Study: Foreign visitors with expired visas pose potential terrorist threat

Posted by Stewart Powell on June 13, 2011

Nearly a decade after five suicide hijackers with expired U.S. visas helped 14 comrades carry out the Sept. 11 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security and Congress have yet to come up with a failsafe way to check foreign visitors in and out of the U.S., leaving an unknown number unaccounted for inside the country.

The absence of a state-of-the-art system to track visitors’ departures with fraud-proof biometrics such as digital fingerprints leaves the nation exposed to potential attack by individuals who legally enter through 327 airports and other ports of entry, a 14-month inquiry by Congress’ investigative Government Accountability Office found.

As many as 5.5 million of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States may be individuals who have overstayed legal visas, according to estimates cited by the GAO.

The volume of visitors with and without visas is enormous.

During the six years from 2005 through 2010, immigration authorities checked in 134 million visitors — 36 million from countries requiring U.S. visas and 98 million from 36 countries in the visa wavier program, such as France, the Czech Republic, Japan and Australia.

Once inside the country, visitors face little scrutiny. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, devotes barely 3 percent of its investigative time to overstay investigations.

Authorities conducted 34,700 overstay investigations during the past seven years, leading to 8,100 arrests, congressional investigators found.

“A critical element of national security in this global age is keeping track of visitors to our country,â€