getting angry

Readers of Col. Hunt's book are supposed to get angry.

It succeeded in pissing me off. He frankly and unvarnishedly lays out facts and chains of events that, taken together, can not but make any decent American steaming mad.

Little of it is wholly new to me. As much as anyone is and has been, I know we're in a war. And I've been at least a casual student of terrorism since realizing I was, personally, a target way back in the early 1980.

Col. Hunt invites his readers to think about what they can do to help win the fight. Although I no longer strap on a holster every day when I get dressed (after sleeping with a loaded pistol under my pillow), as a consular officer I'm no less part of our nation's system of defenses.

Since 9/11 the State Department, in cooperation with several agencies, notably the FBI and DHS, taken quite seriously its role in making the visa process much less of a national security vulnerability. A great deal has been done and, to our leadership's credit, a continuous effort seems to have been institutionalized whereby improvements to the system are constantly being sought out and implemented. It's not a perfect system, nothing could be, but it seems to be working.

The two aims of our visa process, as carried out by consular officers, are in perpetual tension with one another; facilitate legitimate travel (the so-called "open door") while working to keep out those who would do us harm (the "secure borders" half of the equation).

A key word here is "legitimate." Economically and politically it's simply impossible to stop international travel to the U.S. It's simply not possible, for more than the extremely short-term, to shut-down the borders. Earlier tonight, Madam-at-Arms and I watched United 93. When the head air traffic controller ordered all flights grounded and international flights diverted, he became my hero. It was obviously, in hindsight, the right move, but for someone whose entire career field involved keeping the air traffic moving it must have been quite psychically jarring to order its cessation.

And so it seems sometimes in the visa process. Without going into other than the most vague details, a number of checks and procedures have been implemented to help us keep out the people who should be kept out. A lot more is considered than the solely economics-motivated intending immigrant; just the sorts of folks who you might think should get extra scrutiny do in fact receive it. And it pisses off lots of people. It causes delays (although we do our best to minimize that) even though we urge people who're making travel plans to apply for their visa as early as possible. Of course at some posts early visa appointments are simply not possible due to significant backlogs of applicants at some posts. But I digress.

What bothers me oftentimes is, even with the increased scrutiny and checks for a pretty broad range of applicants, there's just this cognitive dissonance that strikes me with regards to applicants from, for example, countries identified as being state sponsors of terrorism or as being part of the "Axis of Evil."

As much as anyone, I appreciate the need to avoid unnecessarily constricting legitimate travelers. That seems valid to me on both economic and business grounds if only because one of our national strengths is as an economic superpower. In the middle of a war, it wouldn't make sense to handicap ourselves. And as a reasonable person, I'm loathe to infringe on legitimate travel for purely humanitarian reasons that would appeal to anyone with a heart.

But what I often wonder is why some travel, by persons of certain nationalities or holding certain citizenships, wasn't banned entirely.

Let me talk a little bit straighter; after the "Axis of Evil" speech, why wasn't there a ban on all U.S. travel by nationals and citizens of these countries: Iraq, Iran, Libya, and North Korea?

By the time of that speech, Afghanistan had already been liberated and was characterized in that speech by Pres. Bush as being an ally. Likewise, Iraq (or at least its government) is out of the axis, at least until we do something stupid like withdraw our troops prematurely (but that's a subject for another time). But that still leaves two ends of the axis, at least one of which has a lot of people applying to travel to the U.S.

Now I'm not suggesting that our family reunification-based Immigrant Visa (IV) programs be suspended, particularly given the scrutiny each applicant undergoes. But Non-Immigrant Visa (NIV) travel and other-than-family-based IV travel could have been suspended.

I'm not an unreasonable person (I think) and for folks of these nationalities who, for instance, win the Diversity Visa (DV) lottery ought to be exempted from the statutory requirement that they travel to the U.S. during the year they win the DV lottery. If we put their applications on hold "for the duration," then we can stop the clock for the individuals. These are our rules, after all, and Congress can modify them to better suit us.

I'd also exempt the family-based NIV categories, such as the K-1 "fiancee" visa from any such travel ban.

During our last declared world war, enemy aliens were interned; I can't believe we continued immigration and non-immigrant travel as usual. I know this war is different in that very few actual governments will go on record as being at war with us, no matter what they actually do against us behind our backs (or under our noses). It just seems to me that we could do a bit more in our own interests here. The 9/11 hijackers all entered the U.S. legally, even though they didn't stay that way. And we're now looking at a record increase in the number of student visas for nationals of the country most-represented among the 9/11 hijackers, Saudi Arabia.

I'm no Saudi expert. I speak only a few, mostly polite words of Arabic and have never set foot on Saudi Arabian soil/sand. I appreciate that from my lowly perspective on U.S.-Saudi foreign policy I probably don't grasp all the factors at play in our bilateral relations. And giving the screening process its due, the Department along with DHS does a much better job than perhaps we used to do in scrutinizing travelers and visa applicants from that part of the world. Still this great increase is a little worrisome. I'm greatly heartened by the recent stories about the Egyptian students who decided to strike out on their own rather than go the school which was sponsoring their student visa. Within a very short time they were missed, reported missing, and being sought nation-wide. That tells me something's working.