CNS News.Com - Obama Freezes Budget for Program Designed to Stop Terrorists from Getting U.S. Visas

From my archive of press clippings:

CNS

Obama Freezes Budget for Program Designed to Stop Terrorists from Getting U.S. Visas

Wednesday, May 05, 2010


By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer


This Dec. 2009 photo released by the U.S. Marshal's Service on Monday Dec. 28, 2009 shows Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in Milan, Mich. Abdulmutallab, 23, is charged with trying to detonate an explosive device on a Dec. 25 flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. (AP Photo/U.S. Marshal's Service)

(CNSNews.com) – Four months after the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit and nine years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, only 14 of the 57 U.S. consulates identified as being at “high risk” for potentially providing visas to terrorists have been furnished with units of the Department of Homeland Security’s Visa Security Program (VSP).

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"President Barack Obama, meanwhile, is planning to freeze the program’s budget for fiscal 2011.

The VSP, established by the Homeland Security Act of 2002, puts Department of Homeland Security officials in the field at U.S. consulates to vet the backgrounds of people applying for U.S. visas. DHS uses a broader range of databases than the State Department to review the backgrounds of visa applicants. Also, many policymakers believe DHS officials tend to be more security-minded than State Department consular officers when reviewing visa applications.

While administration officials have said publicly that five additional VSP units should be in place at high risk consulates by the end of 2011, President Barack Obama’s fiscal Year 2011 budget for DHS--submitted almost two months after the Christmas Day bombing attempt—does not increase funding for the program from its fiscal 2010 level."

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"Congressional sources told CNSNews.com that Yemen and Jerusalem are believed to be among the four planned VSP units to be deployed in 2010. The visa-issuing process and the progress of the VSP came under scrutiny after the failed Christmas Day attack Northwest Flight 253, when the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held hearings on the incident. At the April 21 hearing, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the committee, said the Obama administration was not making the expansion of VSP a priority. “Here’s why I reached that conclusion,” Lieberman (I-Conn.) said. “DHS and the State Department have identified 57 high-risk consular posts around the world – that’s out of 200 posts that issue visas. But only 14 of those have received … Visa Security Program offices.”"

re: "Abdulmutallab (TWA "Christmas Bomber") Had a Visa Denial Reversed"

TSB at The Skeptical Bureaucrat ("Giving my fellow Americans the view from my cubicle") has "about the complicated visa history of the "Christmas Bomber," young Mister Abdulmutallab of Nigeria."

Money quote(s):

"The bottom line is that the 18 year-old Abdulmutallab committed a non-material error on his first visa application, which was forgiven based upon his lack of willful misrepresentation and his strong ties to Nigeria, i.e., his Daddy's $$$$$$$. This all happened before he was radicalized and became a security threat."

Be sure to read the commentary; it's right on point.

WT - MOWBRAY: It's the visas, stupid. State Department can't treat travel to U.S. like a civil right.

From my archive of press clippings:

Washington Times


MOWBRAY: It's the visas, stupid


State Department can't treat travel to U.S. like a civil right


By Joel Mowbray

Monday, January 11, 2010

Tucked away in a single paragraph near the end of the declassified preliminary report on the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack is the key fact glossed over by most in media and the government: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had a valid visa when he boarded his Detroit-bound flight.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"(T)he State Department has barely budged its default position that visas are to be issued unless they have a clear reason to deny applications."

"This suicidally legalistic approach does not owe to President Obama or previous political leadership, but rather to the long-held institutional mindset of the State Department. Using a questionable legal interpretation, State's position has been that a visa must be issued to qualified applicants, with denials only possible with specific, credible proof that someone can be deemed a security threat.

But unlike in a court of law, foreigners wishing to enter the U.S. should not be presumed innocent.

Moreover, denial of the privilege to come to the U.S. is not reviewable, and it can be made unilaterally by State. Yet it is State who pushes to issue visas to those who raise red flags, but don't quite belong on the terrorist watchlist."

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"Any probable cause of terrorist connections needs to result in visa denials and revocations unless the evidence can be disproved or reasonably deemed illegitimate. Even when we have no specific information, as was the case with most of the Sept. 11 terrorists, State should enforce the visa laws as strictly with young Muslim men from known terrorist hotspots as it does with poor (or even middle-class) Filipinos.

But for State to enforce existing law and err on the side of security, the department must undergo a complete about-face from its current operating procedures. If Mr. Obama is as serious as he purports to be, however, he must demand nothing less."

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Joel Mowbray is an investigative journalist living in New York City.