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State Department hangs on to visa authority

Sunday, August 04, 2002

By Jack Kelly, Post-Gazette National Security Writer

The State Department apparently has won a turf battle over who should issue visas.

The House last week defeated an amendment which would have transferred responsibility for visas from State's Bureau of Consular Affairs to the proposed Department of Homeland Security.

The Senate version of the Homeland Security bill also leaves visa responsibility with State, so the issue would appear to be settled, although Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, plans to offer an amendment similar to the one offered in the House by Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., when the Senate takes up the bill this week.

Weldon said visa authority should be transferred to homeland security because it makes administrative sense, and because the State Department has done a poor job of screening visa applicants.

All of the Sept. 11 hijackers entered the United States on lawful visas. Fifteen of 19 were Saudis. Three of the Saudis were admitted through a special program which, in effect, delegated to Saudi travel agents responsibility for checking the bona fides of visa applicants.

"Visa offices are our perimeter in the war on terror," Weldon said. "Terrorists couldn't shoot up airports or bomb nuclear power plants if they couldn't get into the United States in the first place. Consular officials have been asleep on guard."

Visa authority should remain with the State Department, counters John Naland, president of the American Foreign Service Association, because Foreign Service Officers "have the smarts, the knowledge and the language skills to determine who does, or does not get a visa."

If authority were transferred to Homeland Security, visas would be issued by "rent-a-cops," Grant Green, undersecretary of state for management, told a House committee. It also would be expensive for Homeland Security to duplicate the infrastructure Consular Affairs has in place to issue visas, he said.

Under current law, the Justice Department, in which the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) resides, technically has the authority to make visa policy, but the work is done by State's Bureau of Consular Affairs. In Consular Affairs, responsibility for issuing visas is delegated to junior Foreign Service Officers, host nation employees of the U.S. embassy or -- in the case of Visa Express -- to foreign travel agents.

Visa Express was a program that began about three months before Sept. 11. It allowed Saudis to apply to a travel agent for a non-immigrant visa, supplying only a two-page form and photo. The travel agent would then process the paperwork through the U.S. consulate.

In the past, most applicants for visas had to be interviewed by U.S. embassy personnel. But during the nine year tenure of Mary Ryan as head of Consular Affairs, the proportion of applicants actually interviewed dwindled to about 20 percent. Consular officials never laid eyes on those who applied via Visa Express.

Visa Express wasn't canceled until earlier this month, after the existence of the program was reported by Joel Mowbray, 26, a lawyer turned journalist.

Secretary of State Colin Powell told the House Select Committee on Homeland Security that his department was tightening visa policies, and that it was "absolutely essential" that the authority to issue visas remain with Consular Affairs.

Powell may have influenced wavering lawmakers more by asking Ryan to retire. Ryan had been criticized for emphasizing service to visa applicants rather than security, and her retirement was announced July 11, the day Powell testified before Congress and the day after reports hit the news media of a visa-selling ring operating out of the U.S. embassy in Doha, Qatar. Seventy one people had paid up to $10,000 each for visas, according to State Department spokesman Phil Reeker.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has come under fire, as well, after he wrote in a letter to the Justice Department saying that the mere belief that someone might be a terrorist "is insufficient grounds for a consular official to deny a visa." The Justice Department's Terrorist Task Force had urged just such a policy.

Armitage's letter was one of several documents leaked to Mowbray, who writes for National Review magazine, by a Foreign Service officer alarmed by lax security in Consular Affairs.

Armitage's letter indicates that the State Department feels it has the right to challenge the Justice Department on visa policy, Mowbray said, and "possession is nine tenths of the law. It's meaningless to give Homeland Security nominal control over policy as long as State continues to issue the visas."

E. Wayne Merry, a retired Foreign Service officer who is now at the American Foreign Policy Council, agreed.

"This would merely replicate the current setup, which has policy in Justice and issuance in State," Merry said. "Visa officers in the field need to know their job is law enforcement, not diplomacy."