By Robert Windrem and Garrett Haake, NBC News
The State Department has been steadily increasing the number of visas granted to students and visitors from three Islamic nations -nations with connections to the Sept. 11 attacks and to al-Qaida, according to an NBC News survey of U.S. visa data.
Many counterterrorism experts welcome the increase in visas to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, arguing that exposure to American culture outweighs any possible risk from prospective terrorists.
“Given the fact we have things like biometric data, and more robust efforts around the world to track people of concern, it’s better we take the calculated risk to encourage the elite in these countries to come here,” said Bob Grenier, former head of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center. “There is a ripple effect in reaching those people we want to reach in those countries.”
NBC examined temporary and student visas granted to citizens of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan from 2000 through 2007. Saudi Arabia is Osama Bin Laden’s home country, while Egypt is the home country of his deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri. Both men are now believed to be hiding inside Pakistan. Saudis also made up 15 of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11.
Overall, the three countries received 134,015 visas in 2000, before dipping to 34,781 in 2003, the lowest year in recent memory. Since then, the numbers have risen dramatically, to 109,878 last year, the first year of 100,000 or more visas since 2001. Those numbers represent an 18 percent drop from the peak year of 2000, but a near tripling since 2003.
The decreases, however, are uneven, with Pakistan down 48.5%, Saudi Arabia down 34.4% and Egypt down the least, at 20.2%.
A State Department spokesman agreed that some of the rapid decline after Sept. 11 was the result of increased security measures, but said the visas are granted on an individual basis.
“The numbers are proof of the success of the U.S. government’s efforts to reverse the drop in student and other visa applications after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,” said Cy Ferenchak, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs.
“Individual visa issuances are not related to our bilateral relationship with another country. Every visa application is adjudicated individually on its own merits. The Department of State can only process visa applications from those who apply. The number of visa issuances went up in Saudi Arabia because of an increase in the number of scholarships provided to their students by the Saudi Government,” he said.
Indeed, more educational visas were issued to Saudi nationals in 2007 than were issued in 2000. Last year, 6,030 students were granted visas, compared to 4,518 in 2000, for a 33% increase.
Officials in the three countries are particularly sensitive about the educational visas. The reason: The elite in each of those countries-usually the most pro-American segment of society-want their children educated in U.S. colleges and universities.
“The elite in Pakistan all want their children to go to Harvard or Stanford,” said a Pakistani official. “And if they don’t get into Harvard or Stanford, they get upset with America.”
In fact, State Department data show that the number of student visas granted Pakistanis have dropped precipitously, from 4,321 in 2001 to 2,218 last year.
A Saudi official agreed that they have increased scholarship aid to students so that a larger number can apply for U.S. visas. The Saudi official argued that the large numbers of Saudi students in U.S. colleges and universities improves U.S.-Saudi relations. He noted that many members of the middle and upper ranks of the Saudi counterterrorism agency were educated in the U.S.
There are other issues, however, suggested Grenier, that have to be dealt with if the U.S. is going to win friends and influence people in those nations.
“I’d like to know the waiting time for some of those visa applications,” said Grenier, who was CIA Station Chief in Islamabad, Pakistan after Sept. 11. “The waiting time went way up, and the schools were not adapting. Students would still be waiting for visas when school began. No wonder the applications went down.”
Grenier also noted that many of the elite in countries like Pakistan feel “humiliated” by the secondary inspections they get on arrival in the United States. “The impact of that is significant for people wanting to travel to the U.S.,” Grenier said.
Roger Cressey was deputy director of the National Security Council’s counterterrorism office in the Clinton and Bush administrations, and is now an NBC News consultant. He said in general he believes the U.S. is best served by openness to Islamic nations.
“In the 1990s we threw all sorts of sanctions against Pakistan,” recalled Cressey. A broad spectrum of Pakistani military officers was not educated in the US and did not get exposure to US culture. As a result, they are not as likely to be as pro-Western in orientation as previous generations of Pakistani officers were.”
“The same principle holds true for Arabs and Muslim,” Cressey said. “On the whole, it benefits us greatly.”
--Garrett Haake is a researcher at NBC Nightly News in New York.
