A VISA TO "SNITCH"

Eleanor M. Brown, George Washington University School of Law

Abstract

Last summer’s Times Square bombing attempt by the son of an elite Pakistani military officer confirms a disturbing trend; namely that terrorist groups are increasingly likely to recruit bombers from a network of global elites with access to the U.S. In visa application processes, screening out terrorism suspects on an ex ante basis is notoriously complicated, in part because terrorist networks are typically difficult for outsiders to penetrate. Yet, the same cannot be said of elite networks. Indeed, the term “global elite” is meant to reflect precisely the fact that a “network” of rich, well-educated persons from developing countries exists, and that members of this network are now bona fide members of the Western elite. Social network theory tells us that these elites are typically only a few degrees of separation apart.

Yet while a primary goal of immigration law is screening, that is, collecting predictive information about which aliens are likely to be terrorist threats, the U.S. currently finds itself in the absurd position of screening elite aliens utilizing what this essay terms “insufficiently networked” information. This screening typically occurs with little reference to the closely-knit elite networks whence these aliens originate, even as these networks are far better placed to access information about their members. A primary goal of immigration law should be to leverage these networks to supply the government with early warning signals when members of such networks who are U.S. visa recipients display terrorist sympathies. How do you leverage such networks? Take, for example, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young Nigerian “underwear bomber” who attempted to detonate a bomb on an airline bound for Detroit. What was unusual about this particular terrorist’s profile were the repeated attempts of his father, a well-known Nigerian banker and former government minister, to alert the U.S. authorities to his son’s increasing radicalism.

The U.S. essentially needs to codify the behavior of the underwear bomber’s father. In an effort to mitigate the U.S.’s informational disadvantage, it should impose a “duty to snitch” on elites who suspect terrorist activity within their network. For wealthy and mobile global citizens, an appropriate penalty for a failure to snitch, that is, for their network’s failure to police itself, would be, at the very least, a loss of access to American territory. Both Abdulmutallab and his father were recipients of multiple-year, multiple-entry visitors’ visas, for which usually only elite Nigerians are eligible. If not as a de jure matter, certainly as a de facto matter, elites typically have access to U.S. immigration privileges that are not easily available to their fellow nationals. Visas are status-conveyers, and their loss may undermine business and educational opportunities dear to global elites. Thus, the penalty should be the withdrawal of visas in the event that elites are later found to have failed to share critical information which could have prevented a terrorist attack, and which they had reason to know.