Immigration Fraud and National Security Threats - Deja Vu All Over Again

By Bill West

On September 24, the Cybercast News Service ran a story about a GAO report issued September 21 reflecting that our Diversity Visa program was at notable risk of fraud abuse and that risk was particularly vulnerable to misuse by foreign terrorist operatives seeking to enter and remain in the United States, utilizing the program to gain “legal” immigration status and cover. The Diversity Visa program was initially established to facilitate immigration from countries with otherwise low levels of immigrant entry. This currently includes terror sponsoring countries like Iran, Syria and Sudan.

The report indicates fraud within the program is complicated by the easy potential for terrorist aliens obtaining genuine identity documents in false identities in their home countries, or such aliens who are not already known to US and allied Intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and therefore not in the various lookout systems, slipping through the alert network. Additionally, the report notes once Diversity Visa aliens are admitted into the United States, there is virtually no follow up effort by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or any other US Government agency to verify their location or activities.

These issues are nothing new. The fraud abuse potential is the same as exists for all our visa and immigration systems. The resources for State Department and DHS immigration agencies to investigate, pursue and address these issues are significantly limited and that is something that is little changed from the days of the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the demise of which was supposed to make such things much better.

Ironically, and perhaps a bit sadly, more than ten years ago fellow CT Blog contributor Mike Cutler and I testified before the House Immigration Subcommittee on the topic of immigration and visa fraud. We spoke about the potential for such fraud being pursued by organized crime and terrorist groups and the threat that posed and the need for additional enforcement resources focused on the problem and the need to change various policies and procedures to limit the exposure of the system to such fraud. Clearly, we may as well have been speaking to ourselves in a mirror.

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