[Infowarrior] - U.S. Is Dropping Effort to Track if Visitors Leave

[Richard Forno]

December 15, 2006
U.S. Is Dropping Effort to Track if Visitors Leave
By RACHEL L. SWARNS and ERIC LIPTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/washington/15exit.html?ei=5094&en=27f5ff9d
cbd78759&hp=&ex=1166158800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 ‹ In a major blow to the Bush administration¹s efforts
to secure borders, domestic security officials have for now given up on
plans to develop a facial or fingerprint recognition system to determine
whether a vast majority of foreign visitors leave the country, officials
say.

Domestic security officials had described the system, known as U.S. Visit,
as critical to security and important in efforts to curb illegal
immigration. Similarly, one-third of the overall total of illegal immigrants
are believed to have overstayed their visas, a Congressional report says.

Tracking visitors took on particular urgency after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks, when it became clear that some of the hijackers had remained in the
country after their visas had expired.

But in recent days, officials at the Homeland Security Department have
conceded that they lack the financing and technology to meet their deadline
to have exit-monitoring systems at the 50 busiest land border crossings by
next December. A vast majority of foreign visitors enter and exit by land
from Mexico and Canada, and the policy shift means that officials will
remain unable to track the departures.

A report released on Thursday by the Government Accountability Office, the
nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, restated those findings,
reporting that the administration believes that it will take 5 to 10 years
to develop technology that might allow for a cost-effective departure
system.

Domestic security officials, who have allocated $1.7 billion since the 2003
fiscal year to track arrivals and departures, argue that creating the
program with the existing technology would be prohibitively expensive.

They say it would require additional employees, new buildings and roads at
border crossings, and would probably hamper the vital flow of commerce
across those borders.

Congress ordered the creation of such a system in 1996.

In an interview last week, the assistant secretary for homeland security
policy, Stewart A. Baker, estimated that an exit system at the land borders
would cost ³tens of billions of dollars² and said the department had
concluded that such a program was not feasible, at least for the time being.

³It is a pretty daunting set of costs, both for the U.S. government and the
economy,² Mr. Stewart said. ³Congress has said, ŒWe want you to do it.¹ We
are not going to ignore what Congress has said. But the costs here are
daunting.

³There are a lot of good ideas and things that would make the country safer.
But when you have to sit down and compare all the good ideas people have
developed against each other, with a limited budget, you have to make
choices that are much harder.²

The news sent alarms to Congress, where some Republicans and Democrats
warned that suspending the monitoring plan would leave the United States
vulnerable.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is a departing
subcommittee chairman on the House International Relations Committee, said
the administration could not say it was protecting domestic security without
creating a viable exit monitoring system.

³There will not be border security in this country until we have a knowledge
of both entry and exit,² Mr. Rohrabacher said. ³We have to make a choice. Do
we want to act and control our borders or do we want to have tens of
millions of illegals continuing to pour into our country?²

Representative Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who is set to lead
the Homeland Security Committee, also expressed concern.

³It is imperative that Congress work in partnership with the department to
develop a comprehensive border security system that ensures we know who is
entering and exiting this country and one that cannot be defeated by
imposters, criminals and terrorists,² Mr. Thompson said in a statement
Thursday.

In January 2004, domestic security officials began fingerprint scanning for
arriving visitors. The program has screened more than 64 million travelers
and prevented more than 1,300 criminals and immigration violators from
entering, officials said.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other officials often call
the program a singular achievement in making the country safer. U.S. Visit
fingerprints and photographs 2 percent of the people entering the country,
because Americans and most Canadians and Mexicans are exempt.

Efforts to determine whether visitors actually leave have faltered.
Departure monitoring would help officials hunt for foreigners who have not
left, if necessary. Domestic security officials say, however, it would be
too expensive to conduct fingerprint or facial recognition scans for land
departures. Officials have experimented with less costly technologies,
including a system that would monitor by radio data embedded in a travel
form carried by foreigners as they depart by foot or in vehicles.

Tests of that technology, Radio Frequency Identification, found a high
failure rate. At one border point, the system correctly identified 14
percent of the 166 vehicles carrying the embedded documents, the General
Accountability Office reported.

The Congressional investigators noted the ³numerous performance and
reliability problems² with the technology and said it remained unclear how
domestic security officials would be able to meet their legal obligation to
create an exit program.

Some immigration analysts said stepping away from the program raised
questions again about the commitment to enforce border security and
immigration laws.

A senior policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, Jessica
Vaughn, said the government had long been too deferential to big businesses
and travel groups that raised concerns that exit technology might disrupt
travel and trade.

³I worry that the issue of cost is an excuse for not doing anything,² said
Ms. Vaughn, whose group advocates curbing immigration. Domestic security
officials said they still hoped to find a way to create an exit system at
land borders. ³We would to do more testing,² a spokesman for the department,
Jarrod Agen, said. ³We are evaluating the initial tests to determine how to
move forward.²