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Home Front: WoT
Feds can't say whereabouts of those whose visas were revoked over terror threat
2015-12-18
The Obama administration cannot be sure of the whereabouts of thousands of foreigners in the U.S. who had their visas revoked over terror concerns and other reasons, a State Department official acknowledged Thursday.

The admission, made at a House oversight hearing examining immigrant vetting in the wake of major terror attacks, drew a sharp rebuke from the committee chairman.

“You don’t have a clue do you?” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told Michele Thoren Bond, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Consular Affairs.
They usually don't...
Bond initially said the U.S. has revoked more than 122,000 visas since 2001, including 9,500 because of the threat of terrorism. But Chaffetz quickly pried at that stat, pressing the witness about the present location of those individuals.

"I don't know," she said.
Ms. Bond is a political appointee and suffers from the same problems that most of the rest of the Obama team political appointees have: she's a clueless, talentless hack whose main job is to look after Democratic Party interests first and always...
The startling admission came as members of the committee pressed administration officials on what safeguards are in place to reduce the risk from would-be extremists.

At issue is how closely the U.S. government examines the background of people seeking entry to the country, including reviews of their social media postings.

Leon Rodriguez, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told committee members that such checks aren't being done in an abundant manner, and he was not specific about when or how it would occur.
Leon's not even sure of his own name...
Lawmakers are trying to ascertain which safeguards are in place to ensure that extremists are not exploiting a variety of legal paths to travel to the United States.

One of the San Bernardino, Calif., shooters came to the U.S. on a K-1 fiancee visa last year despite the fact that the FBI believed she was already radicalized. Tashfeen Malik came to the U.S. on a K-1 fiance visa in July 2014 and passed multiple background checks and at least two in-person interviews, one in Pakistan and another after she married Syed Farook. FBI Director James Comey has said Malik and Farook communicated privately online about jihad and martyrdom before they married.

Lawmakers at times angrily pressed officials on why even public social media wouldn't routinely be looked at for vetting those trying to enter the country.

"If half the employers are doing it in the United States of America, if colleges are doing it for students, why wouldn't Homeland Security do it?" said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass. "We don't even look at their public stuff, that's what kills me."

DHS did launch three pilot programs specifically aimed at reviewing social media postings as part of the immigration vetting process.
Pilot programs. They'll take about a decade each; they're screening Usenet right now...
"There is less there that is actually of screening value than you would expect, at least in small early samples, some things seem more ambiguous than clear," Rodriguez told lawmakers Thursday. He said foreign alphabets frequently used in social media posts were a challenge to translate.
It's not like natural language processing can only be done in English...
"We all continue to believe there's a potential for there to be information of screening value ... particularly in high risk environments," he added.

Both DHS and the State Department are reviewing the process for vetting visa applications, including the K-1 program, and have been directed by the White House to create specific recommendations for improvements.
Sometime in 2017...
DHS is specifically reviewing policies on when authorities at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services can look at social media posts as part of the process for evaluating applications for certain visas.

"There are some legal limits to what we can do," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Wednesday. He added that he thinks reviews of social media should be done more often, but did not provide specifics.
Nor will he...
Posted by:Steve White

#3  Sadly there are no surprises here. This administration has established a well earned reputation for allowing terrorists into the country. Might be interesting to tally all the victims.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305   2015-12-18 12:18  

#2  "If you know the whereabouts of these two men, contact your local....."
Posted by: Besoeker   2015-12-18 04:43  

#1  What's the big deal they're just...umm... "Undocumented". Yeah...that's the ticket.
Posted by: DepotGuy   2015-12-18 03:20  

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