NYPost

FEDS IN BLUNDERLAND

By MALCOLM BALFOUR and JOHN LEHMANN

March 13, 2002 -- Welcome to the United States, Mohamed Atta. Your visa has been approved.

That was the message sent out by sleepy immigration officials this week while the rest of America was remembering the havoc wrought by the Sept. 11 attack leader.

In a mind-boggling gaffe, the Immigration and Naturalization Service notified a Florida flight school on Monday that student visas had been approved for Atta and Marwan al Shehhi - six months to the day after their suicide attack on the World Trade Center.

New Yorkers who lost loved ones in the attack called last night for heads to roll at the INS over the embarrassing mistake.

"It's quite asinine, really. One hand has absolutely no idea what the other hand is doing," said Anne Ielpi, whose firefighter son, Jonathan, lost his life in the attacks.

"It's time somebody investigated the INS."

Red-faced INS officials said the department was battling a backlog of visa applications with an antiquated mail-delivery system.

The INS said the visas was granted weeks before Sept. 11. They insisted they granted approval to Atta and al Shehhi only because they were never told of their terror links by other government agencies.

The approval letters were held up until March 5, when they were sent out by an INS-contracted company in Kentucky.

The bungle was revealed after the Florida flight school where Atta and al Shehhi received lessons received INS documents saying their student visas had been approved.

Huffman Aviation, based in Venice, Fla., filed M-1 student visa request forms for Atta, 33, and al Shehhi, 23, in Aug. 29, 2000.

The forms sought altered visa status for the men, who had entered the United States on tourist visas, so they could take flight lessons.

Rudi Dekkers, who runs Huffman Aviation, said the arrival of the yellow INS forms came as a shock.

"We thought we had put this behind us," he said. "And it had to happen right on the six-month anniversary."

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2002

Answers

Do you think they would now check all the notices that have been sent to see if there are others that shouldn't have been sent?

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2002

I'll bet you dollars to donuts that the "regular" staff is on vacation, and there are a bunch of clueless temps handling the mail. I know that's the case at my job. Some temp yesterday accidently spammed all the employee mailboxes because she didn't know how to program bulk mail correctly. One of the IT guys said she came with 30 seconds of bringing down the mainframe computer. I hope that he was making things up because if she could do it by accident, a hacker could do it on purpose. . . .

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2002

Apparently, the stuff is outsourced to a contractor (lowest bid, no doubt).

Now--in order to change my name on my alien registration card (which I've needed to do for years but have put off because I know what a nightmare these things can turn out to be), I'm supposed to fill out this form the size of a tax form (and as simple), pony up photographs and $250, and go down to Charlotte for a personal interview. That entails leaving the day before so that I can get to the INS office at dawn to stand in line otherwise I'll be in the waiting room the entire day.

I can't do this. My doc is going to do a letter stating I'm physically incapable. (Not to mention mentally.)

Question: since the INS is part of the Justice Department, why can't the local FBI office or US atty's office check out my stuff and give me the okay? I mean, I've been here all these years, no problems, record is clean, it's only a change of last name, for God's sake!

I have to do this or I can't get Social Security and there will be problems over the will if I go before this is cleared up. And, for me to take out citizenshup, I have to do it too. God knows how much THAT will cost. Send me your poor--HA! Aaaargh!

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2002