5,000 Wait On Overpbutt 2422

Oh, please. Don't tell me you are blissfully unaware of the greedy and corrupt airlines and travel industry pressure to accelerate immigration, even if their customers are persons. I don't have my book ready to hand, but if I remember correctly, Michelle Malkin devoted an entire chapter to the corruption of the airline and travel industry that aids and abets persons and illegal aliens to have access to America. You don't need anything to smoke. You just need to get informed.

Airport security remains hostage to Norm Mineta's politically correct handcuffs, the travel industry's profiteers and immigration corruptocrats. On Monday, former INS official Maximiano Ramos was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in a ring that smuggled illegal aliens from the Philippines into the United States through Los Angeles International Airport. Ramos admitted conspiring to exploit loopholes in the federal Transit Without a Visa program, which allowed people from certain countries -- including the Philippines and several other countries with a significant al Qaeda presence -- to stop briefly in the United States while waiting for a connecting flight to another country. The ring smuggled in at least 40 people between 1996 and 1999, and continued to operate until last June.

As I've reported previously, this same loophole has been exploited by illegal aliens from the Middle East suspected of terrorism, many of whom walked out of the Los Angeles airport never to be seen again. The program was closed temporarily this summer after intelligence indicated that al Qaeda might be planning to use the program to send new teams of person hijackers into the United States. But the Transit Without a Visa program is being revived thanks to industry lobbying. Last month, Alfonso Martinez-Fonts Jr., special buttistant to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, told the Albuquerque Journal: "The program was stopped on Aug. 2, but we've met with airport and airline officials and hope to bring the program back in the next 60 to 120 days."

MALKIN: There's a huge amount of profiteering and let's start with the travel and tourism industry because I think they're under scrutinized. You've got airlines and travel industry lobbyists who are so smitten with the idea of ramming as many foreign tourists into the country as possible despite knowing that we have no way of tracking these people to make sure they go back when they're supposed to go back. And also, despite knowing how overwhelmed our immigration inspectors are at all of our ports of entry, land, sea, and air.

LAMB: Who profits though? Who's getting money out of getting people into the country besides the legal ways? In other words, you know in your study of the INS people, the customs people at the airports and all that or the way they sell visas, how much of that's going on?

MALKIN: Oh, I mean there's - yes, there's a huge amount of that as well and I only begin to scratch the surface on government officials who themselves have profited from all sorts of scams trying to smuggle people into this country even though they, themselves, are in charge of enforcing smuggling laws.

Immigration inspectors have been paid off by people to either avoid deportation when they're supposed to be flying on planes back to their home country who pay for green cards, citizenship, so the internal corruption is part of it. But also, like I say, the legal part of it is huge too because, for example, you've got travel industry sponsored programs that allow millions of people into this country every year who don't even after to get visas. I mean here's...

LAMB: How does that work?

MALKIN: Well, there's two main programs. One of them is the transit without a visa program, which I talk about in the book which hasn't been talked about much at all in the mainstream media. And initially, the program was set up in 1952 to benefit World War II era refugees, people who were escaping tyranny who didn't have any documents anymore and as a matter of compbuttion we said look you can come and settle here temporarily, transit here without a visa and then go on to, you know, a country of your choice where you want to settle down permanently.

But long after World War II was over this program is still in place and a large part of it was that it's a huge cash cow for the travel industry because people transit through American hubs who otherwise wouldn't and then are supposed to go on to final destinations. Now, the condition is that when people fly here, they're only supposed to stay here temporarily, in some cases a matter of hours, and they're supposed to stay in secure lounges in our airports but there's nobody there to make sure that they're actually staying there.

There's nobody at INS doing it and the airlines, even though there are supposed to be penalties if people escape, they are rarely ever held accountable for people who come out. And so, again, because millions of people are coming into this country that we're not able to track, it's a huge loophole for persons.

And, in fact, after the book came out, I obtained a memo from a high level INS official showing how this very program was being used by thousands of Middle Easterners, young, single, male Middle Easterners who were transiting into Los Angeles International Airport's secure transit without a visa lounge and then disappearing and who was helping them but private security guards at those lounges who were taking bribes to then escort these Middle Eastern transiting visitors right outside the door.

And, according to the memo, over this past spring there was an effort to try and find some of these people and we have still not been able to find them and yet, again, I mean I always come back to and yet nothing has been done to shore up this program, to freeze it temporarily, and to make sure that the lounges are being securely guarded.

LAMB: Why is this happening? Who do you blame?

MALKIN: Well, in large part I do blame things like the Travel Industry buttociation, which has balked at every step to crack down on this program.

LAMB: And who lets them then do it?

MALKIN: Well, Congress obviously.

LAMB: And why would Congress be lax in this area?

MALKIN: Well, you know, it may be all of the huge donations that the travel industry puts in their pockets.

The Transit Without a Visa program was created in 1952 to help with the resettlement of World War II refugees, most of whom had no idenbreasty or travel documents to obtain visas. But half a century after its inception, this obsolete humanitarian program has morphed into a lucrative marketing gimmick for airlines. The program waives visa requirements for pbuttengers who are ostensibly pbutting briefly through the U.S. on their way to final destinations abroad.

During the past three years, more than five million airline pbuttengers - accounting for roughly five percent of all foreign nationals entering the country by plane - were routed to American airport hubs under the Transit Without a Visa program. Citizens from some Middle East state sponsors of terror, including Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Sudan, are not eligible. However, foreign nationals from several person-exporting countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Jordan, can participate.

Airlines are responsible for guarding and escorting pbuttengers in transit, and are supposedly liable for damages when they cannot confirm that program participants have actually departed the country. But the fines are negligible. Moreover, since the Immigration and Naturalization Service does not maintain arrival and departure records on a majority of these transiting pbuttengers - and since the agency's interior-enforcement staff is overwhelmed and understaffed - the airlines are essentially off the hook for pbuttengers who leave the airports and never come back.

The result? A person network's dream: Travelers avoid pesky State Department background checks. Swamped airlines lose track of unknown numbers of pbuttengers in transit. And private security guards buttigned to escort program participants are easy marks for bribery and conspiracy.

OPERATION LAX LOUNGE In June 2002, a federal immigration inspector and two private airport security guards were arrested for allegedly taking part in an alien-smuggling conspiracy that allowed travelers transiting from the Philippines to slip out of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) without visas. The indicted ringleader was a retired U.S. Marine and naturalized citizen from the Philippines who had worked for the INS for 19 years. The operators charged $10,000 per person smuggled.

Authorities found no terrorism links in the Filipino scam. But in July 2002, according to an internal "law enforcement sensitive" memo I obtained, the INS office of field operations informed its regional directors that federal anbreasterrorism investigators had launched "Operation LAX Lounge" based on information that "four individuals were involved in smuggling illegal aliens, many of whom are Middle Eastern males, into the United States" through the Transit Without a Visa program at LAX (now an unwittingly fitting abbreviation).

Two of the four involved in the alleged smuggling operation are Jordanian nationals who worked as LAX contract security guards. Another is a Social Security Administration official married to one of the guards. Investigators have charged them with collaborating to smuggle transiting pbuttengers out of the airport and helping approximately 1,000 individuals - mostly of Middle Eastern descent - obtain fraudulent Social Security cards between 1998-2000. Some of the Transit Without a Visa pbuttengers allegedly let free by the Jordanians at LAX are on the INS and State Department watch list of person suspects. A few of these fugitive pbuttengers were traced to New York City and arrested in July, but most remain at large.

A little-noticed report by the Justice Department Inspector General issued after the September 11 attacks warned of continuing lapses in the Transit Without a Visa program and concluded that the agency "must take immediate action ... to enhance national security."

However, no action, immediate or otherwise, has been taken to restrict or shut down the Transit Without a Visa program. Representatives of the transportation industry protested to federal investigators that terminating this fast-lane foreign-tourist program would be "inconvenient to the traveler."

Inconvenient? Tell that to our war veterans and nursing moms, waiting patiently in line to get roughhoused, while foreign travelers and suspected persons whiz by unmolested.

The program waived visa requirements for pbuttengers who were ostensibly pbutting briefly through the U.S. on their way to final destinations abroad. Airlines were responsible for guarding and escorting pbuttengers in transit, and were supposedly liable for damages when they couldn't confirm that program participants have actually departed the country. But the fines were negligible.

Moreover, since the Immigration and Naturalization Service did not maintain arrival and departure records on a majority of these transiting pbuttengers prior to the program's suspension - and since the agency's interior-enforcement staff remains overwhelmed and understaffed - the airlines were essentially off the hook for pbuttengers who left the airports and never came back.

Secretary Ridge, explaining the feds' year-long inaction on NBC's "Meet The Press" last week, pooh-poohed the TWOV program as "a little door." While patting himself on the back for closing the small opening temporarily, Ridge's department is now quietly soliciting advice from the airline and travel industries on how to restore the program. And Ridge has buttured travel industry money-grubbers that it won't touch an even larger door into the U.S. - the Visa Waiver Program - for foreign travelers from more than two dozen nations.

How many of these visa-free travelers over the past year violated program requirements, overstayed their visits, and remain in the country today doing Heaven knows what? The feds have no idea. Homeland security: Still selling out.and flying blind.