NEW YORK: In the aftermath of the World Trade Center explosion, the US Administration is under increasing pressure to plug holes in the immigration procedures. Mohammad A Salameh, one of the two main suspects in the World Trade Center came to the country as a visitor in 1987 and stayed on after have slipped through the Federal Immigration bureaucracy.
It is estimated that nearly 500,000 other visitors drift through the country as their visas lapse. These people are never traced or thought of until any of them get involved in some incident.
Every year more than 20 million people come to the country as temporary visitors and the existing procedures to keep a track of catch one of them are not adequate, Many of these people apply for political asylum and remain for additional years until a decision is taken on their applications.
The Federal Government is seriously planning to tighten immigration controls and stem the increasing flow of immigrants from the third world countries. “There is no question in my mind that for years the federal govt immigration policy or lack of it has had a profound impact on California, Florida and Texas,” President Clinton said to journalists in California.
Congressman Schumer has proposed stationing INS agents in foreign countries to coordinate visa procedures and he wants more detention centers built in New York to handle some 1000 political asylum seekers who arrive catch month, most of them are given hearing dates, a year or more into the future and allowed to move about freely in the country in the meantime. Half of them never show up for the hearings, Immigration laws, liberalized in 1980 allow people Seeking residency, the same legal rights as an American citizen once they are in the country.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 19, 1993
