Temporary Visas Used to Stay in U.S. Indefinitely : Borders: Recent terrorist incidents point up looseness in immigration laws. Congress may make changes.

WASHINGTON — The World Trade Center bombing and the recent shooting outside the CIA point up a surprising laxity in U.S. immigration laws that permit foreigners to enter this country on a temporary visa and to stay indefinitely--with virtually no chance of getting caught.

Officials of both the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the State Department readily admit that they have no idea how many people fail to depart as promised. Even if they knew that a foreigner had overstayed his visa, they say that they have no way to find him.

American embassy officials interview foreigners, ask why they want to come to the United States and issue visas to those who are likely to leave as promised. But those records are destroyed after one year, department officials say.

The INS issues an entry card to visa-holders once they arrive here, but its agents do not keep information that would permit them to track down a missing foreigner.

“You are talking about a huge number of people” who come here with a temporary visa, said INS spokesman Duke Austin. “There is no system to track them. We wouldn’t even know where to start looking for them.”

In 1991, Austin said, 293 million people came to this country on some sort of entry permit.

Until now, no one paid much attention to this virtually unregulated system of legal immigration. But the recent highly publicized crimes at the Trade Center and the CIA have prompted some talk of change on Capitol Hill.

“Our borders are much too porous,” Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We want to keep them open, but we also have to be much more careful.”

The prime suspect in the World Trade Center bombing, Mohammed A. Salameh, entered the United States in 1988 with a visitors visa issued at the American Embassy in Amman, Jordan. The 20-year-old Palestinian who has a Jordanian passport said he wanted to come here for one year to study, but he never returned home. That fact became clear to U.S. officials only after he was arrested in connection with the bombing.

Last month, officials had a similarly unpleasant surprise when investigating the murders of two CIA employees as they sat in their cars outside the agency’s headquarters in a Virginia suburb outside Washington.

They learned that the prime suspect in that case, Mir Aimal Kansi, had entered this country in December, 1990, with a visa issued at the American Embassy in Karachi, Pakistan. He said he was coming here on business and would leave within one year.

But Kansi failed to depart and instead applied for asylum, a slow and cumbersome process that takes years, even to set up a hearing.

With his asylum application and a work permit, Kansi was able to get a Virginia driver’s license and to purchase an AK-47 assault rifle that allegedly was used in the Jan. 25 murders.

Once he became a suspect in the case, Kansi simply fled back to Pakistan.

Kansi’s case shows how the asylum laws can be abused.

“Right now, if you get on an airplane (to the United States) and claim asylum . . . when you arrive at Kennedy Airport in New York, they will say to you, ‘OK, we’ll give you a hearing on whether you deserve asylum. Show up in a year.’ And two-thirds of the people never show up,” said Schumer, who chairs the House subcommittee on criminal justice.

Immigration lawyers say it is well understood that foreigners who can obtain a temporary visa have no trouble staying here indefinitely.

“There is no automation to their records (at the INS), so there are literally thousands coming all the time who just stay,” said David Carliner, a prominent immigration lawyer in Washington. “It’s not always easy to get a visa, but once you get here, they don’t have any way of tracking you.”

Foreigners arriving with a visa are asked to supply an address, he said. But that information--which is not checked--may be nothing more than the name of a hotel.

When leaving, they are supposed to drop off a departure card, but that is not required. Based on this information, INS officials try to estimate departure rates for various countries.

This data is used to set criteria for admitting foreigners. For example, it is harder to get a visa from Haiti or Pakistan, whose citizens are deemed less likely to return home, than from Germany or Britain, immigration lawyers say.

Embassy officials also are more likely to give a visa to a 40-year-old with a house, a family and a job in his native country than to a young, unmarried person.

“If you are between 18 and 25 and have no attachments, then they are going to think you are not a very good risk,” Carliner said.

The State Department has been asked why Salameh and Kansi, two young, unattached men from poor nations, were given visas to come here, but its officials have been unable to supply the answers.

“The visa applications are destroyed after a year, so we don’t have any information on them,” said Joseph Snyder, a State Department spokesman.

“We have a great deal of trust in our system,” said Austin of the INS, so some foreigners can abuse the system. “But that’s the price of an open society,” he said.