelaD]

I will be in a state of total disbelief if Congress can actually bring itself to do the right thing in this case, which is get the State Department out of the business of issuing visas (and out of the business of letting Saudi Arabian travel agents, for all practical purposes, issuing visas.) They also need to dismantle the visa waiver program today. Now. I am amazed the people in charge at the State Department can walk and talk, let alone find pertinent parts of their anatomies with either hand. Congress has dropped the ball so many times on these issues of national security it isn't even funny, yet it is still posturing to convince us that it is actually doing something.

[WakeUpChristian]

State Department look out for the U.N

STOP ALL VISA NOW