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INS Sends Visa Approval
Letters to Terrorists Six
Months after Attacks
By Jake Easton
R A D O K N E W S
Posted: May 16, 2003
SIX MONTHS TO THE DAY following the September 11 attacks, visa approval letters were sent out to a Florida flight school notifying the school that Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al Shehhi (two of the September 11 hijackers) had been approved for student visas.
The mistake is just the latest gaffe for a troubled agency that has long been criticized in Congress for sloppy management and inept record keeping.
"I think it is certainly embarrassing that the letters show up at this late date," said INS spokesman Russ Bergeron. "It does serve to illustrate what we have been saying since 1995 - that the current (INS) system for collecting information and tracking foreign students is antiquated, outdated, inaccurate and untimely."
Unfortunately, Mr. Bergeron must not have been aware that between 1993 and 2002, Congress quadrupled the INS' operating budget, and a recently released study by the Justice Department's Inspector General concluded the INS mismanaged a $31 million project specifically budgeted to automate and monitor foreign visitors.
The INS admits the monitoring system still doesn't work, and now says it will need an additional $57 million to complete the project.
Upon learning of the visa approval letters being sent out six months after the attacks, President Bush said, "I was stunned. And not happy. Let me put it another way: I was plenty hot," the President said, adding that "I could barely get my coffee down."
INS Commissioner James Ziglar, who quit at the end of 2002, said the notification incident "is unacceptable and will not be allowed." His response to cleaning up the mess? He did it the federal government way - he reassigned four midlevel employees.
In another disturbing revelation that unfolded in August 2002, the INS admitted that more than 2 million documents filed by foreigners, from change of address forms to requests for benefits, have been piling up in a warehouse for almost ten years and only now are being reviewed by the government, senior U.S. officials said.
The documents have been collected by the Immigration and Naturalization Service from field offices across the nation and sent to a warehouse complex outside Kansas City, Missouri. They include 200,000 change-of-address notices, INS spokesman Bill Strassberger said.
"The field offices weren't sure what to do with all of the documents they had not been able to look through, and they were a bit overwhelmed by the unprecedented growth (in immigration)," Strassberger added.
Excerpts from the book:
Americans Behaving Badly
by Jake Easton
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Americans Behaving Badly exposes the outrageous behavior of liberal politicians, celebrities, the media, and those that exploited the September 11 attacks against America. 
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