Official Inquiry Ordered for All Visa-Issuing Foreign Posts (VISA EXPRESS & The SAUDIS)

Associated Press ^

[TheOtherOne]

Official Inquiry Ordered for All Visa-Issuing Foreign Posts
By George Gedda Associated Press Writer
Published: Jul 16, 2002

WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department's inspector general has ordered a survey of all U.S. foreign posts that issue visas to determine whether any are being approved for unqualified applicants.

Clark Kent Ervin made known his request in a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and to Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., chairman of a House Government Affairs subcommittee.

The two lawmakers on Tuesday made public a letter Ervin wrote concerning the survey. They had told Ervin earlier that they were "very troubled" by reports suggesting that some visa applicants are receiving approval without proper interviews.

Ervin also said he wants to send special inspection teams this fall to visa issuing posts in countries considered linked to terrorism.

Grassley and Weldon said three of the 19 hijackers responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks took advantage of a State Department program known as Visa Express. They contended the program allows applicants to receive visas through a travel agents and does not require them to be interviewed by an American official.

The lawmakers have demanded the program's end. The State Department this month ordered a plan readied that would move toward requiring interviews for all adults who apply for visas, and would eliminate the role of travel agencies in forwarding visa applications to U.S. officials.

Department spokesman Richard Boucher last week rejected suggestions the program has led to inadequate scrutiny of visa applicants.

The travel agents who assist visa applicants "don't adjudicate," he said. "They don't decide. Only American consular officers decide who gets a visa."

Boucher rejected as a "myth" a report that 2 percent of the visa applicants were interviewed under this program in Saudi Arabia.

He said the actual figure was 45 percent. Those who are spared interviews include infants and people who have made multiple visits to the United States, he said.

Late Tuesday, Grassley's office released numbers provided by Ervin on applications filed through Visa Express in Saudi Arabia:

-36,018 total visas issued to Saudi Arabian applicants (citizens and third-country nationals) from June 1, 2001, through Sept. 10, 2001.

-Saudi Arabian citizens getting a visa through the program accounted for 64 percent of that total; just 3 percent of them were interviewed.

-People living in Saudi Arabia but from other countries and getting visas through Visa Express made up 36 percent of the total visas issued, and 72 percent of them were interviewed.

Boucher said he figures related to applications. Ervin's covered approvals.

In his comments last week, Boucher had said that applications from people applying outside their own countries "are almost always interviewed, and anybody with any suspicions as far as the consular officer is concerned is always interviewed."

The State Department's performance in issuing visas is coming under increasing scrutiny on Capitol Hill because some lawmakers want to transfer that authority to the proposed Homeland Security Department.

Weldon supports the transfer, contending that the State Department is unable to screen out terrorists.

Grassley and Weldon also sent a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday expressing concern about the "detention and questioning" by State Department diplomatic security officials of a reporter, Joel Mowbray.

Mowbray, who has written for National Review magazine about the Visa Express program in Saudi Arabia, was questioned after disclosing at a press briefing that he had obtained a classified document about visa issues.

AP-ES-07-16-02 1943EDT

[TheOtherOne]

Saudi Arabian citizens getting a visa through the program accounted for 64 percent of that total; just 3 percent of them were interviewed

[Sub-Driver]

inept.......Oh Gen Powell, u have some splain to do!

[Vidalia]

President Bush, close the damn immigration doors and clean house...

[denydenydeny]

State would love to cover this up, but it is finally breaking into the mainstream press. Kudos to National Review Online for their outstanding work getting this story out.

[eno_]

Americans, perhaps thousands to tens of thousands, WILL die because our government HAS NOT deported all illegal Moslems, re-checked the status of all Moslem visa-holders and PRs for ties to radicals, guarded the borders adequately against infiltrators, and investigated Wahabbi and other radical mosques the same way they would rightly look into a neo-Nazi group.

When another major hijack or bombing takes place, I hope a few of the people responsible for this lack of effort get a visit from the loved-ones of the victims, and recieve the kind of counseling it will take to ensure their attitude changes, so that they become an example for others.

[Guillermo]

...ordered a survey of all U.S. foreign posts that...

They forgot to add "Except in Saudi Arabia"

[Soul Citizen]

thanks for keeping this issue alive and in the forefront here at FR!

[Mixer]

Saudi Arabian citizens getting a visa through the program accounted for 64 percent of that total; just 3 percent of them were interviewed

But the Saudis are our friends so of course this percentage is ok. /end sarcasm

[cake_crumb]

I hope this leads to loads of crokked officials getting the axe and to serious immigration reform. Don't forgot about all those Arabs, Pakistanis and Sudanese BUYING visas for 10,000 dollars from the office in Pakistan.

[cake_crumb]

"crokked" was SUPPOSED to be "crooked"

DEFINITELY past my bedtime.

[2rightsleftcoast]

YES!! agree with you totally. What can we do to make this happen. Maybe if we all write Ashcroft and the President.

[blam]

"Don't forgot about all those Arabs, Pakistanis and Sudanese BUYING visas for 10,000 dollars from the office in Pakistan."

I thought that was Qatar?

[TheOtherOne]

Here is another intersting slam at State:

State of Embarrassment

07/16/2002

The Asian Wall Street Journal

A9

(Copyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

Now we know: The U.S. State Department can get tough when it wants to, if only against fellow Americans.

Joel Mowbray, a writer for the magazine National Review, had the temerity at Friday's press briefing to question State spokesman Richard Boucher about "Visa Express," a program that has made it easier for Saudi Arabian citizens to enter the U.S. without interviews.

Mr. Boucher had denied that the U.S. ambassador to Riyadh wanted to terminate Visa Express, even though a classified cable had clearly said otherwise. Mr. Mowbray called the spokesman on his spin, and when the reporter went to leave the building he was detained and questioned by security officers for about 30 minutes.

State's line is that Mr. Mowbray was detained because he'd quoted from classified material, as if that's any justification. It's no crime to report such news, only to leak it, and the cable's contents were reported in both National Review and the Washington Post. Mr. Mowbray's reporting has embarrassed State, and its officers were clearly engaging in intimidation to dig up the source. It's the kind of thing they do in, well, Riyadh.

Mr. Boucher also continues to humiliate himself by defending Visa Express. Never mind the ambassador's cable, and Colin Powell's sacking last week of Mary Ryan, the career diplomat in charge of consular affairs. The firing was a clear effort to placate the U.S. Congress, which is angry about Visa Express and had threatened to yank State's visa authority.

The Boucher response here is of a piece with State's refusal to press Saudi Arabia on the plight of American women held in that country against their will. State's instinct is always to attack Americans who raise questions, instead of pressuring the Saudis on behalf of U.S. interests. All the women need to leave under Saudi law is the permission of their husbands or fathers, which surely the House of Saud can arrange, if the State Department ever bothered to ask. But apparently it's too busy harassing American journalists.

[cake_crumb]

"I thought that was Qatar?"

Probably...I'm too tired to think anymore. My brain is getting fried. I didn't think Pakistan looked right on my post, but am getting too darned dumb to think to correct it.

[cake_crumb]

Thanks for that post. Unfortunately, I think I'm the only one who read it.

[TheOtherOne]

Hey, as long as someone is reading it - I am glad I posted it.

(stealth bump)

[maranatha]

non-stealth bump. Thanks.

[poweqi]

Last night O'Reilly had a reporter, can't remember his name, but is reporting on the visa express and the people at the STATE DEPARTMENT said he was causing trouble and surrounded him and told him he was being detained! After he called the Nat'l Review? and they called the State Dept. public relations and said they would make life very hard for them they let him go!!!! Our own people threatened one of own own people!!!!!What the hell is going on???

[3AngelaD]

That this was a serious problem "came out" during the extended Congressional hearings that led up to passage of the 1996 Immigration "Reform" Act. I know for a fact, because I was present at three different hearings (at which there were reporters from AP, UPI, Reuters, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and more) there was extensive testimony regarding major problems with the Consular Service, the issuance of visas to "inappropriate" individuals, routine visa fraud, massive visa overstays (at the time 50 percent of the illegals here were visa overstays) and other problems that the State Department just stuck its head in the sand and ignored. Nor did the reporters present bother to report this, being too busy characterizing these hearings as "racist" and xenophobic. All this information was available to the media SEVERAL YEARS ago, had they bothered to be intellectually honest enough to report it. This is not new news. The media dropped this ball, it rolled into the street, and we got hit by a car, actually by three airliners.