Counterterrorism Blog

Today’s edition of the New York Times reports on the nefarious activities of a “diploma mill” that has been successfully operating for some time, amassing huge profits while conspiring with its customers to provide anyone with the money, a worthless diploma that provides the illusion of academic achievement. These diplomas undermine the integrity of our workforce and may even undermine national security. As the article notes, visas can be issued to aliens who are able to document that they have degrees that would qualify them for employment in the United States, when in fact they have no such education and may have no intention of securing the job they apply for but simply desire to enter our country for other purposes.

When I first began working for the INS as an immigration inspector, students who sought entry into the United States were required to produce Form I-20 issued by the school they intended to attend. They were admitted for a period of one year that had to be renewed every year. Several years later, the INS changed the one year admission policy to call for the admission of foreign students for the duration of status as students. Today inspectors simply note the arriving student is admitted for D/S (Duration of Status). This removes a potential area of monitoring whether or not a student is still enrolled in school. There is a program known as SEVIS that is supposed to keep track of foreign students and exchange visitors in our country.

The problem is that with the lack of resources at ICE, a student who stops attending school may well be reported to our government, but in the game of “hide and seek” the student who decides to drop out of school may hide but the government has precious little in the way of resources to “seek.”

The news report on the diploma mill is disturbing but it only addresses one area of immigration fraud while there are many other areas in which the bad guys, including terrorists, are easily able to game the immigration bureaucracy through committing fraud that goes undiscovered.

A green card, that signifies that the bearer has been accorded resident alien status in our country and especially United States citizenship truly represent the “Keys to the Kingdom.” The only distinction that our nation draws between a native-born American citizen and a naturalized citizen is the fact that the President and Vice President of the United States must be native-born citizens.

The federal agency that is charged with the adjudication of applications for a wide variety of immigration benefits including the conferring of resident alien (lawful immigrant) status and even United States citizenship is USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services).

The emphasis at that agency for far too long has been to attempt to keep up with the massive influx of applications each and every day with inadequate resources. I have previously compared the plight of the employees at USCIS with an old episode of “I Love Lucy” where Lucy and her friend Ethel become employed at a candy factory and they are supposed to wrap bits of candy that are sent to them on a conveyor belt. Initially they find the job to be relatively easy but then, the conveyor belt begins moving at an ever increasing speed. The candy begins flying at them at warp speed and they try to keep up but quickly are overwhelmed by the onslaught of candy. To try to keep pace with the speed of the conveyor belt they stuff the candy bonbons down their dresses and try to eat others. The studio audience howls with laughter at this hilarious predicament that Lucy and Ethel are placed in.

The adjudicators at USCIS are not able to stuff the applications down their clothes nor can they eat them, so to attempt to keep pace, the easiest course of action is to approve as many applications as possible. There is nothing funny about this situation. Indeed, this situation has serious national security ramifications.

The 9-11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel begins with the paragraph:

“It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.”

With all of the noise and drama associated with the immigration issue, all too few politicians have been willing to address the critical issue of immigration fraud even as we approach the 7th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

While the “911 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel” addresses this issue in clear and unambiguous terms, it is not the only document or report that makes the national security risks to be associated with immigration benefit fraud and visa fraud.

In October, 2006 the GAO issued a report of an investigation it conducted at the behest of Senators Chuck Grassley and Susan Collins, who had learned about how USCIS had apparently “lost” 111,000 immigration alien files relating to aliens seeking a wide array of benefits including 30,000 such alien applicants for United States citizenship.

The report confirmed this abysmal situation at USCIS in the report that was innocuously entitled: “IMMIGRATION BENEFITS: Additional Efforts Needed to Help Ensure Alien Files Are Located when Needed."

Clearly immigration fraud is a huge problem and one that our government is all but ignoring! Its not that they don't know, there have been enough hearings and GAO reports, it seems that most of these leaders believe that the flood of illegal aliens into our country will create new voters that they hope will vote for them and their party.

When you read the article a fact that you must first pay attention to is the fact that with all of the talk about the nexus between fraud and visas and national security is that you will see that not one single word of the news reports deals with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) or USCIS or what they are doing to deal with the sort of fraud detailed in the news report than undermines the immigration system.

Take out a moment to let this madness really sink in! Diploma mills are cranking out thousands of bogus diplomas that can be used to enable aliens, including aliens from countries that are identified as being "Special Interest" countries because of their sponsorship of terrorism and ICE is missing in action!