Right Voices

Insult
by: Michelle Malkin – NY Post

DO YOU remember when immigration officials sent out flight-school visa-ap proval notices for two of the 9/11 hijackers ” six months after they had committed their suicide attacks on America?

President Bush proclaimed his outrage, four federal immigration officials were reassigned, and Washington vowed that such embarrassing bureaucratic snafus would never happen again. I’m sorry to report that it has, in fact, happened again.

On Jan. 15, immigration officials sent a notice to Eugueni Kniazev of Brooklyn. The letter informs Kniazev, a Siberian immigrant, that he is now “deemed to be a lawful permanent resident of the United States.” The notice directs Kniazev to obtain a new alien registration receipt card (a “green card”), and instructs him to appear at the immigration office at 26 Federal Plaza with his passport and three recent photos.

The letter warns Kniazev not to travel outside the United States without approval.

But Eugueni Kniazev won’t be appearing at Federal Plaza. He won’t be traveling anywhere. Kniazev, 47, was an employee of Windows on the World on the 107th floor of the North Tower. He was murdered in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Just how clueless are our paper-pushers?

People just get caught up in the system of paper in the office of beaurocrats. We can’t really expect them to cross-reference the names in the Citizenship and Immigration Services’ records with the names of those deceased on 9/11, can we? Or even the names of deceased, otherwise?

We couldn’t even expect them to cross-reference the names with those who are the list of known/suspected/dead terrorists . . what makes anyone think that they are going to reference anything of lesser importance?

Eugueni Kniazev’s family hopes his case will lead to reform ” and his case is only the tip of the incompetence iceberg:

* The nation’s various fingerprint databases still have not been integrated because of bickering among FBI, State Department and DHS officials. Most visitors entering the country still aren’t thoroughly screened for terrorist or criminal ties.

* There is still no system in place for notifying investigators about stolen passports, which led the DHS inspector general to conclude last month that foreigners using fraudulent documents have “little reason to fear being caught.”

* The long-delayed entry-exit tracking system for foreign visitors ” in the works for nearly a decade ” has still not been implemented fully.

* There is still no systematic tracking of illegal alien felons.

* And while millions of legal applicants deal with paperwork backlogs and mishaps that take years to resolve, the White House supports granting “temporary guest worker” status to upward of 20 million illegal aliens ” a move that rank-and-file officers say will lead to rampant fraud and even greater bureaucratic overload.