Safer, Smarter Borders

Eight months after thousands of Americans were killed on U.S. soil, I joined President Bush at the White House to witness his signing of legislation I authored that will make it much harder for suspected terrorists to infiltrate our borders again.

The September 11 attacks made clear to all Americans how easy it was for the hijackers to enter our country.

For a long time after the attacks took place, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) could not even answer with certainty a simple question: just who these hijackers were and how they got here.

The final answer took months to obtain. Every single one of the September 11 hijackers entered this country legally. Some were even granted extensions on their visas. Still others had received foreign-student visas and failed to attend classes. And a number of them may have been on various terrorist "watch lists" that should have raised red flags when they first attempted to enter the country.

Just as disturbing, agencies charged with protecting our national security were not sharing information with each other. Consular officials granting visas, for example, often had no idea what, if anything, the CIA or FBI knew about visa applicants. And the INS lacked sufficient resources to go after foreigners already in the United States whose visas may have expired.

As a result of hearings held by the Terrorism Subcommittee (on which I am the ranking Republican), Senator Dianne Feinstein and I set out to write legislation to "plug the loopholes" in our immigration laws. Ultimately, we combined it with a similar bill authored by Senators Ted Kennedy and Sam Brownback.

President Bush noted, as he signed our bill: "No nation can be secure unless it’s well-protected, and unless our borders are well-screened. We must know who's coming into our country and why they're coming. We must know what our visitors are doing and when they leave. The purpose of this bill is to help our country do a better job of border security. This is a legislative part of a national strategy."

President Bush highlighted several provisions in the legislation that will be a key part of that homeland defense strategy, including authorization for 1,000 more INS inspections personnel, accelerated implementation of a computerized visa-tracking system, shared by law-enforcement agencies, and a requirement that all foreign travel documents, including passports, contain secure, tamper-resistant features that can be read by machines at all U.S. ports-of-entry within the next two years.

The new law also mandates stricter oversight of our nation’s foreign student visa system and bars nearly all student visas from countries on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist-sponsoring states. It will also demand greater accountability. Participants in the foreign student visa program must attend school, and schools must notify U.S. officials if foreign students drop out or never appear for classes.

Basically, this law serves as an early warning system for terrorist attacks, a wire that is tripped whenever suspected terrorists seek to infiltrate our borders. It will also help send out an alert if foreign citizens already in the U.S. violate the terms of their temporary visas.

The new law is designed to close doors that terrorists have slipped through, but keep them open to commerce, trade, tourism, or law-abiding citizens seeking to visit family in the United States.

America is a free nation that welcomes visitors and law-abiding citizens from around the world. But it must also be a vigilant nation that protects innocent citizens from "guests" who come here to do us harm.

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