Investment in System to Track Foreign Visitors Must Not Be Delayed
Friday, February 7, 2003
By: Dan Stein

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By now the news reports are familiar. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) cannot locate more than half a million foreign students who are here on temporary visas. It has lost track of some 314,000 aliens who simply vanished after being ordered deported, including 5,000, or so, from terrorist sponsoring countries. There are even about 1,000 known al—Qaeda operatives and supporters whom we have let into the country, but we can't find them now either.

Whenever these types of stories break, the politicians on Capitol Hill trample each other in the rush to get to the microphones and television cameras so the folks back home can see them denouncing the immigration service for its incompetence. It was revelations like these that eventually led Congress to conclude that the INS was beyond repair and that its duties should be absorbed by the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

One thing is for certain: DHS cannot do a worse job administering and enforcing our nation's immigration laws than INS has done. But it may not necessarily carry out these responsibilities any better, unless there is a commitment on the part of Congress and the Bush Administration to provide a clear mandate and allocate the resources needed to do the job.

Before DHS has even officially opened its doors, however, its mission is already being hamstrung by the political wrangling that doomed INS to failure. The incoming chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Ted Stevens (R—Alaska), has proposed cutting funding for programs that would allow for the tracking of foreign visitors who, like the Sept. 11th terrorists, were able to disappear until it was time to execute their attack on America.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11th attacks, Congress concluded that it was essential to homeland security that we be able to determine whether foreigners who enter our country on temporary visas ever leave. Opposition from the airline and tourist industries, among others, had prevented the development of such a database, even though Congress had approved a visa tracking system in 1996.

Similarly, in 2002, Congress also authorized the development of a database to keep track of foreign students. Several of the Sept. 11th terrorists had arrived in the U.S. on student visas, but never registered at the educational institutions they claimed they were coming here to attend. Educational institutions that want the privilege of attracting students from overseas often object strenuously when asked to keep track of those students once they reach the U.S., and report to the government if these students are not abiding by the terms of their visas.

Most Americans are shocked to learn that in an age when commercial databases can keep track of what toothpaste they buy at the supermarket, and what web sites they visit in the Internet, that our government still hasn't developed the capability of matching the entry and exit records of people who visit our country, or whether foreign students are enrolled in school. An estimated 40 percent of all illegal aliens living in the U.S. are people who arrived on valid visas, but never left — and the government has no idea who these people are.

What we don't know can hurt us. Before we can even contemplate trying to track down foreign terrorists and other menaces to our national security we have to know who we're looking for and whether they are in the United States. A database that matches entry and exit records, and one that keeps track of foreign students, is a necessary prerequisite to searching for potential terrorists. Such a system should have been in place years ago, and any further delay would be inexcusable.

The burgeoning federal deficit is a legitimate concern for lawmakers, but not if it comes at the expense of vital homeland security needs. The cost of not protecting our country with a basic system for tracking foreign visitors will be far greater in monetary, not to mention human, terms than making this critical investment in our homeland security. We've already witnessed the high price of doing nothing.