DHS Agency Can't Handle Immigration Fraud Caseload

By Michael Cutler

A "Washington Times" article today, "Immigration agency falters in handling fraud cases," addresses an area of concern that I was greatly concerned about during virtually my entire career at the former INS that spanned some 30 years. I began my career at John F. Kennedy International Airport and was responsible to determine whether or not aliens seeking entry into the United States should be admitted. I was detailed for one year to the unit that adjudicated applications to accord aliens residency in the United States based on marriage to a United States citizen or resident alien. In 1975 I became a special agent and rotated through every section of the Investigations Branch of the former INS including a stint in the Frauds Unit. My career included 4 years as the INS representative to the Unified Intelligence Division of the DEA in New York, Senior Special Agent assigned to the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, and work with counterparts from the FBI, DEA, U.S. Customs, local and state police organizations, and representatives of foreign governments. Many of the criminal aliens who were targeted for investigation as subjects of narcotics and terrorism investigations often were found to have committed immigration fraud in order to either enter the United States or hide in plain sight once they got here. Fraud is a major area of vulnerability that has been overlooked for far too long.

Simply stated, immigration fraud can be thought of as a lie put on an application that enables an individual to gain an immigration benefit that he/she would not receive if all of the relevant facts were known. Additionally, fraud can be thought of as coming in two broad categories, document fraud and fraud schemes. Both areas leave our nation vulnerable and virtually nothing is being done to address these issues in meaningful ways. While much attention has been paid to the situation at our nation's borders, immigration benefit fraud has been all but ignored by the government and by most of the news media. It is far easier to associate the immigration crisis with the border than to consider the other components of this issue. During the last Presidential campaign, the President made the point that since he had been the governor of a border state, he understood illegal immigration. Nothing could be further from the truth. It has been estimated that some 40% of the illegal alien population did not run our nation's borders but rather entered the United States through a port of entry such as an airport and then, in one way or another, violated the immigration laws. In fact, we still have a Visa Waiver Program that enables aliens from 26 countries plus Canada to enter the United States without first obtaining a visa. The truth is that any state that has a seaport or an international airport is, in fact, as much a border state as are those states that lie on our nation's northern or southern borders.

Additionally, when an alien succeeds in entering the United States by running our borders, that alien is not likely to set up a tent near the border, but rather head for a bus terminal, train station or airport to head for some other location within the interior of the United States. Consequently, illegal immigration is creating a crisis for all 50 states and the crisis continues to grow especially as the administration and our government fails to effectively address this crisis. The President's Guest Worker Amnesty Program that is now being mirrored by members of the Senate such as Senator Specter would not solve the crisis but, in fact, exacerbate it. If the agency that is responsible for adjudicating the millions of pending applications for benefits, USCIS cannot grapple with its work load now, how will it effectively deal with millions of applications that would be undoubtedly filed by illegal aliens seeking to remain in the United States? How will ICE police this system if it is overwhelmed by the millions of illegal aliens who are currently in the United States? I am also greatly concerned that terrorists could easily obtain guest worker documents in false identities to circumvent "No Fly" and other watch lists to travel freely throughout the United States and across our borders and obtain other identity documents based on a guest worker identity document to embed themselves in the United States. Finally, it would not be possible to conduct proper investigations to determine when alien applicant for a guest worker program actually entered the United States. I fear that a guest worker program, coupled with the incompetent USCIS will amount to an open invitation to the people from all over the world to come to the United States, provide a false name and lie about who they are and when they actually arrived here. The ensuing bedlam would be nothing short of catastrophic for our nation especially as we are fighting a war on terrorism.

According to the article, USCIS has made the reduction of the backlog the priority for that terribly overworked and understaffed agency. As is the case with any organization, there is an adverse relationship between quantity and quality. If the goal is to churn out as many widgets as possible, the quality of the widgets is bound to suffer. Here we are not talking about widgets but rather with the adjudication of application for immigration benefits. These benefits range from permitting alien students to change schools, to replacing immigration identity documents to the conferring of residednt alien status and even United States citizenship upon aliens in the United States. Many of these issues have a direct bearing on national security. In some ways, the process by which these applications are adjudicated created at least as great a threat to national security as does our lack of secure borders. Additionally, the more fraud that alien succeed in getting away with, the more that additional aliens are emboldened to file fraudulent applications for benefits, further exacerbating the backlog. This increase in the backlog makes it more difficult to restore integrity to this dysfunctional system. I have often compared this situation with the episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy and her friend Ethel get jobs at a bonbon factory, where they are supposed to wrap candy on a conveyer belt. The boss turns up the speed of the conveyer belt to warp speed while the hapless Lucy and Ether struggle to keep up with the candy that is hurtling at them. Ultimately they resort to stuffing the candy down their clothes and try to eat as many of the candies. The chaos that ensues is truly comical. However, chaos in the immigration system is not humorous, it is disastrous. Janice Kephart, a former counsel for the 9/11 Commission conducted a study in which she discovered that 59 terrorists or some 2/3 of the terrorists who have been identified as being in our country between 1990 and the attacks of September 11, 2001 made use of immigration benefit fraud, either to enter the United States or to embed themselves in our country after they succeeded in entering our country. Clearly this situation creates a security nightmare for the United States as does the allegations of corruption at USCIS. As I have previously stated, if we could borrow the deflector shields from the Starship Enterprise and install it along our nation's borders, our security would still be in jeopardy because of the issue of immigration fraud. In effect, immigration fraud provides aliens, including terrorists and criminals with the keys to the kingdom- facilitating the entry of aliens into our country who represent a threat to our safety and survival. When we provide criminal aliens and terrorists with United States citizenship or even resident alien status, we also facilitate their travel to other countries including allies of our nation, imperiling our safety as well as the safety of those other countries.

The GAO report discussed in this article was the result of a request from Representative John Hostettler, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims. His unflagging efforts to address so many of the immigration issues confronting our nation should be appreciated by all of us who share my concerns about the dire need that exists to fix the immigration system.

Our nation desperately needs to view immigration as a system in which all of the components need to work effectively and with great integrity- no less than the safety and survival of our nation is at stake!

As a final note, I was interviewed yesterday at the CNN studios in New York about this report and the brief clip in which I will be seen is expected to air on Friday's Lou Dobbs Tonight program. I hope you had an opportunity to see this broadcast.

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