The crossed perspectives here are with the journalist amazed at how long it took for the approval to come through, where Sensenbrenner's anger should be that approval came through at all. And with the backlog, what happens in the meantime? You still have a proven threat toi life and limb walking the streets with impunity.

INS and Justice Department officials acknowledged yesterday that the delayed mailings were embarrassing, but stressed that the change to student visas for Atta and Alshehhi was actually approved last summer. The pair had entered the United States on tourist visas.



In addition, the INS said in a statement, "when the applications were approved, the INS had no information indicating that Atta or Alshehhi had ties to terrorist organizations."





Did anyone have information relating the two to terrorist organizations? If they did, would they have notified the INS?

"How can these guys get training before they're approved to get training? That's a legitimate issue," one senior Justice official said. "But it's important to note that these guys were approved long before anyone in law enforcement knew they had ties to terrorist groups."

They were uninformed. 90% of the histories that arrive for immigrants arrives with the immigrant. The INS is also likely to be understaffed, as is the way of many ignored government departments. And they're genuinely trying to keep up with the 21st century on 1980’s (hopefully not 1970’s) technology. Systems upgrades were authorized in 1996, but that doesn't mean it would happen in 1996, and there was a pretty good Y2K issue that the government was concerned about.

And immigration doesn't stop just because you have to upgrade your system -- certainly not to the greatest land under the sun -- and if a bureaucracy is in charge of that upgrade, you can probably bet it will be a good upgrade. Of course, that same system will probably be due for another upgrade by the time the bureaucracy is done with it -- if it ever is.

“No, no. What we wanted was 1110101000010110010 01110101000100110010. You gave me 01110101000100110010 01110101000010110010.”

Dan