Posted on 10/11/2009 10:57:54 PM PDT by Steelfish
U.S. Can’t Trace Foreign Visitors on Expired Visas
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. and JULIA PRESTON October 11, 2009
DALLAS — Eight years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and despite repeated mandates from Congress, the United States still has no reliable system for verifying that foreign visitors have left the country.
Hosam Maher Husein Smadi entered the United States legally, but then overstayed his visa. [Pic in URL]
New concern was focused on that security loophole last week, when Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year-old Jordanian who had overstayed his tourist visa, was accused in court of plotting to blow up a Dallas skyscraper.
Last year alone, 2.9 million foreign visitors on temporary visas like Mr. Smadi’s checked in to the country but never officially checked out, immigration officials said. While officials say they have no way to confirm it, they suspect that several hundred thousand of them overstayed their visas.
Over all, the officials said, about 40 percent of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States came on legal visas and overstayed.
Mr. Smadi’s case has brought renewed calls from both parties in Congress for Department of Homeland Security officials to complete a universal electronic exit monitoring system.
Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the Smadi case “points to a real need for an entry and exit system if we are serious about reducing illegal immigration.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yea... It’d be nearly impossible to track people whose source of wealth is based offshore. That would require a device that could search for transactions and associate them with locations. How ever could such a task be accomplished
maybe they can borrow that fancy machine device that tracked all that money made by the evil rich and stashed in those Swiss bank accounts
Your “cure” is worse than the disease. National ID my ass.
That's always been my suggestion....except I would require that high-risk individuals post a $10K bond which would provide for a more substantial fee for the bounty hunter and cover administrative costs.
ping
They still haven’t fixed the problem that arose after 9/11 when they discovered thousands of people in the Country with expired student VISAs that they could not find?
INS looks to be jockeying with the post office for the worst run organization in the Federal Government.
9/11 showed the failure of the student visa program and wouldn’t be shocked if it was still not fixed. When they drop out of school no one was tracking them. After the OU ‘lone suicide bomber’ case, it doesn’t look like they are still tracked if they drop out of school.
Has to be a better way because the current way is a farce.
No such agency exists!
“When they drop out of school no one was tracking them.”
Yes they are!
No problem. While the White HOuse is doing the census.......
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