How Can We Keep Terrorists Out of America?

W A S H I N G T O N, Oct. 18, 2001 -- 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.

"?????????????????????????????????????????????,"James Ziglar, the new commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service told Good Morning America.

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.

Alghami was on board United Airlines Flight 175, which hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Trained in engineering and believed to have lived in either Daytona Beach or Pensacola, Fla., he has been linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.

Hanjour, believed to have lived in either Phoenix, San Diego or New York, was a Saudi national who received pilot training in the United States, and was one of five hijackers who worked out at a Gold's Gym in Greenbelt, Md. He was on board American Airlines Flight 77, which slammed into the Pentagon.

Familiar Story

This isn't the first time that student visa carriers have been involved in terrorism. Eight years ago, in the first attempt to topple the Twin Towers, the driver of the van that carried the explosives also entered the country with a student visa, investigators found.

In 1996, the INS developed an automated system to track visa holders, but lobbyist efforts and complaints from schools prevented its widespread use.

"We need to take a look at the whole system," said Sen. Diane Fienstein, D-Calif., who is calling for a six-month moratorium on all student visas until the entire process is reviewed. She believes the risks are too high.

"If you're coming here from a country that's a state sponsor of terrorism, taking certain kinds of courses, that's something that needs to be watched and evaluated very closely," Fienstein said.

A Long List

For now, Congress has passed a program, which beginning in the year 2003, would require a reporting system for students. Colleges would be required to report if students drop out of school, or do not show up. Up until Sept. 11, there was tremendous opposition from schools, and some in Congress opposed it too.

The government has ways of catching suspected terrorists before they enter the country, including visa screeners, immigration inspectors and border-patrol agents.

One of its primary tools is a watch list to bar people with criminal histories and terrorist links. Trouble is, there are 5.5 million people on that list.

The underlying problem, critics say, is that the INS' security measures were designed to bar illegal immigrants who want to work from entering this country, not terrorists who want to kill.