DATE=03/20/02

TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP

TITLE=I-N-S BLUNDER

NUMBER=6-125611

BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=Washington

INTERNET=YES

EDITOR=Assignments

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT=

INTRO: The United States has suffered an acute embarrassment related to its war on terrorism. Six months to the day after a group of terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the government sent student visa approval for two of the dead terrorists to a Florida flight school in which they had been enrolled.

President George W. Bush was furious when he learned of it, and Congress called Immigration and Naturalization Service officials for an speedy hearing as to how such a mistake could happen. The U-S press is responding to the incident with many critical editorials, many of sarcastic. We get a sampling now from ___________ in today's U-S Opinion Roundup.

TEXT: A week ago Monday [3-11], a Florida flight school where two of the terrorists trained how to fly passenger jets received approval of their student visas. The men were Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, long dead in the September eleventh attacks.

An Immigration Service contractor had routinely processed the visa requests without checking the names of the terrorists which, in the wake of the attacks, are widely known. President Bush said he is "plenty hot" about the mistake, and Congressional hearings on how it could happen are already under way. In the press, there is incredulity occasionally flavored by sarcasm. California's San Jose Mercury News grumbles:

VOICE: … what rankles so much about the months-late … delivery …is the absolute contrast in how our government deals with human lives. The I-N-S can work with great speed in rounding up and detaining or exporting people who may be guilty of … forgivable or overlooked violations of immigration law. But when it comes to tracking paperwork … of… two of the most notorious individuals in American history, the agency is hopelessly inept.

TEXT: An outraged Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio suggests:

VOICE: [The] revelation … simply stands as more evidence that the agency charged with both enforcing immigration laws and meeting the needs of … millions of aliens legitimately in this country is woefully ill-equipped to do either … It's not just an embarrassment. It's a danger.

TEXT: In Charleston, South Carolina's Post and Courier suggests that now the "I-N-S is about to find out what an angry President and Congress can do."

Salt Lake City's [Utah] Deseret News and The Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania] Post-Gazette are both upset as well. First The Deseret News.

VOICE: How is it that the names Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi didn't leap off the pages as their respective student visa applications ground through the Immigration and Naturalization Service approval processes? The glaring breakdown in the agency's procedures was unveiled … when immigration officials notified a Florida flight school … that it had approved student visas for two September eleventh hijackers … If [Mr.] Atta and [Mr.] Al-Shehhi could slip through the cracks, what level of confidence are Americans to have in the overall processes of the immigration service?

TEXT: Calling it a "tragicomic but instructive coincidence," The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette goes on to suggest:

VOICE: The bizarre timing of this paperwork snafu prompted an outpouring of frustration from President Bush, and was followed by the reassignment of several staff members by the Immigration and naturalization Service. The incident also should provide impetus for Congress to mandate a reorganization of the bureaucratically burdened I-N-S. … it took the agency almost a year to approve the visas and seven months to process and mail the notifications through a private contractor.

TEXT: For its part, The Milwaukee [Wisconsin] says the I-N-S is, in this electronically rapid, Internet era, "… a nearsighted, lumbering dinosaur that can't even recognize the names of dead terrorists, let alone help identify live ones."

And in the nation's capital, The Washington Post calls the incident a "blunder" and adds this excoriating comment.

VOICE: … it should come as a shock to no one that the I-N-S is plagued by backlogs and delays, has little sense of who is in its system and can't track individuals once they arrive in the country. In 1996 Congress ordered the agency to do a better job keeping tabs on student visa holders, a mission that took on heightened urgency after September eleventh. But not enough urgency, apparently, to disrupt the churning of paperwork trailing last year's visas or to prompt the workers who handled these particular notices to react to either the widely known names of the hijackers or of the Florida flight school where they trained.

… President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft have launched an investigation into how this could have happened. Well, fine. Truthfully, though, they could get the answer out of any of dozens of past investigations and analyses of the agency. More useful would be for them to spell out how they're doing to improve things. It's their I-N-S now.

TEXT: Portions of a Washington Post editorial.

Florida's Miami Herald, which has long criticized the I-N-S operation of the city's big illegal alien detention center, says the visas were not only an "embarrassing" communications failure.

VOICE: However, the delivery [of the visas] was [also] an insulting reminder of the lapses, backlogs and misguided policies that continue to plague the U-S Immigration and Naturalization Service and, as a consequence, deny law-abiding immigrants the ability to make a life for themselves in this country. … President Bush [says] … that the agency must be reformed. … He's right - - the I-N-S is long overdue for an overhaul.

TEXT: And lastly, from an irate Los Angeles Times, we read this summation.

VOICE: Granting posthumous visas to two of the most infamous terrorists in history is a monumental error, but sadly reflective of the slapdash record-keeping and bad management that plague the agency. So, along with the small steps it is making toward immigration reform, Congress should also push to reform the I-N-S.

TEXT: That editorial outburst from The Los Angeles Times concludes this series of highly critical commentaries on the recent I-N-S blunder involving visa approval for a pair of famous, but dead terrorists.(Signed)

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