lol Bush/Cheney duh ! Wrong for the right reasons ,now isnt that what you just admonished others for??? Your getting old MD!

That made absolutely no sense whatsoever. But that's par for the course with you.

This government is OUT OF CONTROL! The system has been gamed!

No Coyote Needed
U.S. Visas Still an Easy Ticket in
Developing Countries


By David Seminara

Download the .pdf version


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Introduction
Mention the words “illegal immigrant” and most Americans conjure up images of desperate migrants sneaking across the Mexican border. There is another side to America’s immigration problem, however, that most know very little about — those who come with valid, temporary visas and do not return home. According to a 2006 Pew Hispanic Center study,1 nearly half of the 12 million-plus illegal aliens in America arrived legally with temporary, non-immigrant visas. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates that a “substantial” percentage of America’s illegal population is made up of visa overstays — their estimates range from 27 to 57 percent. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted in a 2004 report2 on visa overstays that DHS may be significantly underestimating the magnitude of the visa overstay problem — noting that the DHS study only quantified the number of visa overstays in the illegal population — whereas many who overstay visas are later able to legalize their status.

A DHS survey of 1,000 legal permanent residents (green card holders) revealed that 30 percent had previously been illegal and that 31 percent of that group had overstayed non-immigrant visas.3 These statistics drive home the point that huge numbers of foreign nationals are succeeding in convincing American consular officers that they are bona fide tourists, when in fact they are intending immigrants. Despite the importance of visas to our immigration problem, all of the major American presidential candidates still frame the illegal immigration crisis solely in the context of securing the border with Mexico, and no candidate has mentioned the need to tighten our visa regulations.

Despite that fact that the law is written broadly enough that most foreigners from the developing world could be refused for a visitor’s visa as “intending immigrants,” non-immigrant visa issuance rates are still shockingly high. In 2007, 74 percent of the more than five million foreign nationals who applied for visitor’s visas were approved. (See Table 1.) This figure is particularly startling when one considers that citizens from the world’s most prosperous countries — including most of Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand — do not need visitor’s visas to enter the United States. Two-thirds of Mexican applicants were issued visitor’s (B1/B2) visas (or border crossing cards), four-fifths of Chinese applicants were issued visas, 88 percent of Russians were granted visas, and more than half of Haitian and Dominican applicants were successful.4 (See Table 2.) In this Backgrounder, the author, a former State Department official with experience interviewing tens of thousands of visa applicants from all over the world, explores some of the reasons why it remains relatively easy for all but the most destitute applicants to obtain non-immigrant visas, despite the public perception that visa regulations have tightened since 9/11.



Reasons for this include:

• Foreign service officers tend to have a diplomatic rather than a law enforcement mindset.

• The crushing volume of visa applicants. Most visa processing posts are woefully understaffed, which results in very brief interviews. Managers value speed of adjudication over clarity of decision making, so many borderline visa cases that deserve closer scrutiny end up being issuances.

• Developing countries place great importance on visas in bilateral discussions.

• Consular managers are required only to review visa refusals — not issuances — forcing consular officers to routinely justify denials.

• There is a lack of accountability and emphasis on adherence to the law as a promotion criterion.

• There are no quality control measures — evidenced by the fact that the State Department never requires posts to conduct visa validation studies to estimate visa overstay rates.

• Consular officers’ tend to value applicants’ purpose of travel over their legal qualifications for the visa.

• DHS has failed to implement meaningful exit controls or to share entry/exit data with consular officials overseas, leaving officers without adequate information on visa renewal applicants.

• The lack of feedback to consular officers on visa overstays leads many to underestimate how serious the overstay problem is.

• Officers evaluate how well-off visa candidates are by the standards of their home country, rather than by U.S. standards, and often fail to understand how a school teacher in Romania might prefer to be a cab driver in Chicago, or why a nurse from Ecuador would wash dishes at a restaurant in New York.

• Refused applicants, their relatives, and members of Congress place pressure on consular officials to overturn visa refusals, and sometimes manage to “wear down” consular officers.

• Consular officers often assume that visa applicants won’t overstay their visas because they will be confined to doing poorly paid jobs as illegal immigrants in the United States, when, in fact, many who overstay non-immigrant visas are able to eventually legalize their status and get good jobs.

• The simple reality that it is far easier to say “yes” to applicants than to shatter their dreams by telling them that they don’t qualify to come to America.

CLICK ON LINK TO CONTINUE....THIS IS A LENGTHY REPORT


http://www.cis.org/articles/2008/back208.html