Please excuse the double post.
CJ
London_Calling:
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Yep. Indeed. Several of the terrorists used their own names and passports.
Also, again, for those who don’t seem to be getting it, that’s why fingerprinting, retinal scanning, face-recognition, and other items either being implemented or considered would be helpful. Then what a potential terrorist calls himself, or wherever his passport may be from, becomes irrelevant.
(I’m aware this doesn’t stop people for whom criminal or intelligence records don’t yet exist. That does not mean it isn’t a helpful tool in attempting to thwart terrorism. As evidenced by U.S.'s history with terrorists, listed in the aforelinked report.)
As for those referencing Timothy McVeigh, the Irish, etc., my point was that terrorists representing al Qaeda and attempting to attack the USA will eventually be white-skinned and blue-eyed.
jjimm:
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Agreed. U.S. immigration’s response to all the threats seems to be to make it more difficult for the kinds of people we should want to come here from other countries to get in, and to be as difficult and rude as possible to those who do visit. Judging by what about a dozen of my friends from other countries have experienced.
And how long do you suppose it will take terrorist groups to work out that they need only send in people to do their dirty work that don’t have a criminal record, at least not in a country that agrees to share its records with the U.S. government.
What a stupid idea this is.
ruadh – IMHO, it’s only a stupid idea if the purpose is as advertised, but it’s also a standard ploy to utilise opportunity (national security, ‘patriotic’ move. Etc) to pursue a hidden agenda.
On the general point, I’m also not sure I’d feel comfortable accepting the legitimacy of every court decision from some of those countries – different standards of evidence, different rules of Law, different degrees of credibility/corruption. In fact, in some cases one assumes those supporting some of those regimes are less likely to have criminal records – or to have them wiped.
Another thing is that I can’t think of one security technology that hasn’t been subverted – it’s part of the human condition to solve problems. On that basis, what is now being proposed offers no more than a false sense of security.
I can understand this in terms of a populist ploy designed to contribute to shoring up the conservative vote for the midterms…but beyond that, I honestly don’t know. It’s tempting to think of this as a sinister move that will, eventually, be extended but that seems just idle sensationalism at this point. It remains, IMHO, an ugly precedent.
Finally, there’s something fundamentally wrong about this that I’m not sure I can put my finger on. There is a trend – in the US and, to an extent, in the UK – to distinguish the rights of the population from non-nationals. Put another way: To afford people visiting your country more limited/fewer personal rights and freedoms than you enjoy.
It’s a hell of a long way from sewing a yellow star on their clothes but, somehow, it’s very uncomfortable.
I agree there’s something fundamentally wrong with people thinking they are entitled to rights by birth. I am always surprised to see how many Americans feel that way. Recently someone said “he ‘earned’ it because he was born in the USA”. Read the threads and see how many Americans believe the rights spelled in the constitution apply only to American citizens or should apply only to American citizens. It is frightening to think such a large group of people see themselves as a superior class entitled to more rights than others. I have to say I have not seen such an attitude among European posters.
Traditionally in Anglo countries non citizens had pretty much all the rights of citizens except the right of abode. The idea that they somehow are entitled to less is a sad reflection on human nature.
Nobody likes to use the “f” word to describe some of this administration’s State-centric actions, but this does seem at least very vaguely fascistic. Certainly, though, it’s not nearly the most egregious action in a context which includes the total stripping of civil rights from at least two US citizens on the mere declaration of the President.
A nation enforcing its immigration laws is “vaguely fascist” and “stupid?” Where are you people from, and what do you think your government does/is doing?
sailor - I can’t drive directly into Canada, without telling them what I’m doing there, or how long I’ll be staying. Once there, I can’t simply stay, or go get a job somewhere. I have to go through a process that a person who was born in Canada does not.
Those damned Canadians. Or, as you said, “It is frightening to think such a large group of people see themselves as a superior class entitled to more rights than others.”
Or is only the United States held to a different standard regarding its immigration? Who’s talking about constitutional rights here? I’m talking about immigration. List for me the country that doesn’t require identical (or at least similar) information from a citizen of another country, as that citizen enters its borders?
The U.S. is only seeking to take measures to ensure that the information every country requires upon entry is accurate because there is a large group of people exploiting flaws in the American immigration system to kill mass quantities of U.S. citizens.
It will be interesting for me to see if anyone out there doesn’t see the following four things I’m going to list as givens.
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The United States is under threat of a terrorist organization that has already killed thousands of American civilians, and is plotting to do so again.
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Every nation has a right to control its immigration. To require information such as a visitor’s identity, reason for coming, how long they will be staying, for what purpose and where they can be contacted while there.
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U.S. immigration does a poor job of ensuring the information in #2 is accurate, or is adhered to.
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The U.S. has a keen interest in shoring up deficiencies in ensuring the information in #2 is accurate and adhered to, because of #1, and because Sept. 11 hijackers and other terrorists who have operated in the U.S. have demonstrably exploited the system’s flaws.
I’d prefer my friends from several other countries who’d like to come here to stay or at least to visit be able to do that more easily. If they have to go through an identification and visa-adherence tracking system in order to do that, but it makes the system otherwise less difficult, I’m all for it.
Who said so?
A nation requiring from visitors information which it is ill equipped to process, which is unlikely to be meaningful, and which may pull effort away from more effective screening methods is “stupid.” A nation which requires such information selectively and inconsistently based along superficial individual distinctions and using a process which is determined by political alliances instead of human intelligence is “vaguely fascist.”
This is absolutely the best way to go about it, if you want the most bang for the buck. Of course, there are all sorts of things the Feds can do to improve intelligence gathering and tracking of foreign nationals, but given that we have limited resources and that in any case it’s probably not wise or logistically feasible to implement a bunch of procedures and systems at once which may end up being at odds with each other, I think we should concentrate on making sure that the systems we have already in place have all necessary resources and are actually doing what they are supposed to accomplish.
I’ve spent most of my career working in some immigration-related capacity, be it for the feds, for nonprofits, or now for a private immigration law firm (standard disclaimer; IANAL). Data correlation is one of INS’ biggest headaches; I suspect that part of the issue is that they tend to bid out IT contracts to the lowest bidder, and that the managers who decide who gets the contract have no idea what makes for a non-dysfunctional information system.
Some examples: when I was working in Immigration Court in the early 1990’s, Eastern European countries were splitting up right and left. Since we had to input a country code in the computerized docketing system for all people in deportation proceedings (mostly so the deportation orders would reflect countries that actually exist), one day I had to schedule a Slovak for a hearing, and realized that we needed some new codes, because we didn’t have one for Slovakia yet. While we’re at it, though, I realized, we could also use ones for all the former Soviet republics, and the various pieces of Yugoslavia, too. I wrote an e-mail to the IT folks in Virginia, who responded that they understood my issue, but they obviously couldn’t create policy based on the word of a lowly clerk in Chicago, so they’d have to get back to me.
A few days later, the whole agency got an e-mail with new codes for the various former Soviet republics, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia (which the U.S. hadn’t yet recognized, and whose very name is still the subject of debate in the international community), and – get this – LJUBLANA!
Here’s the terrifying part: I called the IT guys and explained a) the thing about Macedonia (the Greeks were still very upset); and b) that unless we had, unbeknownst to me, returned to the medieval city-state, there was no such country as Ljubljana, and that they probably meant Slovenia, of which Ljubljana is the capital. They responded that in response to my original inquiry, they’d called the State Department for clarification, and that that’s what the State Dept. had told them! I quaked in fear at the prospect that the agency in charge of our nation’s foreign policy couldn’t even be relied upon to provide correct information on whom the U.S. recognized as a nation, to another government agency! And you wonder why I don’t work for the Feds anymore…
Now that I work for a private law firm, getting consistent information from various INS branch offices and service centers is a daily challenge. A clerk in Chicago has no way to determine the actual status of, say, an asylum application in Lincoln, Nebraska. Many INS offices are a year or more backlogged in logging in general correspondence, which is the category that address change requests fall into. And the new AR-11 form, which all noncitizens are now required to use to inform INS within 10 days of a change of address, is field with INS Headquarters, but if the person has an unrelated application pending at another INS office, that office still needs to be informed separately. And, you may ask, what is the point of making millions of people file address changes if it will take a year for anyone to look at the damn form and enter it in the computer?
As for the idea of fingerprinting people upon entry to the U.S.: totally impractical as things stand now, technologically speaking. Are we honestly going to be able to run a thorough background check while the guy is standing there? And if something pops up on the screen, are we going to detain the guy, at government expense, while we sort out the information? How will we handle the inevitable discrepancies in names and such that occur when you are translating information from numerous sources, much of which is recorded in non-Latin alphabets with varied transliteration systems? IMHO, the money would be much better spent on overseas investigations of people who have applied for U.S. visas, BEFORE they get a visa and show up at the airport in front of an INS inspector.
Milossarian you asked why some people are against this idea.
If it were policy to fingerprint everyone entering the US would it stop me going? Hell no. I’ve nothing to worry about but it’s only targeting from your OP link
The government says the security system will target:
–All nationals of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria.
–Nonimmigrant aliens whom the State Department determines to present an elevated national security risk, based on criteria reflecting current intelligence.
–Aliens identified by INS inspectors at the port of entry, using similar criteria.
Fair enough, some of the Sept.11th guys used their own passports but no such fingerprint reg. was in place. Now if there was a regulation in place I almost guarantee that anybody with the intent to kill US citizens will either do one of two things.
- Get false ID so as not to fall into the above criteria
- If they have no record or history and plan to do a suicide attack submit to the finger printing.
Either way it doesn’t stop anything or help in the analysis of how or why they did it. All it will do is hassle tourists/businessmen(no biggy here), tie up people and cost administration time which could be better used in a way that actual helps stop these MF’s and cost money which also could be used in better ways.
I personally have no problems with the US tightening things up to protect its people but I just don’t see how this will help in any meaningful way other than give a reassuring sound bite on the news to the worried proles.
Milossarian, My post was a comment on what London_Calling said:
To which I said :
[quote]
I agree there’s something fundamentally wrong with people thinking they are entitled to rights by birth. I am always surprised to see how many Americans feel that way. Recently someone said “he ‘earned’ it because he was born in the USA”. Read the threads and see how many Americans believe the rights spelled in the constitution apply only to American citizens or should apply only to American citizens. It is frightening to think such a large group of people see themselves as a superior class entitled to more rights than others. I have to say I have not seen such an attitude among European posters.
Traditionally in Anglo countries non citizens had pretty much all the rights of citizens except the right of abode. The idea that they somehow are entitled to less is a sad reflection on human nature.
[quote]
I fail to see your answer to me has any connection with this. If you are accused of a crime in Canada do you have fewer rights to due process than a Canadian national? If the answer is yes I believe there is something immoral about it but I believe the answer is no. And yet in the US a foreign national can be subject to military tribunals where he does not have the chance to get a process to which an American is entitled. I think this is wrong and I think you will not find such things in other free countries.
xeno:
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Perhaps I misunderstood you when you said of the new program to better check people’s identities as they enter the U.S.:
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Ill-equipped to process? Says who? America is ill-equipped to process the information they are getting now. They are trying to improve upon the system.
Unlikely to be meaningful? From the Washington Post article you apparently didn’t read:
Which may pull effort away from more effective screening methods? Such as what?
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What evidence do you have that the three criteria cited in the Post article (not just the first one) will be utilized selectively and inconsistently? What evidence do you have that it won’t involve human intelligence?
Eva Luna: Thanks for providing some interesting first-hand experiences to this issue. The system is clearly not working in an effective way, and acts of terrorism in the U.S. show the need to make improving it a priority.
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Hear, hear. But I don’t see what INS is planning to implement this Sept. 11 as inconsistent with that. I see it as a step in that direction. And I wholly support changes in the bureaucracy to fix the kinds of problems you described.
It’s a national security priority. And should be funded as such.
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It would seem to me to be an unwieldy process, too.
However, they seem to think it can work, and want to test it out. Judging by the last paragraph of the linked WP story, it already has worked.
sailor:
To the thread at hand, the information the U.S. requires from a foreigner attempting to enter is almost if not identical to the information every country requires. And the rights a foreign visitor has are often less than those someone born in the country has. Not just in the USA. Everywhere that I’m aware of.
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I don’t think just any foreign national can. They have to meet specific legal requirements as a ‘foreign combatant’ to be held in such a way, IIRC.
But I don’t know enough about the legal process under which people are being detained to comment on it authoritatively.
In a general sense, however, my position stands. There are NO nations I know of where a foreign visitor has exactly the same rights to do whatever he or she wants as a citizen does.
>> There are NO nations I know of where a foreign visitor has exactly the same rights to do whatever he or she wants as a citizen does.
Ok, then. give some cites of democratic, free, countries where personal liberties and rights are curtailed for non-nationals. What countries (besides the US) would provide for different legal process for a criminal trial if the accused is a foreigner? I’d like to know this because I believe it is very wrong so I would like to have specific examples of any european countries which may do this. Also, any countries where basic freedoms (expression, religion, etc) are restricted for non-nationals? I do not think you can give me any cites but I’ll be very interested if you can.
Milo:
By requesting more information. Unless the new information gathering is accompanied by process improvements, I don’t see how this is an overall system improvement. --Perhaps it’s my manufacturing background preventing me from seeing this. If you can explain how this makes the system better, I will be receptive to your explanation.
Note that the pilot program targeted criminals attempting to re-enter the US. One thing this country’s law enforcement agencies are fairly good at is maintaining a database of fingerprints for this country’s criminals, a group which is inclusive of many career thugs and thieves, but not, sadly, many foreign terrorists.
See wring and Eva Luna. I suspect better screening at the visa application end would be a better use of time and equipment.
I have no evidence, just a lack of faith, and no reason to believe that INS will be invariably efficient, or that “current intelligence” can, will or even should be shared with port of entry inspectors.
As far as the “vague fascism” goes, I plead guilty to rank paranoia, fed in large part by other proposals of this government regarding their War on Terror™.
A couple more items:
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Many of the current proposals for immigration system/process improvements do not take into account the issue of aliens who are visa-exempt (Canadians and most West European nationals, and a few others). Not all of these were born in non-“suspect” countries; many have naturalized (there are lots of people carrying French passports who were born Algerian, for example). As things currently stand, though, they will not be screened AT ALL before showing up at the border.
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We are already starting to see the effects of tighter screening at my job, and so far they’re largely just a big pain in the neck for the business community. 20 minutes after my last post, a co-worker ran into my office in a panic. A client had been denied what should have been a routine visa renewal at the State Department (FYI, some categories of work visas can currently be renewed by mail at the State Dept. while the foreign national remains in the U.S.; this is as a convenience to frequent business travelers who can’t afford to wait up to a month or more for a visa to be processed at a consulate overseas, as it effectively traps them without a passport and leaves them unable to do the jobs for which they obtained the visas in the first place).
The reason: although he is Mexican rather than Middle Eastern, he has an extremely common name. DOS must have run a name check on him and gotten a “hit;” current operating procedure in this circumstance is to force him to be fingerprinted and get his new visa at a consulate outside the U.S. Now my firm has processed literally hundreds of thousands of work visas over the years, and AFAIK we’ve never had a client who did anything more globally violent than get into a barroom brawl; our client base is generally pretty low-risk, and so I somehow doubt that this individual, a multinational manager and career employee of a Fortune 500 company, is a terrorist.
So if the consulates can run a fingerprint check, and they’re run by DOS too, why can’t DOS run a fingerprint check through the same channels? It’s just another case of the right hand not having access to the same intelligence capabilities as the left hand.
I’m all for better screening, but can’t we find some intelligent way to do it that doesn’t make innocent people’s lives miserable? Does anyone really think a hardcore international terrorist will be unable to come up with false documents, or that we should detain everyone named Juan Rivera because there’s a Juan Rivera out there with an outstanding arrest warrant? It just doesn’t make any sense, and I think we’ll see lots more cases of mistaken identity and wrongful arrests and deportations before we get our collective act together.
Question for you Milo - the article doesn’t indicate an answer to this. Here you are at the ‘point of entry’, taking photos and fingerprints. And, you scan them into a computer.
How long before you get any results? Several minutes? a day?
the database for this is pretty damn large (it would have to include all criminals from the US, interpol, as well as other sources). And, of course, if the person hadn’t been identified ever or fingerprinted ever, it wouldn’t include them.
If it takes more than a few minutes to run the ID, I don’t see any point at all.
And, I re-iterate. It would be extremely easy for a terrorist to bypass all of these : by obtaining a new ID under a different name, by obtaining a passport from a different country, by sneaking across our borders in any of thousand different ways etc.
So, given that there are practical reasons to not do it (damage to the tourist industry, cost etc), and this system would only work if the suspected terrorist had been identified and printed and used a passport from the list of countries, didn’t try to change their name, appearance or fingerprints, and were attempting to go across the border in a legal fashion, I don’t see the practical use of the system, other than to point at and say, see, we’re doing something.
If you’re hell bent on having fingerprints be part of the program, then please have it make sense - do not set it up so that it’s easy for some one to go through customs & bypass it.
For example, instead of selecting certain countries and checking everyone from those countries (or certain types of names etc.), have a random check. set up a computer program where it randomly selects 1/10th of those entering (or whatever percent you want) for this level of checking, no matter what country or name their using (of course, we’re assuming that by this time we’ve been able to figure out how to flag those names we know - something that IIRC wasn’t done for 9/11). This way, there will be a chance to catch them.
Frankly any terrorist who, after we state “we’re going to fingerprint everyone from these countries and/or w/ certain types of names” doesn’t manage to circumvent that system is probably an incompetent one.
sailor:
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You keep trying to change the debate. And I’m not sure why. As far as restrictions upon the activities of visitors to a country, vis a vis what a citizen of that country is able to do, I would think it self-evident. Have you ever visited another country?
xeno:
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Agreed. I guess you are making the assumption that there will not be process improvements to utilize the new information quickly and effectively, and I am not.
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For about the fifth time, who is holding this out as THE CURE FOR TERRORISM? It appears it’s a step toward locking the revolving door.
wring: I don’t know. It would be interesting to know how the program worked in the last paragraph of the Washington Post article.
I like your idea of randomizing who gets screened. But I think too many people are discounting the second and third listed criteria. And the idea of more intense scrutiny from known potential problem areas. I yet again urge you to look at the record.
Quit telling me they’d just find another way. We still put locks on bank vaults, even though bank robbers can find another way. Why?
It won’t solve all the problem areas. But it could improve the situation with some of them.
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And that’s probably where the face-recognition technology portion of the equation might help. It is more than 99 percent accurate, and can’t be thrown by disguises.
Milossarian
>> You keep trying to change the debate. And I’m not sure why.
I am not trying to change the debate. I already said it started as a comment to what London_Calling said which is that it seems more acceptable to grant citizens more rights than aliens and that is an aspect of this discussion even if not the central aspect.
>> As far as restrictions upon the activities of visitors to a country, vis a vis what a citizen of that country is able to do, I would think it self-evident.
You would be wrong. It is not self evident. Please provide examples of laws in developed countries which (with the exception of the right to enter and remain and work in the territory) grant local citizens rights denied to aliens. The US has military tribunals which can be used for aliens but not for US citizens. Show me any developed country which makes this distinction and has laws which afford rights and protections to its own citizens which it denies to foreigners. I do not think you will find many. Saying “it is self evident” is not a valid answer because it is only self evident to people who are very ignorant of reality. If it is so, self evident, please provide examples. Any lawyers in other countries who can support that? If you do find a case it would be extremely rare and that is why London_Calling and I agree that it is a bad thing which should not go further. But please provide examples.
>> Have you ever visited another country?
Oh my, this is a good one. Here we go questioning the poster rather than the post. OK, I’ll take the challenge but first I have to say it is totally irrelevant. You do not need to go to a country to know what their legal system is and going to a country does not mean you know anything about their legal system.
But, hey, have I ever visited another country? You gotta be kidding. If you have read any of my posts here you would know that I spend about equal time on each side of the Atlantic, I own property, have done business and dealt with lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic and my family is about equally distributed. I travel regularly inside the US and in Europe and for the last six years have travelled regularly to China. Is that enough for you? Does that prove anything?
Now, not that it makes the least difference on whether what you consider obvious is right or wrong but, what is your experience in international travel and living and doing business in other countries?