Published January 2002 — Download PDF of the original newspaper column
Byrd's-Eye View By U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd Plugging Leaks in Immigration
The terrorist attacks of September 11 highlighted a number of gaping deficiencies in our homeland security, including serious loopholes in the U.S. immigration system that allowed terrorists to enter our country posing as students and tourists or, in some cases, by simply walking across an unpatrolled Canadian or Mexican border. There are currently between 7 million and 13 million illegal aliens living in America. Six out of ten of these aliens crossed a U.S. border illegally and, therefore, were not subject to background checks by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) or the State Department to determine if they had a terrorist or criminal history. Another immigration concern is the nation's inability to keep track of those foreign nationals who enter our country legally as students. More than 500,000 international students are registered at 15,000 universities, colleges, and vocational schools across America. Some of these are nuclear engineering scholars, biochemistry students, and even pilot trainees who have access to highly advanced technology, training, and information. To counter these dangerous shortfalls in our border security, I successfully included provisions in a recently approved anti-terrorism bill that would fill some of the holes in our border security and tighten our immigration regulations. My amendment provides funds for the Justice Department to enact a tracking system that requires every university, college, and vocational school to submit the name, address, and enrollment status of international students who are in this country on these special visas. Without a monitoring system in place, there is nothing to prevent someone from entering the U.S. on a student visa and then simply disappearing. My provisions also require the State Department to review how it issues visas and to take steps to end "consulate shopping" - a practice in which foreign nationals seek out a U.S. consulate that does not have stringent background checks. Consulate shopping allowed a terrorist who was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to obtain a visa from the U.S. consulate in Sudan after being denied a visa from the consulate in Egypt. For too long, our lax immigration and border security regulations allowed foreign nationals to enter this country illegally or to disappear after arriving on student visas. These new antiterrorism measures should help to fill the cracks that enabled dangerous individuals to slip through our immigration system. I am hopeful that this new law can help to prevent future terrorist attacks. January 30, 2002