New Immigration Initiative May Not Provide More Safety

The White House initiative to tighten America’s immigration policies will probably hasten the use of sophisticated new technologies, prod wary agencies into sharing more intelligence and, ultimately, add security to the nation’s porous borders.

But even President Bush’s sweeping proposals to track terrorist suspects will have limited effect as long as the United States remains a nation open to global travel and commerce, experts said Tuesday.

“We would feel a great deal more secure, but we’d be only marginally more secure,” said Demetrios Papademetriou, director of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. “Unless we really hunker down and basically close ourselves off to the rest of the world, these things are not going to protect us against a determined terrorist.”

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have been the catalyst for a wave of proposals from Congress and the White House, all aimed at enhancing the security of America’s borders. In today’s sharply altered political climate, many are likely to be implemented. But it could take many months, if not years, to perfect some of the new approaches, such as a long-awaited electronic surveillance system to monitor foreigners who enter the United States on student visas.

On Tuesday, the White House said its new Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force would propose added controls on student visas within 60 days. It had announced the task force one day earlier, pledging the new unit would coordinate efforts to keep terrorists out of the country and find those already here.

Members of Congress have weighed in with other ideas, including the use of biometric technologies, such as computerized facial recognition and fingerprints, to single out those who would enter this country under false pretenses.

Legislation sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), for example, would create a centralized database of all noncitizens who enter the United States. Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) want the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service to have immediate access to the “lookout” lists of suspected terrorists maintained by the CIA and FBI.

“The screening of foreign nationals who seek entry into the U.S. must be improved,” Kennedy said recently, calling for better intelligence; the use of biometric technologies, such as digitized fingerprints to check identities; and more effective screening of visa applicants at U.S. consular offices overseas.

Such proposals “can make it harder for bad guys to come in,” said Angela Kelly, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group in Washington, adding that more effective use of intelligence and technology helps “the goal of trying to isolate terrorists and not isolate America.”

Indeed, Bush went out of his way Monday to strike a balanced tone, declaring, “We welcome legal immigrants, and we welcome people coming to America. We welcome the process that encourages people to come to our country to visit, to study and to work. What we don’t welcome are people who come to hurt the American people.”

Until now, attempts to draw that distinction have not always met with success. Ever since the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, some members of Congress have called on the INS to develop a computerized method to track students and alert authorities if they disappear. Before Sept. 11, that approach was endangered by disputes over financing, but most of the opposition has since faded. Still, the project is considered technically difficult, and INS officials are racing to meet a congressional deadline of 2003 for the new system.

But would such a system for monitoring foreign students have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks? The answer is unclear; at least two of the 19 hijackers entered this country as students but violated the terms of their visas.

“The fact is that most people who come into this country with visas come in on tourist and business visas,” said Victor C. Johnson, public policy director for NAFSA: Assn. of International Educators. “The thought that it’s going to be possible to address the big issues that he [Bush] raises in 60 days is kind of ludicrous.”

But Johnson said his group would participate in the effort to come up with more effective policies.

On a separate matter, Thomas J. Ridge, director of the White House Office of Homeland Security, said Tuesday that U.S. and Mexican officials would be meeting “in the near future” to discuss ways in which the two nations’ visa and immigration policies could be more closely coordinated.

The White House has acknowledged that post-attack security concerns overshadow the effort to reach an accord with Mexico over the status of millions of Mexicans unlawfully in this country. The new initiative on immigration security suggests future negotiations with Mexico will also focus on U.S. efforts to create harmonious border policies for all of North America.

Others, meanwhile, caution it would be difficult for Bush’s initiative to focus entirely on terrorism without considering the other problems of border enforcement.

“There appears to be an underlying assumption that there’s a way to keep terrorists from overseas out without creating a comprehensive immigration control system that will also keep out non-terrorist illegal aliens,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a restrictionist group. “But if a Mexican day laborer can sneak across the border, an Al Qaeda terrorist can also sneak across.”

However the initiative is ultimately shaped, it cannot succeed without a higher level of cooperation among government agencies, some observers cautioned Tuesday.

“Just because Congress says ‘Do this’ or the administration says ‘Do that,’ it doesn’t mean that the next day people begin to transfer data from one agency to the other,” Papademetriou said.

Even with better systems in place, law enforcement officials may find it difficult to identify those who mean harm but have legal identification and no criminal record.

“What’s most difficult is knowing someone’s intent,” said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. “We cannot look into someone’s mind and someone’s heart, even with all the reporting and all the tracking in the world.”