Immigration Fraud? DHS: “Not necessarily.”
We already knew that DHS has some real problems managing immigration. Just look at some of the issues found with in connection with the foreign-born spouse involved in the San Bernardino shooting (here and here and here and here), along with issues relating to Syrian “refugee” immigration (here and here and here and here).
But you’d think they could get at least the “common stuff” right. Like run-of-the-mill, everyday immigration.
Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. From a recent news report (emphasis added):
The U.S. government has mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants from countries of concern to national security or with high rates of immigration fraud who had pending deportation orders, according to an internal Homeland Security audit released Monday.
The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general found that the immigrants used different names or birth dates to apply for citizenship with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and such discrepancies weren’t caught because their fingerprints were missing from government databases.
DHS said in an emailed statement that an initial review of these cases suggest that some of the individuals may have ultimately qualified for citizenship, and that the lack of digital fingerprint records does not necessarily mean they committed fraud.
The report does not identify any of the immigrants by name, but Inspector General John Roth’s auditors said they were all from “special interest countries” — those that present a national security concern for the United States — or neighboring countries with high rates of immigration fraud. The report did not identify those countries.
Yeah, no need to worry. The DHS IG says that even though the individuals used an alias or other false data during application, that that “does not necessarily mean they committed fraud”.
Really, Mr. IG? Can I come visit the planet on which you’re living?
So, ICE is going after these folks – right? They’re being tracked down and prosecuted for fraud, then stripped of their ill-gotten US citizenship – right?
Hardly. Two have been. Prosecutors declined to prosecute another 26. 32 remain under investigation by ICE; they’ve closed 90 investigations. The status of the remaining, oh, 700+? Damned if I know.
Oh, and this might be just the tip of the iceberg with respect to the problem. The DHS report that found the above issue indicates that digital fingerprints are missing from Federal databases for 315,000 immigrants having final deportation orders on file. I’m guessing some of those either have or will “slip through the cracks” soon.
Yahoo News has an article on the subject; it’s worth a read. Don’t read it if you’re already angry or having a crappy day.
Unfortunately, I’m guessing if you read it and weren’t already having a crappy day . . . you’ll be having one afterwards.
Trump’s gotten a lot of grief on various issues, including immigration. And I can’t say I necessarily like all of his positions or public statements.
But his recent calls for increased scrutiny of those asking to immigrate to the US certainly seem to me to be on the mark.
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Terror War
“inspector general found that the immigrants used different names or birth dates to apply for citizenship….”
Dammit! Another Cheltenham tragedy about to explode, and I haven’t even had breakfast yet!
We are seeing George Orwell being proved a prophet, again.
The delusions are strong in this administration.
So, if I follow this correctly, prints of foreign nationals were taken using the old paper and ink methods. These records were not digitalized, leaving the country dependent upon the honesty of the foreign nationals—hundreds of whom were to be deported—to provide the same name and DOB that they provided when their paper and ink prints were taken. Astoundingly, among the foreign nationals were some who opted to assume an alias, alter their DOBs, or both. Funny how the OIG was able to discover this while DHS was processing targeted deportees for citizenship. Cripes. I can think of a couple of solutions for this problem, none of which would be approved. Why? Because every news outlet in the US would show a pic of a mother and baby being shown the exit door.
The only thing I’d add, 2/17 Air Cav, is that it was the prints of 315,000 individuals who had a valid final deportation order that were never digitized and placed in the appropriate Federal LE databases. IMO there’s absolutely no good reason those records should be absent from those databases. They should have been given second priority by DHS for entry (first priority should be accorded by DHS to prints of those on terror watch lists IMO – if they have those prints).
Having used a scanner before, I’m reasonably certain the process to scan the prints to digital takes about 2 min per set, include double checking the data for usability and correctness afterwards. (Any other processing required of the digital prints afterwards might take additional time, but also could likely be scripted to occur during non-working hours. Use a high-res scanner and you won’t lose detail; storage space is cheap these days.) For 315,000 sets of prints, that comes to about 5 to 6 staff-years of labor.
I’m having trouble believing that DHS is so short of funds that it cant find enough $$$ for a handful of GS-9 positions for a couple of years, plus a small amount of equipment and a bit of programming. Because that’s the level of effort it appears that it would have taken to have prevented this being an issue.
This isn’t due to problems with feasibility, and I can’t see how it’s an issue of resources. Bluntly, IMO it appears to be either an issue of competence or GaS (first word is “give”) on DHS’s part.
As we often say to newbs in the prison industry:
The inmates will lie to you.
It would be astounding to see how many people don’t realize that – except we see it proved repeatedly by those in our Federal Gubbment.
Reason number 2,397,138 that CBP Agents and Officers have morale problems. They’re shoveling shit against the tide.
My wife and her twin sister arrived in the United States with their parents at the age of six months. They immigrated lawfully as refugees and immediately began the process of naturalization, something their American-born younger siblings didn’t have to deal with. Thanks to federal bureaucracy, bullshit, disorganization, and mismanagement, she and her sister finally became American citizens two months before they turned 18.
They grew up here. English is their first language. Culturally, they are as American as anybody else. You’d never guess that they weren’t born here. And they didn’t break the law to get here or stay here. And yet it took 17 years for INS (now ICE) to get around to granting them citizenship.
They are productive upstanding Americans who WANT to be productive upstanding Americans, and they (actually their parents, as they were minors, but you get my point) had to jump through completely-unnecessary chickenshit hoops for 17 years because the feds involved couldn’t find their ass with both hands.
You can imagine how I’m taking this wonderful bit of news in light of that perspective.
Yeah well the problem is not the immigrants – immigrants are always going to try and gain the system; the problem is the bureaucracy! The only way to correct the bureaucracy is to stop the bureaucracy. That’s why we want to stop all the immigration. If you cannot do your job then we take your job away – no longer need your incompetent asses.
Unfortunately when it comes to DHS confidence has never been high that they are getting it right with immigration policies. Primarily because of the fear of being considered racist, or having racially motivated policies.
Jimmy Carter rightly recognized a potential problem with Iranians during the hostage crisis and acted accordingly without a whimper from either side, Trump’s a buffoon on a lot of commentary to be certain but he’s not wrong on this one. If you can’t find your ass without a road map and even then you miss the mark by several feet perhaps it’s a good time to take a moment and catch your breath, get some better documentation and begin searching for it anew once you have all your procedures down to a correct course of action.
1) Do not assume that the current appalling mis-management of immigration is a bug: It is in fact a feature. It is intended to fundamentally transform us into something more resembling the rest of the world.
2) If I grew up in some failed-state / shit-hole nation, you bet your ass I would do whatever was necesary to get to a near mythical place like the USA. The key to managing our immigration is to rig the rules so as to allow in the folks who best build us up, who most want to carve out their own dream like the rest of us, and lock out those who don’t. Get rid of 90% of the idiot free-ride system, and we get rid of the problem of newly-arrived parasites and our own problems as well.
3) Sun-Tsu advised a wise general to sow discord in the enemy camp. Now who do you think might be “helping” encourage our current mess, hmmm?