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The U.S. attorney in Miami, Fla., has charged nine illegal aliens, seven of them commercial airline pilots, with possession of fraudulent immigration papers, raising the questions of just who is flying and servicing American airplanes and how are they vetted?
The government nabbed the nine men only because one turned himself in voluntarily.
Two of the pilots flew small passenger jets for American Eagle, a division of American Airlines, and two flew cargo aircraft for Express.net Airlines, whose fleet includes Boeing 727s. Another flew for Executive Jet Aviation. One was a mechanic and another a fueler. The two remaining pilots were not employed.
The government, according to Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Les Door, does not investigate the backgrounds of foreign nationals who apply for commercial airline pilot’s licenses in the United States. Furthermore, the FAA automatically grants a foreign applicant a U.S. commercial pilot’s license, said Door, provided the applicant already possesses a valid commercial pilot’s license from his native country, and provided that country is a member of the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO.
How many more?
Member countries in the ICAO include all seven nations on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of international terrorism – Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Cuba, and North Korea.
This list, of course, includes the three nations cited by President Bush in his State of the Union Address as components of an “axis of evil.” Membership in the axis of evil evidently does not preclude membership in the ICAO. Thus, axis of evil pilots get an automatic pass from the FAA for commercial pilot’s licenses here.
The list of nations belonging to the ICAO, whose nationals have an automatic right to commercial pilot’s licenses in the United States, also includes Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the home countries of the Sept. 11 terrorists.
The seven men charged Feb. 9 are from Venezuela and are not accused of anything other than fraud and immigration violations.
“There is no requirement for pilots to be U.S. citizens, and there is no requirement that the FAA check their backgrounds,” said Door. “Right now, if a pilot comes to the FAA and says I have a license from country X, if they have a license with ratings from an ICAO country, we reciprocate and give them a license.” Asked if that means a pilot from Egypt or Saudi Arabia with a license from his home country could now get a license “automatically from the FAA without a background check,” he replied, “That’s essentially correct.”
So how many foreign pilots are there in the United States, and who is checking on new ones coming to work here? Spokesmen for American Airlines, United Air Lines, the FAA and the Air Lines Pilots Association said that they did not know what proportion of pilots were foreign nationals.
“I can’t say,” said Door.
John Mazor, spokesman for ALPA, said that he could not quantify the number but did not think it was great. “My sense is there are very few foreign nationals who are pilots at U.S. airlines,” he said.
However, Kurt Iverson, a spokesman for American Eagle, said, “I couldn’t even tell you. But we fly internationally, so it would be unusual if there weren’t any foreign nationals. There are lots of international airlines and I am sure they have pilots from different countries.”
In any case, there is no need for the United States to import pilots from other countries at this time. “There is a surplus of pilots right now, since 9-11,” said Iverson. “Lots of airlines have had furloughs.”
Bryan Sierra, a public affairs official at the U.S. Department of Justice, said that he did not know how DOJ could even be involved in checking on the backgrounds of commercial airline pilots in the United States.
“I don’t know what authority we would have to do that unless we received a referral to the FBI,” he said.
An FBI spokeswoman said, “We don’t get involved in the private commercial airline pilot-hiring process.”
That leaves the airlines, bereft of government resources other than standard databases, to do background checks themselves – something that did not prevent the seven Venezuelans from getting jobs. “We were fooled,” said Iverson. “The papers looked legitimate.”
“All airlines do a criminal background check,” said Iverson.
Other than no criminal conviction, what does a foreign applicant need to get a job as a commercial airline pilot? “A pilot’s license and a green card,” Mazor said.
According to government filings in the case of the nine illegal aliens, one, Pedro Agusti, a pilot with American Eagle, simply walked into a Miami office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in June and confessed to an agent that he was not authorized to work in the United States. He also told of a scheme in which illegal aliens were obtaining fraudulent Alien Documentation, Identification and Telecommunication System (ADIT) stamps, resident alien cards, green cards and Social Security cards. An ADIT stamp in a foreign national’s passport indicates that he is a legal, permanent resident of the United States who has been authorized to work here. Agusti said that he paid two people $2,800 for a fraudulent ADIT stamp that he put in his genuine Venezuelan passport.
Agusti gave the INS the names of over 30 other aliens who, he claimed, had obtained fraudulent ADIT stamps, which allowed them to acquire genuine Social Security cards. Agusti’s revelations sparked an investigation involving several government agencies.
Then, on Feb. 5, a man named Francesco Baffone walked into an INS office and “described to the INS agent the same scheme described by Agusti concerning the fraudulent acquisition of false ADIT stamps and Social Security cards.”
The information led to the charges announced Feb. 9 against Agusti, fellow American Eagle pilot Luis Garmendia, Express.net Airlines pilots Arnaldo Azara and Ramon Castillo, Executive Jet Aviation pilot Pedro Bottome, unemployed mechanic Luis Hernandez, fueler Luis Gonzalez with Signature Flight Support Center, and unemployed pilots Juan Silva and Pedro Martinez. The defendants face maximum prison sentences of between five to 10 years. At a press conference that day, U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis said that the investigation was “ongoing,” leaving open the possibility of more charges, but a spokeswoman declined to give details.
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