Immigration Laws: January, 2002 - Number #1

The INS announced in December 2001 that the names of 314,000 foreigners ordered out of the US would be added to the National Crime Information Center, a database maintained by the FBI and consulted by 80,000 US law enforcement agencies, including local police. This means that so-called abscondees can be apprehended during routine traffic stops. This may increase cooperation between local police and the INS.

The foreigners being added to the NCIC were among those who had been ordered deported by an immigration judge and sent a "bag and baggage" letter instructing them to pack their luggage and report to the INS for removal. These 314,000 did not report.

Hinting at a new process in ending a war, the US announced in December 2001 that Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters would be interrogated in Afghanistan and that some would then stand trial in the courts of Afghanistan, the United States or the fighters' home countries. The US is considering the combatants to be possible criminals, a position that raised questions in the UK. Some ask whether, if British forces were to capture Osama bin Laden, they would turn him over to the US despite European Union rules that bar extradition of prisoners if a death penalty is the likely outcome of a conviction.

The Justice Department asked local police departments to interview 5,146 young foreign men by December 21, 2001. Many police departments cooperated; others did not-as of December 21, about half of the interviews were completed. The list was compiled based on national origin, age and other personal characteristics, not suspected knowledge of terrorism, raising civil liberties fears.

National ID. September 11 changed the way Americans think about a national ID card. Traditionally, Americans have feared centralized government. After September 11, a Pew Research Center poll found that 70 percent of those surveyed would support a system that would require people to show a card to authorities who request it. Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor at the Harvard Law School, who favors a national ID card, asserted: "Even without a national card, people are always being asked to show identification… fear of an intrusive government can be addressed by setting criteria for any official who demands to see the card."

Existing IDs may be upgraded to become a defacto national ID. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, for example, is devising a system to link state drivers' license databases, and to help states to standardize newly issued licenses with computer chips, bar codes and biometric identifiers.

For privacy advocates the consequences of making ID cards more secure is a major issue. How will cards be made in a way that enable the inspecting authority to know whether the person presenting identification is who she says she is? Should the card be linked to databases so that the answers put to a person presenting an ID (to board an airplane, for example) could be checked against information in the database? "Live links" to databases would perhaps reveal to airline clerks that the would-be passenger owed child support or had outstanding traffic tickets.

Over half of the world's 200 nation states have some form of national ID card. Germany requires all citizens over 16 to carry a card that is similar to a passport, while Spain requires ID cards for citizens older than 14.

Students/Saudis. The INS arrested 10 foreign students from the Middle East in San Diego in December 2001 in what it said was the first in a series of arrests of foreign students who violate the terms of their visas. After comparing visa and education records, the INS found that about 10 percent of the foreign students who were checked in San Diego were in violation of their visas. The arrested students can choose to be repatriated or they can fight to remain in the US, which would mean detention until their cases are resolved.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced a bill that would have the INS report the arrival of foreign students to the institutions they are to attend and require the institutions to notify the INS within 30 days of that date if the student did not appear. The bill would prohibit the government from issuing visas to students from countries that the US State Department considers state sponsors of terrorism--Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

In 2001, some 60,000 visitors' visas were issued to Saudis, second only to Israel (143,000) among Middle Eastern countries. Beginning in June 2001, the US consulate in Riyadh allowed travel agencies to collect and submit visa information on behalf of Saudis seeking entry to the US, so that no US official interviewed many of the Saudi applicants.

About 10 million foreigners applied for visas to enter the US in FY01, and 75 percent received them-- 7.7 million visas were issued, up from 6.7 million in FY00. Each of the 19 hijackers entered the United States on valid visas, 15 from Saudi Arabia. The State Department's electronic "lookout" database, which includes 5.7 million names, did not flag any of them.

The process of getting a US visa in Saudi Arabia has lengthened. It is on the list of countries in which men ages 18 to 45 must undergo background checks, which take about three weeks. Over 300 Saudi students have gone back to Saudi Arabia since September 11, and many are not likely to return to the US.

Yemen, which borders Saudi Arabia, began a crack down on illegal foreigners, many of whom are in a tribal region in Marib province, 100 miles east of the capital, Sana. The Abida tribe, which numbers about 5,000, is the largest in Marib province, and has earned a reputation for lawlessness; it is believed to shelter foreigners illegally in Yemen.

A Saudi princess, the 41-year-old niece of King Fahd, was charged with beating her Indonesian maid and pushing her down a flight of stairs in Orlando, where she was studying English at the University of Central Florida. Another Saudi princess was accused in 1995 of beating her servants while visiting Orlando, but charges were never filed.

Many immigrant communities were caught up in the investigation of the September 11 attacks. There are about 3,000 Mauritanian immigrants in the US, including 500 in the Louisville area who came with the help of a successful fellow country man, a trader at automobile auctions. The FBI and INS questioned many of them, and about 40 were held on immigration violations. Most want to remain in the US, but expressed frustration at not being told why they were detained.

There were reports that more Arab and Muslim immigrants were applying for naturalization, even though overall requests for naturalization fell 30 percent between Fall 2000 and Fall 2001. In FY98, 463,000 people became United States citizens, including 12,000 from Middle Eastern countries.

Europe and Passports. Most terrorists have used false passports to cross borders. The principal types of passport fraud include forgery; the use of stolen, genuine blank passports; substituting photos on existing passports; and impostor fraud-- using the passport of a person with a similar appearance. There is no international database containing each country's list of stolen or fraudulent travel documents, so documents are often stolen in one country and used in another.

Serbian gangs operating in Antwerp, Brussels and Charleroi broke into more than 300 city halls in Belgium in the late 1990s and stole thousands of blank passports and identity documents, obtaining passports, driver's licenses, identity cards, visa stamps and travel permits that were sold on the black market. Moroccans are the largest immigrant group in Belgium, and many North African terrorists have presented themselves as Moroccan-born Belgian citizens. They have sometimes used the names of real Moroccans and actual birth dates on phony identity cards.

The New York Times reported on December 28, 2001 that "Muslim militancy took root in Europe in the 1990's." The failure of European governments to cooperate and detect terrorists was ascribed to "different political and legal cultures, different traditions of police power, different levels of concern for individual rights to privacy and protection from the state."

A profile of the 36-year old, Algerian-born Jamal Beghal, highlighted the difficulty of learning about terrorists before they act. He learned French and married a French woman, with whom he has three boys, but could never find a "good job." Apparently while in prison for petty crime, Beghal was recruited into a radical Islamic cell, and eventually went to London, the European heart of Islamic terrorism.

The article concluded that, with passports from one EU country, it was easy to travel, especially within Europe. Would-be terrorists could support themselves by committing crimes such as credit card fraud. The danger, the article concludes, is that sleeper cells - people apparently integrated into society-could strike at any time.

Detention/Courts. The US has 52 immigration courts, whose 220 judges are employees of the Executive Office for Immigration Review within the U.S. Justice Department. Most of the 250,000 cases a year that they consider involve foreigners whom 450 lawyers at the INS are trying to have deported. In FY00, immigration judges agreed with the INS, and ordered 80 percent of the foreigners attempting to stay deported, and granted relief to 15 percent of the applicants.

Decisions of immigration courts can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, and many are-there were about 57,000 appeals pending at the end of 2001. About 9,000 of the 20,000 foreigners in INS detention are persons immigration judges have ordered removed and who are appealing the decision.

Among asylum seekers who did not abandon or withdraw their applications, 9,170 or 36 percent were successful in 2000, compared with 17 percent in 1996.