Remove visa overstayers to increase national security

REMEMBER. Forget. Repeat. For 17 years, America has engaged in a collective ritual every Sept. 11: Hang flags, light candles, bow heads and make vows to “Never forget.”

Then, every Sept. 12,it’s back to business as usual: See something, do nothing.

Did you remember that five of the 9/11 hijackers carried out their killer plot after overstaying their visas, evading detection and avoiding deportation?

Did you remember that other radical Muslim members of the Terrorist Visa Overstayers Club?

They include 1997 New

York subway bomber Lafi Khalil; 1993 World Trade Center bombers Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh and Eyad Ismoil; 1993 New York landmark bombing plot conspirator Fadil Abdelgani; convicted Times Square bomb plotter Faisal Shahzad; and U.S. Capitol bomb plotter Amine El Khalifi.

Did you remember that a year after the jihadist attacks that stole nearly 3,000 innocent lives, the 9/11 Commission urged our government to build a biometric entry-exit program to track and remove visa overstayers — who comprise an estimated 40 percent of the total illegal immigrant population?

Did you remember that Congress had already mandated exactly such a system for all ports of entry — land, sea and air — in 1996 as part of the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibilityact?

On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, GOP House Homeland Security Chairwoman Candice Miller reported on the federal backlog of more than 750,000 unvetted visa overstay records: “If we are serious about controlling who comes into the nation and preventing another 9/11 attack, we need to get serious about an exit program,” she testified.

Spoiler alert: The swamp creatures in Washington are not serious.

Now, the Department of Homeland Security reports a whopping 700,000 foreigners overstayed their temporary tourist, business or student visas in fiscal 2017. Most alarming, among the countries with the highest overstay rates are the terrorist breeding grounds of Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya.

Last year, a DHS inspector general’s audit concluded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot account for all visa overstays because its 27 different databases are a stovepiped mess. ICE arrested a measly 0.4 percent of visa overstays (3,402 out of 500,000) it could account for — in part because investigators couldn’t access information or weren’t even aware of available national security databases.

President Donald Trump called on Congress to expedite completion of the long-delayed biometric exit program, and several pilot programs at airports are now in place. But Trump faces the same open borders/big business roadblocks that have stymied the system ever since the twin towers came crashing down. If Congress wanted to, it could immediately pass measures to make overstaying a visa a felony, to impose re-entry bars on visa violators and to require bonds for foreigners entering through the highest-risk temporary visa programs or from countries of concern.

But annual pretension is so much easier than actual prevention. All remembrance and no action dishonors the 3,000 who died 17 years ago — and endangers us all.

Michelle Malkin is host of “Michelle Malkin Investigates” on CRTV. com. Her email address is writemalkin@gmail.com.