The ability of the INS to deny entry to illegal aliens and to locate and remove aliens who have violated their visa status or snuck into the country has been seriously eroded by a lack of resource allocation and political support from the administration and Congress. This has led to a staggering increase in the volume of aliens residing here illegally. The enormous and still growing communities of illegal aliens and the breakdown of the capability of the INS to enforce our immigration laws have resulted in an environment in which international terrorists can easily avoid detection.

The past decade has seen a virtual blind eye turned to mass illegal immigration. The INS has been allowed to abandon all prospect of meaningful enforcement, and sanctions against employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens have been all but dropped entirely. As a result, we have allowed in literally millions of people who have not undergone required background screening and about whom we know nothing.

Obviously, terrorists cannot be deterred by the same policies aimed at discouraging ordinary illegal immigrants. However, policies that would result in significant reductions in the illegal alien population would free up INS manpower and resources to focus on those people who pose a real threat to our national security. Looking for terrorists among the estimated 8-11 million illegal aliens living here is like searching for a needle in a haystack; the objective of our policy needs to be to reduce the size of the irresponsibly-expanded haystack.

Essential in the fight against illegal immigration is preventing illegal aliens from obtaining employment; aliens would be significantly less likely to come or stay illegally if they knew that employers would not hire them. In 1996, Congress instructed the INS to establish pilot programs to test how an employment eligibility document screening system by employers could best be made verifiable. The INS has yet to report on the pilot verification programs it has run.

Some action has been taken independently by the Social Security Administration (SSA), which has stepped up its "no match" letter program notifying employers when the Social Security number submitted for an employee doesn't match the individual claiming it. This year, the agency will send out as many as 800,000 such notices, compared to 110,000 last year. Previously, a letter was sent only if eleven or more mismatches were found at a company; now, one mismatch results in a notification letter.

However, the SSA has resisted INS efforts to find illegal workers using SSA data. In one case, the INS had to use a private credit service to check Social Security data while auditing a meat-packing firm, because the SSA would not provide information.3 The Securing America's Future through Enforcement Reform (SAFER) Act (recently introduced as H.R. 5013) would establish a new employment verification system that would require employers to verify whether prospective employees are eligible to work legally in the U.S. The system would require the Social Security Administration to develop a method for matching the name and Social Security numbers provided to the verification system against the agency's records. The INS would be required to develop a method for matching the name and identifying information provided to the verification system against INS databases.

• Congress should adopt a national, mandatory electronic work eligibility verification system.

• Limit the issuance of Social Security cards to citizens and aliens authorized to work in this country, and require verification of eligibility for adult first-time applicants.

• The Social Security Administration should share no-match information with the INS. The INS should have access to that information when doing enforcement operations.

Every year, millions of foreigners enter the U.S. as "nonimmigrants" (visitors or workers of some type) for a limited period. Although they are expected to return home at the end of their visit, there is no effective means for detecting those who do not. In 1996, Congress passed a law (the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, or IIRAIRA) requiring the INS to set up a computerized database to track this information. But due to objections from the tourism industry and others, full implementation has been delayed until 2005.

Without entry-exit controls, the U.S. has no way of noticing whether a nonimmigrant unlawfully overstays his/her entry permit. In the absence of such a system, terrorists and other criminals can more easily enter the U.S. and remain to threaten us from within. Several of the September 11th hijackers did exactly this and overstayed their visas undetected, able to remain unnoticed while they planned their attacks.

The Border Security Act enacted in May again mandated the implementation of the computerized entry-exit database by 2005. This entry-exit database, which will collect records on arriving foreign visitors and match them with departure records, must be made compatible with other security databases. (The Border Security Act also mandates that electronic, tamper-resistant visas containing biometric information be used in conjunction with the new entry-exit system, so that arrival and departure data can be entered electronically on a real-time basis.)

A significant omission in the Border Security Act's call for an entry-exit system is that it exempts Canadian citizens, who will not be required to provide passports or visas in order to gain entry to the U.S.-providing an easy loophole for terrorists to exploit.

Also of concern is that fact that, although the INS has begun work on the computerized entry-exit database system, the agency has a long history of poorly implemented projects in this area. A Department of Justice Inspector General's report in August of 2001 found severe deficiencies in the agency's effort to develop an entry-exit database.

• The entry-exit system should be amended to require data on all visitors, including Canadians. Canadians would remain exempt from the passport/visa requirement only if they presented a machine-readable Canadian identity document, such as a driver's license.

• The record of all entries and departures must be immediately retrievable by immigration and homeland security officials

The INS is routinely unable to locate individuals whom it wants to deport, some of them for criminal violations. After the attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft acknowledged that the FBI and INS, in cooperation with local law enforcement authorities, had been unable to locate more than 1,000 foreign students from Arab and Muslim countries (about one in five of those sought) for interviews related to the terrorist attack.4

Earlier this year, the Justice Department announced the launch of the "Absconder Apprehension Initiative," an effort to locate an estimated 314,000 foreign nationals who have ignored court orders to turn themselves in to the INS for deportation. Officials say that the operation will focus first on about 6,000 men from countries identified as al-Qaeda strongholds.

The INS's ability to locate these individuals on its own is limited, since there are only about 1,200 agents charged with interior enforcement, so it has sought the assistance of state and local law enforcement agencies by putting the data in the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database.

The Department of Justice has also taken action to put teeth back into the unenforced registration requirement for virtually all non-citizens, regardless of immigration status. Attorney General Ashcroft recently announced a proposed regulation that would begin using criminal penalties against non-citizens who fail to notify immigration officials when they change their address. Restoring enforcement of the registration requirement would increase the ability of the INS to locate immigrants and also provide an important method of detaining immigrants who may pose a security threat.

Critics correctly charge that terrorists will not register their whereabouts with the INS. The benefit of registration, however, is that law-abiding non-citizens will be quickly and easily accounted for, and the INS's resources can then be focused on those who have reasons not to want to be located.

Another new Department of Justice regulation will require that visitors from countries where terrorists are known to operate be fingerprinted, photographed, and questioned about their plans in the U.S. (Foreigners seeking to live in the U.S. are already required to be photographed and fingerprinted.)

• The INS must determine what staffing level is needed to promptly locate and remove deportable absconders and must be granted sufficient authority and funding to accomplish it.

• Federal immigration authorities should enlist the help of local police departments, who are in the best position to locate suspects in their communities.

At any point in time, there are roughly one million foreign students studying in America. In recent years, the FBI has warned Congress that state sponsors of terrorism have been funding students to come to the U.S., where many are studying technology-related fields that may contribute to foreign weapons of mass destruction programs.5

One of the September 11th hijackers was admitted to the U.S. as a foreign student; he never showed up at the school, and the college did not report that fact to the INS. Two more of the hijackers entered the country as nonimmigrant visitors and then applied to change to student status once they were here. The INS granted them preliminary approval to enroll in a Florida flight school (and then sent their change of status approval notices to the school six months after the attacks).

A computerized system to track foreign students was designed in 1997 (the Coordinated Interagency Partnership Regarding International Students, or CIPRIS), but due to intense lobbying by colleges, it was never implemented beyond the pilot program stage.

While openly acknowledging widespread gaps in the student monitoring system, colleges and universities have worked diligently to avoid any measures they think might impede the flow of foreign students (one that they say accounts for ten percent of their revenues6).

September 11 gave new impetus to establishing a foreign student tracking system. The Border Security Act again mandated the development of such a system. In addition, the law improves upon transitional regulations by prohibiting individuals from adjusting their status to a student visa; requires consular screening of student visa applicants; and mandates a review of educational institutions certified to admit student visa holders. Institutions not in compliance may lose the ability to sponsor foreign students.

The INS is now developing a new automated computer system to track foreign students, called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). It will electronically maintain current information on foreign students, including immigration status changes, changes of address, changes in program of study, and other details.

Before SEVIS, schools filled out and mailed I-20 forms to foreign students, confirming admission and allowing the issuance of a visa. Once SEVIS is implemented, schools will enter information about students electronically into the database. Only INS-approved schools with access to SEVIS will be able to create I-20 forms for students. The INS will be required to decertify schools that violate program requirements, thereby removing the schools' ability to issue I-20s.

Meanwhile, tighter controls have been issued to make it more difficult for aliens to obtain student status. Nonimmigrant visitors will no longer be allowed to apply to switch their status to student without leaving the country; a new INS rule requires them to have obtained a student visa before entering the U.S. (Until now, foreign students have been permitted to begin classes in the U.S. while their student visa applications were pending.) Additionally, the Border Security Act requires any foreign national seeking a student visa to apply in person at a consulate abroad before entering the U.S.

While SEVIS holds the potential to be significantly more effective than the INS's previous, paper-based foreign student monitoring system, its success is not guaranteed. The system will only be useful if the INS acts on the data being entered into it. Additionally, the INS will need to review and re-certify the thousands of schools currently certified to enroll foreign students and must ensure that information is quickly and accurately entered into the system. Audits of the foreign student program show that many of the over 70,000 institutions registered to enroll foreign students are either fronts for fraud or defunct.

To date, the INS has not announced any concrete plans for verifying the accuracy of the data that schools enter into SEVIS. Furthermore, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice issued a report in May stating that it is unlikely that the INS will be able to meet the January 2003 deadline for full implementation of SEVIS.

• The INS should more closely monitor the schools that are permitted to enroll foreign students and should conduct regular re-certification reviews.

• The INS must ensure that schools are entering timely and accurate information into SEVIS.

• The INS must allocate sufficient resources to analyze SEVIS data and investigate suspected fraud.