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The INS has to be one of the best arguments around for using private employees to screen baggage. My wife is foreign-born, has been a permanent resident since she was seven years old (in 1974). Her green card was stolen along with her wallet. She has been trying to get a replacement for more than a year. Unfortunately, her records are not on computer, but in a carboard box somewhere in Chicago. So, we pointed out that she has been here long enough to qualify for amnesty and is also married to a citizen. No luck, though!!! The brilliant INS types pointed out that since she already has qualified for a green card, they can't issue her another one. But, they can't replace her old one because the records are not available.

Easier to harass taxpayers than bother terrorists, I guess...

My son was in a catch-22 with the State Dept. His daughter was born out of the country. Fine, my son is a citizen so his daughter is automatically a citizen. Not so fast. It showed on his passport that he had been out of the country for two years (at school) and he had to prove that he had a certain number of years continuous residency in the US prior to age 15. So my son said: Well, my first passport was issued by you, how did they issue me a passport if I wasn't a citizen and had been in the country. They answered: they only kept the records for ten years therefore the expired passport could not have verifying information since he needed info that was older than ten years. He finally was able to prove his residency through his Bar Mitzvah invitation and his immunization record. His booster shots were a proof! Anyone of those things could have been a forgery, but they were better proof than school records, letters of affirmation, and the old passport. I may have left out something here that I can't remember, but his daughter was not issued a US passport until they had the Bar Mitzvah invitation and his immunization record. It was the most bizarre situation I ever heard of. I tried speaking to the consular officer, but his English was worse than Putin's. Now, my grand-daughter was entitled to citizenship. My son is an AMerican born kid. Now go try and prove that you had continual residence if your usual ids for some reason were unacceptable. We felt like we were in a Kafka story. But I'll bet if some Saudi boy with a few bucks added to his application appeared, he would have been waved through.