S/S
200408897
United
tate
Washington
D.C.
2 52
pr l
23,
2004
'•
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIEDMEMORANDUM FOR DANIEL MARCUSGENERAL COUNSELNATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITEDSTATESSUBJECT: National Commission
on
Terrorist
Attacks Upon
the
United
States Request
for
Documents Request
No.
15
This is in response to Request No.
15
from the National Commission onTerrorist Attacks Upon the United States for Department of State documents.The attached consists of two pages of unclassified information providing the
requested
data
on
individual
officer
issuance
and
refusal
rates
in
Riyadh
and
Jeddah from January
1,
1997, through September
11,
2001,
as well as posts'overall issuance
and
refusal rates
broken
down
by
third country
nationals
and
Saudi citizens.The Department of State does not provide visa
refusal
statistics to the public.
Such
statistics are open to
misintepretation.
Refusal
statistics relate to the
activities
of individuals. We want to avoid any misunderstandings that would
result
if individual governments were to look at a
nation's
overall
refusal
rate andseek
to
compare these rates with that
of
another country. Such
conclusions
wouldbe of no value as explained below. Consequently, we ask that you not include this
information
in public statements or reports.Please.also note that the attached document contains information that isprotected from disclosure under Section
222(f)
of the Immigration and Nationality
Act,
8 U.S.C.
1202(f),
and, in accordance with that law, may only be used for the formulation, amendment, administration,
or
enforcement
of the
immigration,nationality, or other laws of the United
States.
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED2
It
is
important
to
note that statistics tell only part
of a
story.
It is not
unusual
in
a visa unit for various officers to have disparate refusal rates and yet stillmaintain common adjudication standards. An individual
officer s
refusal rate may
vary
depending on the role he or she carries out in the section as well as the
demographic
mix of
visa applicants
at a
particular post.
In
some cases
an
officer
may
spend
a
preponderance
of his or her
time
on
certain types
of
visas
or
categories
of
visa applicants, using adjudication standards common
to all
officers
at post, which
nonetheless
may
result
in
either
a
higher
or
lower refusal rate than
might
otherwise
be the
case.
For
example, there
may be
differences between
the
numbers
or
types
of
cases adjudicated
by a
supervisor versus
a
line
officer,
or an
officer
fluent in one
language versus another. While
the
statistics transmitted
in the
attachment
provide
a
snapshot
of
refusal
rates, they
must be
viewed with
an
understanding
of the
difficulty
of
drawing conclusions
based
solely
on the
numbers.
The
Department
of
State
is
providing
the
names
of the
officers
and abreakdown of
their
refusal
rates
for
review
by the
Commission
but not for
publicrelease. Some additional explanatory comments concerning the attached document
are
necessary:
Visa
Statistics:
All
refusals,
regardless
of
grounds, have
been
included.
In
cases where
an
adjudicating Foreign Service
Officer
was not
recorded,
the
certifying
officer
or
authorized user
was
recorded.
A
small number
of
casesremained that had no User ID at all recorded with the adjudication data.They
are
still included
in the
attached document, with
a
blank user
ID.
These anomalies stem from an earlier, less sophisticated version of our visa
systems,
which was corrected in the more modernized
NIV
system
introduced in
Jeddah
and
Riyadh
in
mid-1998. Some data converted
fromthe
earlier system may have not have converted into the new systemcompletely.
Adjudicating Officers:
In
some cases,
the
database does
not
link
a
name
to auser
ID, and the information is no longer available. This is because theearlier visa system
PCN-NIV)
was in use in Riyadh and Jeddah prior to
mid-1998.
At that time, Jeddah and Riyadh were converted to themodernized visa
application,
which permitted
the
Department
to
capturemore information
on
visa adjudications
and
make
it
available on-line
through
the Consolidated Consular Database.SENSITIVE
BUT
UNCLASSIFIED
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED
3
We hope this information is
useful
to you. As always
please
do not hesitate
to
contact
us if you
have
further
questions.
Karl
Hofmann
Executive
Secretary
Attachments:
1
Index
and
Department
of
State documents.
2
Incoming request.SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED
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