Obsolete systems hobble Immigration Service

The news that 69 workers at the Salt Lake City Airport -- mostly Mexican nationals -- were indicted last Tuesday on charges of lying to their employers about their immigration status or criminal background and providing false Social Security numbers on their applications for security badges is yet another instance of the dangers Americans face because immigrants cannot be properly monitored. With the technology available in the United States, there is no reason that illegal immigrants should be employable. Of course, it doesn't help that companies like Argenbright, the world's largest aviation security firm, is in no hurry to confirm the status of the employees it can hire so cheaply.
More than a year after pleading guilty to federal fraud charges and being put on three years' probation, Argenbright was accused on Oct. 11 by the U.S. attorney's office in Philadelphia of failing to complete background checks for workers at 13 large U.S. airports. Recently in Chicago, at least seven of their employees were suspended, including a supervisor, following a security breach at O'Hare International Airport, where a pre-boarding security check -- performed after the initial security check -- found seven knives, a can of Mace and a stun gun in a passenger's carry-on baggage.
Non-compliance: Clearly, it's not as if Argenbright hasn't been told. The company simply refuses to comply with American law.
In other nations, security screeners must be citizens or have been long-time residents of the country in which they are employed. But even were the United States to have such stringent rules, it would still be difficult to determine quickly the residency status of an alien with forged documents.
That the U.S. State Department and Immigration and Naturalization Service are still relying too heavily on pencil-and-paper systems, long after they've been abandoned by the corporate world, makes it almost impossible to keep track of those who entered the country illegally and those who have overstayed the welcome of tourist or student visas. At the same time, even those companies that want to hire legal residents cannot readily determine the legitimacy of documents presented to them.
No identification system is foolproof, but if supermarkets can keep track of their loyal shoppers, surely the United States can keep track of those who -- if not loyal -- are at least entitled to be in this country.