Is anyone surprised by this? Anyone?
Last December, the State Department issued a student visa to the Bangladeshi man arrested this week for trying to blow up the Federal Reserve building with what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb, the State Department confirmed today.
Twenty-one-year-old Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, who was arrested Wednesday as part of an FBI sting operation, was reportedly in contact with al Qaeda before he entered the United States in January to attend Southeast Missouri State University, where he was studying cyber security. But the State Department’s system to check visa applicants didn’t find any reason to deny him entry, and the department issued his visa.
“The suspect did have a student visa to attend a legitimate academic program in the United States, for which he was qualified,” State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said today. “Visa decisions are made in accordance with applicable law and department regulations. Each case is looked at on a case-by-case basis, taking into account all of the information contained in U.S. government databases and in consultation with other government agencies.”
Along with the insecure border and the identification theft/false identification culture that goes hand-in-hadn with that, the State Department’s student visa program is a hole exploited during the original 9-11 terrorist attacks that remains unfixed. State failed to fix it after 9-11 and failed again after the “underwear bomber” exploited it.
How many more potential terrorists may be lurking in the student visas?
In fiscal year 2011, the State Department issued 476,000 type “F” student visas worldwide, 1,136 of them for Bangladeshis.
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