The Foreign Service Journal, September 2004

purposes, and will continue to set visa validity periods and fees. Jacobs says that, if necessary, the two depart- ment secretaries — Powell and Tom Ridge — are pre- pared to step in to resolve disputes. Last year, DHS began deploying visa security offi- cers to consulates and embassies overseas, starting with Saudi Arabia. The Saudi deployments, now com- plete, were the only ones explicitly mandated in the 2002 legislation creating the department. Still, DHS plans to expand the deployment of visa security offi- cers to five more posts this year, and an additional five the following year, pending adequate funding and recruitment of officers. The officers’ roles, as yet, are somewhat undefined. But Harty said last year that “DHS personnel abroad will act as coordinators of source information involving threats to the United States, particularly focusing on terrorist threats ... They will provide training and intelligence support to our consular officers.” Harty adds that DHS officers have been welcomed to the team, and that they and State’s consular workers are now operating efficiently together. The two depart- ments are coordinating weekly on the new U.S. VISIT system, which is designed to track the entry and exit of foreign travelers. And CA expects to meet its goal of implementing new biometric checks during the visa interview process by October. All visa applicants will have to allow a consular offi- cer to take two fingerprints before a visa will be issued. The departments also worked together extensively to implement the new Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), which tracks foreign stu- dents at U.S. colleges and universities. As a result of those efforts, a number of wanted criminals have been captured, and about 200 foreign students were turned back after it was discovered that they were not proper- ly enrolled in the school they claimed to be attending. The data collected during the biometric checks is run through the Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS), which now contains nearly three times as many records as it did before 9/11 because of new agency data-sharing requirements passed by Congress. Visa applicants are then vetted against Homeland Security’s Automated Biometric Identification System, which is known as IDENT. Any hits are sent to the FBI in Washington for further review. When a visitor arrives in the United States, the Homeland Security officer at the port of entry scans the visa, takes another pair of fingerprints, and pulls up the photo submitted by the applicant and fingerprints Consular Affairs col- lected to make sure the person who applied for the visa is the same one arriving in the United States. Through no fault of either State or DHS, another October deadline threatened to test the new partnership. In 2002 Congress also passed legislation requiring all 27 of the visa-waiver countries to begin issuing passports with biometric information embedded within them by October 2004. Because none of the countries are on track to do so and because of ongoing problems with the technology, Powell and Ridge asked Congress to extend the deadline by two years. In early August, President Bush signed leg- islation granting only a one-year extention, to October 2005. If not resolved, CA would have had to start pro- cessing visa applications for travelers from visa-waiver countries, which include all of our closest European and Asian allies — a potential logistical nightmare. No One Was Prepared The post-9/11 transition hasn’t been easy. In 2002, new security procedures overwhelmed an under- staffed consular work force and led to long waits over- seas. Even though visa applications dropped dramati- cally after the terrorist attacks, backlogs grew because of the new procedures. For example, whereas CA had often waived the requirement that visa applicants show up in person for an interview, after the new rules almost all applicants — except for children, the elder- ly and diplomatic personnel — were required to undergo an interview. Also in the interest of security, CA dropped a 30- day time limit for comment that it had previously imposed on other agencies, such as the FBI, that had asked to review a visa application. “None of the fed- eral agencies involved in the clearance process, including State, were technically equipped to handle the volume of data that began to come in to us,” Jacobs told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last October. The Government Accountability Office (formerly the General Accounting Office), Congress’ watchdog arm, followed up with a series of critical reports that said CA management was slow in defining the new security standards, communicating them to its work force, and setting procedures for working with other S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 25 F O C U S