Mark Steyn -- The upside-down world of the INS

National Post ^ | July 30, 2002 | Mark Steyn

[Clive]

Every so often, the name of Deena Gilbey crosses my radar screen.

Who's Deena Gilbey? Well, she's one of several hundred non-U.S. citizens widowed on September 11th. Her husband Paul was a trader with EuroBrokers on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center and that Tuesday morning he stayed behind to help evacuate people. He was a hero on a day when America sorely needed them, having been thoroughly let down by those to whom the defence of the nation was officially entrusted. Mr. Gilbey was a British subject on a long-term work visa that allowed his dependents to live in America but not to work. The Gilbeys bought a house in Chatham Township and had two children, born in New Jersey and thus U.S. citizens. All perfectly legal and valid.

But then came September 11th. And a few days afterwards Mrs. Gilbey received a form letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service informing her that, upon her husband's death, his visa had also expired and with it her right to remain in the country. She was now, they informed her, an illegal alien and liable to be "arrested and deported."

Think about that. On the morning of Wednesday, September 12th, some INS departmental head calls the staff into his office and says, "Wow, that was a wild ride yesterday. But the priority of the United States Government right now is to find out how many legally resident foreigners have been widowed and see how quickly we can traumatize them further."

And maybe someone says, "Well, you know, boss, maybe leaning on Deena Gilbey really isn't where we ought to be concentrating our energies right now. I mean, we did after all issue visas to every single one of those 19 terrorists. Given that the fellows we let in then went on to murder Mrs. Gilbey's husband, should we really be adding insult to the great injury we've done her?"

But, if anybody did say that, he was presumably put on sick leave, and the rest of the Feds went back to business as usual.

As on September 11th itself, when the FBI, INS and FAA flopped out big time, it was the local guys who came through. The Police Chief of Chatham, N.J., was outraged by the Government's harassment of Mrs. Gilbey, and the British press picked it up, and eventually it came to the attention of the President, who in late October signed special legislation for the hundreds of law-abiding widows and children in Mrs. Gilbey's position.

And then a week or so back, it all came up again. It turned out that the President's special legislation designed to cover Mrs. Gilbey's situation did not, in fact, cover it. The USA Patriot Act allows foreign-born widows and children of 9/11 to apply for permanent residency -- the famous "green card." But Mrs. Gilbey was told by the INS she didn't qualify because "her paperwork had not reached a certain level of the process." Look at that phrase. Cut it out. Enlarge it. Pin it to the wall. Suspend it from the ceiling, lie on the carpet and try to figure out what it means. It is, as they say in Mrs. Gilbey's native land, bollocks. It is bollocks forward, sideways and back-to-front. It does not address the reality of the situation -- that Mrs. Gilbey is the mother of American citizens, that her husband died saving the lives of American citizens, that he is buried in a vast mass grave on American soil, that his relict is no threat to anyone and that the sensible thing to say is, "Oh, let's just stamp the thing and give it to her. Every minute we waste on Deena Gilbey is a minute we could be devoting to the guys we should really be looking into."

The reason "the paperwork had not reached a certain level" was because, after applying for his green card way back in 1994, Paul Gilbey had then changed jobs, which meant he had to go to the back of the line and start from scratch. At the INS, having different U.S. companies competing for your services is cause for punishment. Regular folks don't change jobs every decade, they join a government agency when they're 21 and stay there till 65. So the Gilbey paperwork, having painstakingly climbed to the second level of the INS ladder, was now back down the garbage chute at the bottom.

Facing deportation yet again, Mrs. Gilbey this time lined up the support of not just the Chatham Police Chief but also New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine, Tony Blair, and even Hillary Rodham Clinton. And so last week it was announced that, barring the INS discovering further loopholes, she'll be allowed to stay.

Meanwhile, while Mrs. Gilbey has been frantically petitioning Senators and Prime Ministers, Saudi citizens have been enjoying the benefits of a service called "Visa Express," under which they can be processed for admission to the United States without having to be seen by any U.S. consular official. Instead, they are, to all intents and purposes, approved by their Saudi travel agent. Fifteen out of 19 of the September 11th terrorists were Saudis. Yet 10 months after September 11th this program was still up and running, still shovelling out pre-approved visas. Visa Express was a pilot program, unique to Saudi Arabia. But, even before September 11th, why would you pilot a fast-track admissions program in a country profoundly anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, anti-Western? What do the American people gain by it?

The State Department now claims to have shut the program down, but not before revealing the surreal immigration preferences of the United States government: Give them the best part of a decade and they cannot complete Paul Gilbey's green-card application, but give 'em two minutes and the word of a Saudi travel agent and they're happy to issue fast-track visas to three of Mr. Gilbey's murderers -- Salem al-Hamzi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Abdul Aziz al- Omari. Mr. Gilbey's widow needs to go through CIA clearance to stay in the country, but not the allies of his murderers -- au contraire, the State Department's Richard Armitage said on June 10th that even if the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force believes "the applicants may pose a threat to national security," that's "insufficient to permit a consular official to deny a visa."

You can fly a jet at full speed into the bureaucratic mindset but it just bounces off, barely felt. The INS has no real idea who's within America's borders. One reason they have no idea is because it takes them a decade to process a routine green-card application by a highly-employable, high-earning, law- abiding citizen of America's closest ally. That's a joke, and it brings the entire system into disrepute. But that's big, sprawling, inefficient, your-paperwork- has-not-reached-a-certain-level government for you. The INS failed to get Messrs. al-Hamzi, al-Mihdar and al-Omari, but they did get Deena Gilbey. Congratulations, guys.

We talk about government "intelligence failure" as if it's something to do with misreading satellite intercepts between Peshawar and Aden. But the "intelligence failure" of September 11th is more basic than that, a failure of intelligence in the moderately-competent grade-school sense. And nothing we've learned in the last 10 months -- from Mohammed Atta's posthumous flight-school visa to last week's belated termination of the Saudi fast-track -- suggests that Federal officialdom has changed or is even willing to change. Paul Gilbey is buried in the dust of Ground Zero. At the very least America should also bury with him the bureaucratic inertia symbolized by his decade- long green-card application.

[Clive]

Flag

[fporretto]

Mark Steyn always goes for the jugular. I have yet to see him miss.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

[maica]

Clive, this is all true, but one early fact has been overlooked. Mrs Gilbey did not gratuitously get a letter from the INS. She contacted them and demanded to know her status - and so the new chain of paperwork began.

I am no apologist for the INS, and hope that her agitation of the system helps to remove a lot more of the scales from everyone's eyes. I am just saying, as always, there is more to this story.

BTW, I find it hard to believe that it would take anyone eight years and two children to formalize their status. It is much more likely that it just was not perceived in their household to be a priority. If Mr Gilney had been hit by a bus, going to his job in the WTC - to use a cliche - she still would have found herself in the same bureaucratic quagmire.

[tet68]

Bump.

[babyface00]

I've had to deal with the INS on behalf of an employee. Believe me, eight years isn't unbelievable at all.

On top of the time, add tens of thousands of dollars in filing fees and attorneys fees (you don't dare fill out a form wrong, so you need to hire an attorney to help you), and the silliness of deadlines that expire before the INS has made a decision, forcing you to leave the country, just so you can come back when they make up their freakin' minds...its ludicrous.

Just imagine the most silly, incompetent, idiotic beurocrats you can imagine. The INS is worse.

[Pokey78]

Thanks!

Pinging the Steyn list.

[maica]

I have dealt with them on more than one occasion, in more than one venue and agree wholeheartedly with you.
If Mrs Gilbey has a paper trail lasting eight years there is no problem.
I just had the impression when she first started the PR campaign last fall, that she was concerned about locking in her share of 'benefits', while she took her children who are also EU citizens back to the UK .

[xJones]

I understand what you have said in your posts #4 and #8. But the real kicker is this:

Saudi citizens have been enjoying the benefits of a service called "Visa Express," under which they can be processed for admission to the United States without having to be seen by any U.S. consular official. Instead, they are, to all intents and purposes, approved by their Saudi travel agent. Fifteen out of 19 of the September 11th terrorists were Saudis. Yet 10 months after September 11th this program was still up and running, still shovelling out pre-approved visas. Visa Express was a pilot program, unique to Saudi Arabia. But, even before September 11th, why would you pilot a fast-track admissions program in a country profoundly anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, anti-Western? What do the American people gain by it?

[hangin' chad]

I just had the impression when she first started the PR campaign last fall, that she was concerned about locking in her share of 'benefits'

If I had spent a decade of my life in a new country and had two children born there (and presumably in school, with friends,etc.) and recently lost my spouse, I too would be "concerned about locking in my share of the 'benefits'" i.e. the right to stay there.

[goldstategop]

A friend of mine was facing the same screw up thanks to the fact her mom died and due to an immigration law technicality, she couldn't get a green card. Makes you wonder how the INS works. I mean illegal aliens and terrorists get better service than law abiding immigrants. What a world!

[pawdoggie]

It's axiomatic that with a big, bloated Federal bureaucracy the individual often gets lost in the shuffle. That having been said, if we're ever going to get a grip on illegal immigration, there will be a lot of "Mrs. Gilbey" stories. The burden of proof as to whether an alien resident deserves to be in this country will have to fall on the alien, and not on the INS. We simply don't have the resources to treat everyone and every case as an individual, and trying to selectively discriminate between different nationality or ethnic groups (sometimes known as "racial profiling"), is probably a permanent non-starter.

[headsonpikes]

Ah...socialism...American socialism has a particularly inefficient zest to it!

I'll bet bureaucrats all around the world dream of being a lifer in the INS.

[surely_you_jest]

This is simply outrageous.

The INS is so incompetent that they make the Internal Revenue Service appear to be competent by comparison. And as we all know, that is not easy.

[300winmag]

Just imagine the most silly, incompetent, idiotic beurocrats you can imagine. The INS is worse.

And I think the INS mindset is not unique, but affects all federal agencies. "Screw up, stonewall, and be promoted."

While it has always been bad, I attribute this new level of lethal incompetence to the klinton era. We've seen the FBI and BATF kill people, perjure themselves in court, destroy, alter, or hide evidence, with no ill effects. Only whistleblowers are punished, for breaking silence. And their daily operations show them to be both stupid and lazy. In other words, they behave like klintons.

After seeing agencies like that prosper, why shouldn't the INS (or the new security agencies) do anything different?

[Notforprophet]

Pokey thanks for the ping! Whenever I see your pings I head straight for the thread. I rarely, if ever, disappointed.

Regards,

Notforprophet

[Gritty]

BTTT

[MeekOneGOP]

And then a week or so back, it all came up again. It turned out that the President's special legislation designed to cover Mrs. Gilbey's situation did not, in fact, cover it. The USA Patriot Act allows foreign-born widows and children of 9/11 to apply for permanent residency -- the famous "green card." But Mrs. Gilbey was told by the INS she didn't qualify because "her paperwork had not reached a certain level of the process." Look at that phrase. Cut it out. Enlarge it. Pin it to the wall. Suspend it from the ceiling, lie on the carpet and try to figure out what it means. It is, as they say in Mrs. Gilbey's native land, bollocks. It is bollocks forward, sideways and back-to-front. It does not address the reality of the situation -- that Mrs. Gilbey is the mother of American citizens, that her husband died saving the lives of American citizens, that he is buried in a vast mass grave on American soil, that his relict is no threat to anyone and that the sensible thing to say is, "Oh, let's just stamp the thing and give it to her. Every minute we waste on Deena Gilbey is a minute we could be devoting to the guys we should really be looking into."

I had to look it up in the Cambridge English (British) Dictionary:

Bollocks

bollocks (BODY PART)
plural noun 
BRITISH AND AUSTRALIAN SLIGHTLY TABOO SLANG 
testicles 
Ouch! That caught/hit me right in the bollocks!

bollocks (NONSENSE)
noun [U] 
BRITISH SLIGHTLY TABOO SLANG 
nonsense 
What he said was a load of bollocks.
Bollocks to that (=that's nonsense)!

bollocks up British and Australian
phrasal verb [M] 
They completely bollocksed up (=spoilt by making mistakes) the game.
Try not to bollocks it up (=make mistakes) this time!

[MeekOneGOP]

Mark Steyn -- The upside-down world of the INS

Excerpt:

Who's Deena Gilbey? Well, she's one of several hundred non-U.S. citizens widowed on September 11th. Her husband Paul was a trader with EuroBrokers on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center and that Tuesday morning he stayed behind to help evacuate people. He was a hero on a day when America sorely needed them, having been thoroughly let down by those to whom the defence of the nation was officially entrusted. Mr. Gilbey was a British subject on a long-term work visa that allowed his dependents to live in America but not to work. The Gilbeys bought a house in Chatham Township and had two children, born in New Jersey and thus U.S. citizens. All perfectly legal and valid.

But then came September 11th. And a few days afterwards Mrs. Gilbey received a form letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service informing her that, upon her husband's death, his visa had also expired and with it her right to remain in the country. She was now, they informed her, an illegal alien and liable to be "arrested and deported."

< snip >

Meanwhile, while Mrs. Gilbey has been frantically petitioning Senators and Prime Ministers, Saudi citizens have been enjoying the benefits of a service called "Visa Express," under which they can be processed for admission to the United States without having to be seen by any U.S. consular official. Instead, they are, to all intents and purposes, approved by their Saudi travel agent. Fifteen out of 19 of the September 11th terrorists were Saudis. Yet 10 months after September 11th this program was still up and running, still shovelling out pre-approved visas. Visa Express was a pilot program, unique to Saudi Arabia. But, even before September 11th, why would you pilot a fast-track admissions program in a country profoundly anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, anti-Western? What do the American people gain by it?

The State Department now claims to have shut the program down, but not before revealing the surreal immigration preferences of the United States government: Give them the best part of a decade and they cannot complete Paul Gilbey's green-card application, but give 'em two minutes and the word of a Saudi travel agent and they're happy to issue fast-track visas to three of Mr. Gilbey's murderers -- Salem al-Hamzi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Abdul Aziz al- Omari. Mr. Gilbey's widow needs to go through CIA clearance to stay in the country, but not the allies of his murderers -- au contraire, the State Department's Richard Armitage said on June 10th that even if the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force believes "the applicants may pose a threat to national security," that's "insufficient to permit a consular official to deny a visa."

Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my General Interest ping list!. . .don't be shy.

[MeekOneGOP]

I thought ya'll might appreciate this one........