Despite finding evidence of widespread fraud and abuse in applications for four different types of immigration visas, the federal government still does not do routine site visits on these applicants like it does with two other common visa types, The Daily has learned.
Between 2005 and 2010, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted fraud assessment studies on eight different types of immigration applications, which involved in-person visits to a random sample of applicants.
The results of four of those assessments — for political asylum, marriage-based, Yemeni family-based and L1 intercompany transfer visas — worked their way up through the agency starting in 2008, but were never finalized, released to the public nor acted upon.
But The Daily was provided a draft of the L1 visa study, which showed fraud in nearly a third of cases.
From Florida to New York, fraud officers found evidence of fraud and technical noncompliance in 29 percent of the 238 site visits they conducted on L1 visas. The violations ranged from nonexistent businesses and missing beneficiaries to less egregious issues like an exaggerated description of the duties carried out by the applicant, who was often a relative of the business owner.
L1 visas are for the purpose of transferring employees who are managers, executives or have specialized knowledge, from an overseas companies to the same firm’s office in the United States.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has said these visas are especially problematic because “there are no wage protections, no annual numerical limits, fewer obligations on the employer, and thus, fewer protections for American workers.”
Don Crocetti, who presided over all of the studies as the associate director of the fraud detection unit, declined to provide the fraud rate for the other three unreleased studies, but said they were all in the “double-digits … high enough that there should be a concern, and that the agency and the department should want to correct it.”
USCIS spokesman Christopher Bentley said the reports were not released because the methodology was not statistically sound enough for public consumption.
But many within the agency suspect the move was to protect the Obama administration’s immigration reform agenda, since some of the unfavorable and potentially alarming statistics would have been released right as the president rolled out his immigration initiative in a May 2010 speech in El Paso, Texas.
Emilio Gonzalez, USCIS director during the George W. Bush administration, said he also doesn’t think these fraud assessments should be publicly released, even though members of Congress often push for them.
An internal email chain from April 2007 showed internal anxiety over releasing a report on the “politically sensitive and high profile” professional visas, known as H-1Bs, which was finally made public in September 2008 and showed a fraud and non-compliance rate of 21 percent.
The religious worker visa assessment released in August 2005 found a 33 percent fraud rate.
Crocetti said his methods for collecting the data were sound.
“There’s a concern about timing; coming out with a certain finding of fraud where there are efforts toward getting certain legislation passed,” he said.
“[But] I most certainly would have released them... I would stand behind every one of them.”
Bentley countered that the methods for the fraud assessments were outdated and discontinued in 2009.
“We continue to collect, analyze, and use information from the field to inform how we allocate our resources to most effectively combat fraud,” he said in an emailed statement.
Using contract workers, the agency only routinely does site visits for all religious worker visa applicants, and a random sampling of some companies applying for professional (H1-B) visas.
The follow-up visits can be conducted for any other type of visa if there is a special request for one, but several USCIS employees told The Daily this rarely happens.
One fraud detection officer, who asked to remain anonymous, said the service officers aren’t sending them requests for site visits on L1 visas because they are “afraid.”
Last week, The Daily exclusively reported on a draft report from the Office of Inspector General that found many immigration officers felt pressured to approve questionable visa applications — and that the culture of the agency has dramatically shifted under the current director's mantra of “get to yes.”
Sarah.Ryley@thedaily.com
RELATED ARTICLES
ARTICLE 1: IMMIGRATION STRIFE
ARTICLE 2: IMMIGRATION REACTION
ARTICLE 3: IMMIGRATION BACON
Between 2005 and 2010, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted fraud assessment studies on eight different types of immigration applications, which involved in-person visits to a random sample of applicants.
The results of four of those assessments — for political asylum, marriage-based, Yemeni family-based and L1 intercompany transfer visas — worked their way up through the agency starting in 2008, but were never finalized, released to the public nor acted upon.
But The Daily was provided a draft of the L1 visa study, which showed fraud in nearly a third of cases.
From Florida to New York, fraud officers found evidence of fraud and technical noncompliance in 29 percent of the 238 site visits they conducted on L1 visas. The violations ranged from nonexistent businesses and missing beneficiaries to less egregious issues like an exaggerated description of the duties carried out by the applicant, who was often a relative of the business owner.
L1 visas are for the purpose of transferring employees who are managers, executives or have specialized knowledge, from an overseas companies to the same firm’s office in the United States.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has said these visas are especially problematic because “there are no wage protections, no annual numerical limits, fewer obligations on the employer, and thus, fewer protections for American workers.”
Don Crocetti, who presided over all of the studies as the associate director of the fraud detection unit, declined to provide the fraud rate for the other three unreleased studies, but said they were all in the “double-digits … high enough that there should be a concern, and that the agency and the department should want to correct it.”
USCIS spokesman Christopher Bentley said the reports were not released because the methodology was not statistically sound enough for public consumption.
But many within the agency suspect the move was to protect the Obama administration’s immigration reform agenda, since some of the unfavorable and potentially alarming statistics would have been released right as the president rolled out his immigration initiative in a May 2010 speech in El Paso, Texas.
Emilio Gonzalez, USCIS director during the George W. Bush administration, said he also doesn’t think these fraud assessments should be publicly released, even though members of Congress often push for them.
An internal email chain from April 2007 showed internal anxiety over releasing a report on the “politically sensitive and high profile” professional visas, known as H-1Bs, which was finally made public in September 2008 and showed a fraud and non-compliance rate of 21 percent.
The religious worker visa assessment released in August 2005 found a 33 percent fraud rate.
Crocetti said his methods for collecting the data were sound.
“There’s a concern about timing; coming out with a certain finding of fraud where there are efforts toward getting certain legislation passed,” he said.
“[But] I most certainly would have released them... I would stand behind every one of them.”
Bentley countered that the methods for the fraud assessments were outdated and discontinued in 2009.
“We continue to collect, analyze, and use information from the field to inform how we allocate our resources to most effectively combat fraud,” he said in an emailed statement.
Using contract workers, the agency only routinely does site visits for all religious worker visa applicants, and a random sampling of some companies applying for professional (H1-B) visas.
The follow-up visits can be conducted for any other type of visa if there is a special request for one, but several USCIS employees told The Daily this rarely happens.
One fraud detection officer, who asked to remain anonymous, said the service officers aren’t sending them requests for site visits on L1 visas because they are “afraid.”
Last week, The Daily exclusively reported on a draft report from the Office of Inspector General that found many immigration officers felt pressured to approve questionable visa applications — and that the culture of the agency has dramatically shifted under the current director's mantra of “get to yes.”
Sarah.Ryley@thedaily.com
RELATED ARTICLES
ARTICLE 1: IMMIGRATION STRIFE
ARTICLE 2: IMMIGRATION REACTION
ARTICLE 3: IMMIGRATION BACON
