By Aziz Haniffa
WASHINGTON: Indian nationals accounted for the highest number of illegal immigrants who entered the United States last year from New York’s Kennedy international airport, a senior immigration official said here last week. Chris Sale, acting Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, told Congress that “of the excludable coming into JEK airport, 30% were from India, 26% from China and 16% from Pakistan.”
She added: “These are the clusters of countries where we’ve seen the largest number of people” arriving without documents or with fraudulent documents and promptly applying for political asylum.
Although most arriving at JFK are from India, China and Pakistan, she added, not all of them necessarily come directly from these countries.
Sale said the majority came from Europe, where they had been living illegally for years, but due to an “extraordinarily heightened” policy of seeking out illegals there, they had begun to head for the U.S. with no documents or with fraudulent ones, usually forged passports.
She said a claimant for asylum was usually released with a work perm it for a year and could quickly apply for a Social Security number and driver’s license.
Sale’s appearance was to give the Immigration Service’s views On three bills pending in the House that are designed to plug the loophole used by bogus asylum seekers, “One has been introduced by Mazzoli, a Kentucky Democrat in the forefront of immigration reform. It calls for the summary exclusion at ports of entry of those arriving without documents or with fraudulent ones.
Another, introduced by Rep. Charles Schumer (D-New York), provides for pre-inspection overseas. The third, by Rep. Bill McCollum (R.Florida), calls for revamping the asylum laws to determine whether aliens should be granted protection on account of threats to life or freedom.
Mazzoli said that “thousands were entering with no papers or fraudulent papers, some with nefarious schemes and militant intent”
He and several other legislators pointed to the example of Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani national, He entered illegally and applied for political asylum, which entitled him to a work permit, an SS card and driver’s license, helping him to purchase weapons used in the killing of Central Intelligence Agency officials last March.
Schumer said that the asylum process, “which has been designed to serve noble ends, is simply becoming a vast loophole in which abuses far outnumber the legitimates Claimants,” Schumer warned that “as abuses skyrocket, the credibility of the system declines precipitously.” His pre-inspection bill would have INS officials stationed in foreign airports “’so that people without the proper documents can be screened out,” he explained.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 25, 1993
