Opening Our Borders to Terror

The Obama administration’s new immigration reform plans could actually make it easier for potential terrorists to enter the country.

The Obama administration is advocating immigration reform but their plans do nothing to strengthen visa controls, and would give potential terrorists more opportunities to enter the country. If we had implemented the administration’s amnesty plan, the Pakistanis who assisted the Times Square bomber would have been eligible to become U.S. citizens. The administration must pursue an immigration policy that strengthens our security with stronger oversight and enforcement.

Weak immigration enforcement has already aided domestic terrorists. The three recently arrested Pakistani men who aided the Times Square bomber flaunted our immigration laws. Two of the Pakistanis were arrested in the Northeast for overstaying their visas. The third admitted in writing that he had come to the United States illegally in 1991.

In November 2009, Janet Napolitano laid out the immigration reform the administration would push for: “A tough and fair pathway to earned legal status will mandate that illegal immigrants meet a number of requirements—including registering, paying a fine, passing a criminal background check, fully paying all taxes and learning English.” Compare this to the three Pakistanis recently arrested who spoke English, had money.  Additionally, prior to their capture a criminal background check would not have raised any red flags.

Since the Pakistanis met Napolitano’s requirements they could have become U.S. citizens. If that happened, a former CIA official doubts that they could have been arrested on immigration violations, “There would be no mechanism for determining where they were, detaining them, and deporting them.”  In other words, they would have also been able to more easily blend in with the population.

The administration clearly needs better oversight of expired visas.  Nearly ten years after September 11, visa overstay is still a large problem. Three of the 9/11 hijackers and now two of the captured Pakistanis were overstayers.

Visa enforcement is difficult because of the scale of the problem, 41% of the illegal immigrant population have entered legally but then overstayed. Fran Townsend, former Bush Homeland Security Advisor, believes we need clearer priorities and points to the “overwhelming number of visas that have expired.  We do not go after visa overstayers unless we have information that we suspect that person … [I]f you are from a certain country like Pakistan and you have overstayed we should go after you.  We have to develop better travel intelligence to understand the travel patterns.”

A national ID card would also help standardize enforcement. Currently, there are no common standards across states. Some of the 9/11 hijackers were able to obtain drivers licenses in Virginia and the recently arrested Pakistani, Khan, was able to get a license, in Boston, to drive a taxi even though he had admitted on his application that he was an illegal. A national ID card (a social security card with a picture ID, biometrics, and connected to a database) would mean that potential terrorists could not find employment to support their activities. The card would prevent someone from hiding their identity by going to a state with weak standards.

Any real immigration reform will need to deal with the security problems on the Mexican border (the former Iraqi leader of Al Qaeda, Abu al-Zarqawi, had a plan for smuggling terrorists through Mexico to attack Americans). A first step to immigration reform must include those measures that would strengthen America’s national security, not weaken it.