Thread: VISA OVERSTAYS: A GAP IN THE NATION’S BORDER

After decades, and billions of dollars, a major terror vulnerability still persists.

May 29, 2017 Michael Cutler

A recent headline blared: Secretary of Homeland Security head says terror situation is scarier than you know.

However, the situation at the Department of Homeland Security that the Trump administration inherited when it took office is so dire, that I refer to the DHS as the “Department of Homeland Surrender.”

Unquestionably the Obama administration did incalculable damage to the security of our borders and the enforcement of our immigration laws, however, for decades a series of administrations, led by presidents from both parties, have sought to undermine national sovereignty in their push for globalism.

In my judgement, many components of the immigration system have been rendered dysfunctional with the intentional purpose of flooding America with ever increasing foreign tourists, foreign students and a veritable army of cheap and exploitable labor that displaces Americans workers and drives down the wages of those Americans fortunate enough to keep their jobs.

This is not only in the economic bottom rung jobs but, increasingly, within the high-tech industries as well.

I support my claim by providing at the end of my article, outrageous findings of the Office of Inspector General who lays out, in has May 23, 2017 report, information about a level of dysfunction in a component of national security that could not be created by accident or incompetence.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, the very structure of the DHS, as implemented by the administration of President George W. Bush, in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 appears to have been designed to hobble any efforts to secure our borders and/or enforce our immigration laws.

On May 5, 2005, approximately 44 months after the attacks of 9/11, the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims conducted a hearing on the topic, “New "Dual Missions" Of The Immigration Enforcement Agencies.”

There is a parallel that must be drawn in considering that the hearing was conducted 44 months after the attacks. It took the United States and its allies 44 months to defeat the Axis nations during the Second World War.

In order to achieve that incredible success our nation and its allies built fleets of aircraft of brand new designs that had not existed before. Fleets of ships and even nuclear weapons with brand new and un-proven technology.

On September 11, 2001 nineteen terrorists, barely out of their teens, were able to cause more casualties than did the Japanese fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Yet tracking the arrival and departure of aliens who were legally admitted into the United States is beyond the grasp of the nation that more than 40 years ago repeatedly launched astronauts to the moon and returned them all safely to the earth.

Rep. John Hostettler was the chairman of that subcommittee at the time of that hearing and his courageous prepared statement at that hearing included the following disturbing conclusion:

At no time during the reorganization planning was it anticipated by the Committee that an immigration enforcement agency would share its role with other enforcement functions, such as enforcement of our customs laws. This simply results in the creation of dual or multiple missions that the act sought to avoid in the first place.

Failure to adhere to the statutory framework established by HSA (Homeland Security Act) has produced immigration enforcement incoherence that undermines the immigration enforcement mission central to DHS, and undermines the security of our Nation's borders and citizens.

I was one of the witnesses at that hearing and included information about that hearing in my previous article Immigration Failure - By Design which explored how these failures were created and exacerbated to meet the demands of the globalist immigration anarchists.

These failures not only facilitate the entry of foreign workers, students and tourists but transnational criminals and international terrorists.

However, as long as politicians, acting on behalf of various supremely greedy special interest groups including the United States Chamber of Commerce and its corporate allies, that are more focused on head counts on airliners than body counts in the morgue, our immigration failures will not be effectively addressed.

An area of vulnerability that was addressed by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 was the need to track the arrival and departure of nonimmigrant aliens to determine if those nonimmigrant (temporary) foreign visitors departed the United States as required by the terms of their admission into the United States.

This legislation was enacted just years after two deadly terror attacks were carried out in the United States by Middle Eastern aliens in 1993. In January of that year CIA officials were gunned down at CIA Headquarters by Kansi, a Pakistani citizen who entered the United States on a nonimmigrant visa and went on to apply for political asylum.

The following month the first bombing at the World Trade Center left six dead, more than 1,000 people injured and devastated that iconic complex of buildings, inflicting approximately a half billion dollars in damages.

Yet the tracking of nonimmigrant aliens was not implemented.

The 9/11 Commission established tracking the arrival and departure of nonimmigrant aliens as a vital component of national security.

Consequently, on June 3, 2004 it was reported, “Accenture secures U.S. Visit.” (US-VISIT was the term provided to describe the tracking system.)

That report provided a bit of insight into the wrangling that went on to award that contract to Accenture the company that would go on to “distinguish itself” when it attempted to create a website for Obama Care.

As to the magnitude of the contract, Government Executive Magazine reported, Accenture wins $10 billion US VISIT contract.

Yet in March 2013, nine years after giving that contract to Accenture, the goals of tracking the arrival and departure of nonimmigrant aliens was still not accomplished. Consequently the DHS renamed the program, giving it the title, Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM).

On May 22, 2017 the Department of Homeland Security issued a press release, DHS Releases Fiscal Year 2016 Entry/Exit Overstay Report. The press release provided note the nexus between national security and the ability to effectively track the arrival and departure of aliens.

This excerpt illustrates part of the magnitude of the challenges we face:

The report specifies that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processed 50,437,278 in-scope nonimmigrant admissions at U.S. air and sea POEs who were expected to depart in FY16—of which 739,478 overstayed their admission, resulting in a total overstay rate of 1.47 percent. Of the more than 739,000 overstays, DHS determined 628,799 were suspected “in-country” overstays, resulting in a suspected in-country overstay rate of 1.25 percent. An individual who is a suspected in-country overstay has no recorded departure, while an out-of-country overstay has a recorded departure that occurred after their lawful admission period expired.

There was no mention, however, about aliens who are admitted or depart through land borders.

That issue and others were raised in the report issued on May 23, 2017 by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a report, “Visa Overstays: A Gap in the Nation’s Border.

These findings included in this report will likely keep you awake. That these failures have not been addressed goes beyond mere incompetence:

The results of our audit revealed that DHS’ information technology (IT) systems do not effectively support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) visa tracking operations for the following reasons:

Identifying and investigating potential visa overstays requires pulling data from dozens of systems and databases, some of which are not integrated and do not electronically share information;

Access to real-time data is mired by system access restrictions, the need to retain up to 40 passwords, and systems that are not updated;

ICE personnel do not have the training and guidance they need to effectively identify and utilize the myriad systems currently available for visa overstay tracking; and

In the absence of a comprehensive biometric exit system at U.S. ports, DHS relies on third-party departure data, which is not always accurate and fails to capture land departure data, which accounts for the vast majority of visitors exiting the United States.

These deficiencies have significant real-world impact, including:

A backlog of more than 1.2 million visa overstay cases;

Considerable resources wasted investigating thousands of leads that should have been ruled out as visa overstays (e.g., individuals who already left the country or applied for / received immigration benefits);

Arrests of less than 0.4% of the individuals who potentially overstayed their visas; and

Congress receiving DHS visa overstay reports that underestimate and distort the true scope of the visa overstay problem.

Until the Department properly equips its personnel with the tools and training required for the vital work of tracking visitors who overstay their visas, timely identification, investigation, and adjudication of visa overstays will not be possible, increasing the risk to public safety and national security.

Our “leaders” have squandered billions of dollars, but more importantly, they have squandered many years. Time is not on our side.

Politicians, on every level of government, and corporations and their executives who are awarded contracts for national security-related programs must be made truly accountable.

National security is serious business- deadly serious business.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2668...michael-cutler

The US is finally telling the public who overstays their visas the most—and it’s not Mexican

Canada is the open border by which people like Ted Cruz find their way into the US.

600,000 overstayed U.S. visas in 2016

Staggering number of visa overstays now biggest problem in illegal immigration

740K illegal immigrants came legally but didn’t leave in time in 2016

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times -
May 22, 2017

The nexus of illegal immigration into the U.S. has shifted away from the southwest border and into the country’s air and sea ports, where more than 54 million visitors checked in last year — and nearly 630,000 of them didn’t go home, according to new numbers released Monday.

Known as visa overstays, the visitors present a different challenge than the border crossers, and one that Homeland Security officials are still trying to figure out how to handle.

“This report shows that we have a problem with visa overstays in the United States,” a senior administration official said in briefing reporters on the new numbers, vowing to step up enforcement to try to cut down on the violations.

The Trump administration’s report stands in contrast to the Obama administration, which played down the numbers last year when officials released a similar report, focusing on the vast majority of travelers who did comply and leave when they were supposed to.

Indeed, more than 98.5 percent of those admitted through airports and seaports departed before their admissions expired in 2016. But the sheer amount of travel — some 54 million visitors who came through those air and sea ports — means even that small overstay rate works out to nearly 740,000 illegal immigrants.

Some of the overstays were short term, and the foreigners did leave eventually, but the majority were long-term problems.

Nearly 630,000 immigrants were still in the U.S. at the end of 2016, for a persistent overstay rate of 1.25 percent.

Student visas and exchange visitors were the worst violators, with some countries averaging overstay rates above 20 percent.

Libya, a country of special interest because of terrorism concerns, saw 43 percent of its students refuse to leave on time, while a staggering 75 percent of students from Eritrea broke the terms of their deal, the report said.

Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, said those kinds of rates should force a rethink at the State Department, which issues visas, and should spur immigration officials to put more effort into deterring and deporting overstays here in the U.S.

“The fact that more than 700,000 visits were overstayed last year shows just how much we need to step up interior enforcement to create more of a deterrent, not only by identifying and deporting overstays, but by weakening the job magnet by cracking down on employers who hire illegal workers,” she said.

Almost none of the visa overstays are investigated, Homeland Security officials told Congress last year.

Just 2,500 visa overstay cases resulted in deportations in 2015, or a fraction of 1 percent of the problem.

While it’s difficult to know exact numbers, some analysts say that for every illegal immigrant nabbed at the border, another one gets through. That means that fewer than 500,000 new illegal immigrants a year have snuck in.

Illegal overstays, meanwhile, easily top that number now, according to the new statistics.

Homeland Security experts say those who come legally then overstay have at least faced some scrutiny, often by State Department employees who issue visas, and then by border officers who make a final determination on everyone admitted.

That’s different than border crossers, who face no inspection whatsoever, and where the identity of those who entered is entirely unknown.

Still, experts point out that at least five of the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist plot were visa overstays.

The report is years overdue, and the Obama administration struggled to get it done, with then-Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson sending versions back for rewrites.

A partial report was released last year, but it only covered basic tourist and business visas, not student visas or other categories that grant foreigners prolonged access and a chance to make a life in the U.S.

Those additional categories in this year’s report are likely one reason the numbers are higher.

The report only covers arrivals and departures by air and sea, not land ports of entry, where inspection is less thorough — though those crossing are usually locals who are going back and forth regularly, and stay near the border.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/22/visa-overstays-biggest-problem-illegal-immigration/

Trump needs to go on the warpath at the microphone and on Twitter about visa-overstays. He needs to lay it out, that all these people are risking ever being allowed back into the United States if they don't pack up and depart immediately. No mercy, no exceptions. If they wait to be hunted down and deported, that would mean they won't ever be able to get even a tourist visa or business visitors visa in the future and would never be able to visit families or businesses here in the future, they would in essence be banned forever based on their having violated an immigration document of the United States.

Originally Posted by pkskyali

The US is finally telling the public who overstays their visas the most—and it’s not Mexican

Canada is the open border by which people like Ted Cruz find their way into the US.

Huh???? Cruz was born a U.S. citizen since his mother was an American citizen living in Canada. Ted's mother, with Ted in tow, moved back to the United States after only spending four years working in Canada. Your comment concerning Cruz crossing an open border has no relevance to this thread. As a U.S. citizen he had every right to cross the border regardless of whether it was open or closed.

Originally Posted by MW

Huh???? Cruz was born a U.S. citizen since his mother was an American citizen living in Canada. Ted's mother, with Ted in tow, moved back to the United States after only spending four years working in Canada. Your comment concerning Cruz crossing an open border has no relevance to this thread. As a U.S. citizen he had every right to cross the border regardless of whether it was open or closed.

No, he didn't. His mother had to register his birth with a US Consulate and obtain a US passport under US Immigration Law.

Originally Posted by Judy

No, he didn't. His mother had to register his birth with a US Consulate and obtain a US passport under US Immigration Law.

Yes, he did have every right to cross into the U.S. I assume what you're saying is standard procedure for an American born on foreign soil, but by virtue of his mother's American citizenship, he to was born an American citizen. Everything was legal and above board. So how does that mean he took advantage of an "open border" as pkyskiali implied?

Of course she had to register his birth with the American Consulate just like U.S. born folks are registered when receiving their birth certificate here in the U.S.

Originally Posted by MW

Yes, he did have every right to cross into the U.S. I assume what you're saying is standard procedure for an American born on foreign soil, but by virtue of his mother's American citizenship, he to was born an American citizen. Everything was legal and above board. So how does that mean he took advantage of an "open border" as pkyskiali implied?

Of course she had to register his birth with the American Consulate just like U.S. born folks are registered when receiving their birth certificate here in the U.S.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. There are rules that require the US Consulate to confirm the claims of American citizen born overseas. That's how a US passport is issued for someone not born in the US. They can not just "cross the border". What is noticeably absent in all this are the records that would verify that for a person born overseas to an American mother and a Canadian father. We know he established Canadian citizenship which was not undone until after he was running for either the US Senate for President. It's a simple matter.

But the issue during the election wasn't whether or not Ted Cruz was a US citizen, it was whether or not he was a natural born citizen eligible to be President and the Canadian father and born in Canada ruins that for him.

Originally Posted by Judy

Yes, that's what I'm saying. There are rules that require the US Consulate to confirm the claims of American citizen born overseas. That's how a US passport is issued for someone not born in the US. They can not just "cross the border". What is noticeably absent in all this are the records that would verify that for a person born overseas to an American mother and a Canadian father. We know he established Canadian citizenship which was not undone until after he was running for either the US Senate for President. It's a simple matter.

But the issue during the election wasn't whether or not Ted Cruz was a US citizen, it was whether or not he was a natural born citizen eligible to be President and the Canadian father and born in Canada ruins that for him.

Unlike you and pkskyali, I have no interest in rehashing the presidential race. However, Ted's mother was a U.S. citizen. Under U.S. law, the fact that Cruz was born to a U.S. citizen mother makes him a citizen from birth, not a naturalized citizen.

I don't know why a couple folk continuosly want to dredge up this crap from the campaign. A lot of misinformation and accusations were bantered around during the campaign because Trump and Cruz were opponents. That is no longer the case, so why are a couple folks still insistent on taking shots at Cruz? From what I can tell they are now on the same team and share many of the same ideas.