Immigration benefit fraud is "rampant" and "out of control," allowing some foreign nationals to stay in the country illegally to traffic in drugs and commit violent crimes, according to a General Accounting Office report scheduled to be released today.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service "does not know the extent of the immigration benefit fraud problem," the study concludes. "However, reports and INS officials indicate that the problem is pervasive and significant, and will increase as smugglers and other criminal enterprises use fraud as another means of bringing illegal aliens, including criminal aliens, into the country."
Benefit application fraud involves obtaining documents that illegally give immigrants U.S. citizenship, residence, authorization to work or other changes in their status. It can include applicants who seek temporary visas but have no intention of leaving the United States, or arrange sham marriages to U.S. citizens to earn the right to stay here.
The study concludes that the INS lacks the ability to track and manage investigations of fraud and does not share information among offices. That allows applicants denied benefits at one service center to apply for and receive benefits at another.
The GAO interviewed INS officials in Washington and around the country. It examined how much the INS knew about the fraud, how the agency's policies support benefit fraud and what measures the agency has to "gauge the results of its benefit fraud enforcement activities."
The GAO collected the information at the request of Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. George W. Gekas (R-Pa.), chairman of the immigration and claims subcommittee.
The two often have been critical of the INS. Last year they denounced Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's plan to separate the agency's enforcement and service functions, saying it does not go far enough to fix the INS.
"This report raises a whole host of troubling homeland security threats posed by an immigration benefits process wrought with fraud," Sensenbrenner said in a statement. "In fact, the GAO finds that the INS does not even know the extent of the problem.
"We have a complete failure by the INS to take the steps necessary to protect the people of the United States and the immigration system itself from criminals manipulating the benefits process," he said.
Michael Pearson, an INS executive associate commissioner in charge of field operations, said in a letter accompanying the report that his agency agrees it should do a better job of detecting fraudulent applications and processing legitimate applications more efficiently. An INS spokesman declined to comment further.
The report found that 20 to 30 percent of applications in some places are fraudulent. In a review of petitions for one visa category in which fraud is a particular problem, the INS found 90 percent of 5,000 petitions were fraudulent. A follow-up study of 1,500 of those petitions found that all but one was fraudulent.
About 68 percent of INS applications and petitions are filed at the four service centers, which are located in California, Texas, Nebraska and Vermont.
The examination found that benefit fraud is a low priority for the INS and that there is no assurance that the agency's reviews can detect noncompliance or abuse during the application process.
"Immigration benefit fraud has been a longstanding problem for INS that has grown more intense and serious," the report said. "Institutionally, INS has not done much to combat this significant problem, which threatens the integrity of the legal immigration system because it results in INS's granting valuable benefits to ineligible aliens."
The GAO recommended that Ashcroft order INS Commissioner James W. Ziglar to develop a better method of tracking and managing benefit fraud investigations; determine how the INS can balance processing applications quickly and detecting fraud applications; and develop procedures for the agency's investigative units to determine which fraud cases to pursue.