Best Way to Tend Borders Escapes INS

In the hopes of politicians, it has emerged as one answer to the challenge of international terrorism: keeping tabs on foreigners as they enter and exit the United States. “It’s important that we have good information,” President Bush said recently, “so we can secure the homeland.”

Yet an array of obstacles still stands in the way of a comprehensive “entry-exit” system as called for by many members of Congress and endorsed by the White House. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has yet to make some of the basic decisions about the demanding new task, including how to prevent spectacular traffic jams at border posts.

A complete system could require construction of many new exit gates to process travelers leaving the United States, sparking environmental concerns and difficult planning decisions at 153 crossings along the Mexican and Canadian borders. And while some former critics are more receptive to such controls since Sept. 11, business interests still fear they could damage cross-border commerce.

The Bush administration last week requested $380 million for a “comprehensive” entry-exit system and set a target date of September 2004 for a program that would track hundreds of millions of border crossings a year. But close observers question whether the federal government can finish the project on time, and whether it will be as all-encompassing as the White House has urged.

“This idea is easier said than done,” said Theresa Brown, manager of labor and immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “When you start delving into what it really entails, it’s a whole lot more complicated than people might think.”

Immigration officials monitor all arrivals and departures by air and sea--but they have no strategy to track departures by land. The approach is widely seen as antiquated.

Even inside the INS, officials concede that some of the most basic issues remain far from settled. More than 505 million people entered the United States last year through Mexico and Canada (including travelers who came here more than once). Of the half-billion entries, more than half were made by noncitizens.

“We’re going to be going out to private industry to get ideas and suggestions and to ask, ‘If you had to track the entry and exit of all these people, how would you do it?’ ” said Shonnie Lyon, a chief inspector in the INS office of inspections.

It is an ancient question. Congress called for all departing “aliens” to be recorded on official manifests as long ago as 1907, according to the INS. Yet it was not until 1996--as public concerns mounted about terrorism and the booming population of illegal immigrants--that lawmakers ordered the immigration service to come up with a modern plan to do the job.

Before Sept. 11, the proposed new border controls sparked a fierce backlash. Border-state interests warned that long lines would trigger economic chaos, disrupting tourism and other industries. Business interests feared that new red tape would bog down the movement of cargo at a time when manufacturers were demanding parts and supplies faster than ever before. Merchants near Mexico and Canada complained that new hassles in crossing the borders would keep customers out of their shops.

A Detroit-area official once argued that if the INS needed an extra 30 seconds to process even half of the daily vehicles that crossed the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, it would take so much time as to “effectively close the bridge.”

Besieged with complaints, the INS abandoned plans three years ago to try out the approach at the border crossing in Eagle Pass, Texas.

“Every time you increase the amount it takes to do an inspection or check the driver, you’re backing up traffic--and that creates major problems,” said Martin Rojas, director for cross-border operations for the American Trucking Assns.

Technology May Not Be Up to the Task

Congress postponed the mandate in 1998 and again in 2000, when it sought to ease the economic anxieties by prohibiting the new system from adding paperwork. Under current law, the system would be in full effect by 2005, a schedule that the White House wants to speed up by a year.

Truckers are prepared to help establish a workable plan that addresses the needs of border security, Rojas said. But he voiced the widespread doubts: “We’re going to have to see--I don’t really think the technology is there yet.”

The challenge appears greatest at land borders. Jets and ships already collect passenger manifest information. But tracking departing motorists represents an entirely new challenge, in part because U.S. land borders were designed to inspect entrants, not those who are leaving.

At the busy entry point of San Ysidro, 24 gates await travelers entering the United States from Mexico; only two exist for those who are heading south of the border. Stephen Gross, chairman of the San Diego-based Border Trade Alliance, which advocates international trade, warned that without a major expansion of facilities, “you’d have a line that was 10 hours long.”

Such concerns have long slowed progress on a plan. But the politics all changed after Sept. 11, when the INS was embarrassed by its lack of readily accessible records for the 19 hijackers.

The proposed new system would have quickly accessible records of noncitizen arrivals and departures. Advocates say this information could be used in concert with other government databases, creating a new potential to tip off officials when foreign visitors stay too long in this country, and also helping catch those whose names are on terrorist lookout lists.

“If you’re not supposed to be here more than a period of time, then maybe you ought to just go on home,” Bush said last week, suggesting one use of the proposed system.

System of Magnetic Cards Considered

For all that, INS officials have yet to make basic technical decisions about how they would record entries and exits. The agency has considered one technology in which at least some foreign travelers could record their border crossings by swiping a magnetic card, and another in which it would apply stickers with bar codes to vehicles that are driven across the border.

More recently, the INS has considered whether it should issue foreign travelers cards that contain data in a radio signal.

“As they pull up to the booth, the antenna reads the card,” said Lyon, describing such an approach as “a distinct possibility.”