ISIS can export jihadis to the United States–such as Tashfeen Malik, who killed 14 in San Bernardino–by going online and arranging 90-day fiancé visas for as little as $375.
Since 2009, President Barack Obama’s deputies have streamlined the process so that it can all be accomplished completely online–without any face-to-face check with a U.S. embassy official.
There were 24,486,536 tourist, business and other arrivals in the U.S. from residents of the 38 friendly nations on the U.S. Visa Waiver Program. Since Obama took office, the number of visas issued per year to non-friendly, non-waiver residents has jumped by over 50 percent to 9,932,480 last year.
The fastest-growing sector of the program is the “Fiancé Visa” program, known as “K-1,” which jumped from 30,290 in 2013 to 41,488 in 2014. San Bernardino terrorist Tashfeen Malik was one of them.
Referred to as the “mail order brides and grooms” category, there are at least 10 online companies that arrange 90 day fiancé visas at very low cost.
The activity has become so popular that in 2014 The Learning Channel launched a TV series called 90 Day Fiancé that tracked people each week from around the globe who were trolling on Facebook to arrange a marriage proposal as a backdoor into America.
ISIS would have known that the show generated 69,761 Facebook likes, and that one episode imported a potential groom, named Alexi, from war-torn Ukraine.
The 90-day fiancé visa supposedly requires a passport, police certificates from the country of residence, medical examination records, evidence of financial support, and evidence of meeting and having a relationship with an American fiancé. But the Obama administration streamlined the process so that it can all be accomplished completely online.
That change ended the requirement that an applicant must visit a U.S. embassy where he or she would be photographed and had their fingerprints taken in person.
Male terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook was born in Chicago to hard-working Pakistani immigrant parents. Syed went to Riverside’s La Sierra High School, earned a degree in environmental health at Cal State San Bernardino, and found a good job as an inspector at the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health.
Other than wearing a beard and being a devout Muslim that went to pray at a mosque every day, no one seemed to think Farook was radicalized or dangerous.
Obama administration officials have seemed desperate to claim that Farook and Malik were not part of a larger conspiracy organized by the the so-called Islamic State, another militant group from abroad, or an extended sleeper cell in California.
But the Malik’s family back in Pakistan told the Los Angeles Times that Tashfeen’s father took her to Saudi Arabia to teach her about living a more extreme Muslim life at a very young age.
It was widely known back home in Pakistan that Tashfeen was religiously radicalized during college, and that she immediately began posting extremist messages on Facebook after arriving in the U.S. in 2014.
A family member who only speaks Urdu said that before Tashfeen went to the U.S. on her 90-day fiancé visas, “She used to talk to somebody in Arabic at night on the Internet. None of our family members in Pakistan know Arabic, so we do not know what she used to discuss.”
Syed and Tashfeen were married in Islam’s holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Although the Obama administration talks about the “robust” security measures they have put in place, Tashfeen was granted permanent status and a green card last summer after a supposed FBI and Department of Homeland Security background checks.
Once in California, Malik wore a full veiled burqa and stayed to herself. Her husband’s co-workers never met her. That proved to be good terrorist “tradecraft” when planning the San Bernardino Inland Regional Center. Her attack killed 14 and injured 21 in the most deadly attack on American soil since 9/11.
It could have been much worse. Tashfeen Malik studied pharmacy at a university in Multan, Pakistan from 2007 to 2012, and Syed Farook had virtually unlimited access to the U.S. food and water supply as a health inspector. With just a little more time and planning, the lovebirds who used a 90-day fiancé visa could have used their knowledge and government credentials to pull off a horrendous bio-terrorism attack that killed thousands.
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