How Can We Keep Terrorists Out of America?

W A S H I N G T O N, Oct. 18 -- One of the more frightening aspects of the Sept. 11 attacks is that the hijacking suspects were men who were living and learning in the United States, using student visas to hide in plain sight while they plotted an attack.

This ease of entry has prompted critics to say that the United States borders are essentially sieves that let terrorists travel at will, anonymous among the 7 million foreign citizens who are allowed to enter the United States each year.

The government grants student visas to foreigners on a regular basis, with nearly 300,000 such visas handed out in the past fiscal year. Among those granted student visas: Ahmed Alghami and Hani Hanjour, two of the Sept. 11 hijacking suspects. Alghami's had expired before Sept. 11.

Patching Up Security Holes

The immigration debate has historically focused on economics, and jobs. Now Congress is looking at it as a national security issue, weighing a variety of new border measures, including bulking up security at the largely unprotected Canadian border, reviving systems to track foreign visitors and boosting funds devoted to improving coordination between law enforcement and the State Department.

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There are 30 million legal aliens in the country, and in anything short of a police state, it is impossible to track them down, INS officials have said. However, the agency does use intelligence information to identify those aliens who may pose a risk.

Undetected Until Sept. 11

Prior to Sept. 11, Alghami's visa had expired, but he remained in the country, becoming just one of the estimated four million illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. Though he used education as a premise for getting into the country, Hanjour never showed up for school. He and Hanjour remained undetected until they crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.