ABSTRACT
On September 10, 2001, the United States was the most open, and some might have said most naïve, country in the world . . . Government scrutiny for the more than 7 million visas granted each year to foreign visitors was cursory, while another 11 million travelers from Europe and nearly 25 million visitors from Canada and Mexico crossed with virtually no scrutiny at all. U.S. policy was explicitly to facilitate and promote travel, believing it could only bring economic, social, and cultural benefits to the country . . . But in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, which had left nearly three thousand people dead and their grieving families behind, the risks suddenly appeared vastly to outweigh the benefits.
