Los Angeles Times

latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immig-fraud7-2010feb 07,0,7555071.story

In fighting visa fraud, nothing beats the personal touch

U.S. is using new technology and better cooperation between agencies
to detect false applications, but face-to-face visits are the best way
to catch a fraudulent claim.

By Teresa Watanabe
February 7, 2010

The immigration investigator was polite but persistent as he
approached the leasing agent at a five-story office building in El
Monte. Where is Suite 105? Can I see it? Where is the person who
established the business?

The leasing agent paused. The businessman was trying to set up the
office a year ago, she said, but he never did. Actually, she added, he
used the place only as a mailing address.

Bingo. According to immigration official Rand L. Gallagher, the visit
confirmed his suspicions that the Chinese national in question had
filed a fraudulent application for a business visa. The visa petition
claimed the El Monte office housed employees who were going to start a
U.S. subsidiary of an import-export parent company in China.

But "Suite 105" turned out to be a tiny side room inside the leasing
office, with no workers and no evidence of a business operation.

"There’s a lot of covering up going on," said Gallagher, who heads the
western operations of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’
anti-fraud unit. "I doubt the guy was even here."

Increased site visits like the recent trip to El Monte are a key tool
in the federal government’s newly aggressive fight against immigration
fraud. The visits are to expand to as many as 25,000 this fiscal year
from 5,000 last year, according to Alejandro N. Mayorkas, director of
the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Site visits are required for each application for a religious worker
visa after a 2006 internal review found a 33% fraud rate. The expanded
site visit program will focus on applicants for a skilled worker visa
known as H-1B. Applications in that visa category were found to have
a 21% rate of fraud or technical violations in a 2008 internal review.

Investigators have found applicants for skilled worker or managerial
visas working at convenience stores, fast-food restaurants and video
shops. They have discovered bogus firms, as in the El Monte case. They
have documented exaggerated claims, such as an Armenian flower shop in
Glendale that asserted the need to bring in a foreign worker as a
full-time accountant when the business, on inspection, turned out to
be far too small to need one.

"I’d be happy to find that everything was legitimate, but that’s not
the real world," said Gallagher, who has investigated immigration
fraud for 14 years and previously served as an intelligence analyst,
interrogator and linguist in the U.S. Air Force. "The reality is that
there are many people who exploit our agency. . . . We’re trying to
make sure we give benefits to people who actually deserve them."

Some fear, however, that the aggressive anti-fraud effort is having
unintended negative consequences. Robert P. Deasy, a spokesman for the
American Immigration Lawyers Assn., said many of his organization’s
business clients are complaining that denial rates for visa
applications appear to be on the rise even for legitimate applicants.

Although immigration officials could not provide overall denial rates,
a government study last year found they doubled for religious worker
petitions, to 60% in fiscal year 2007 from 31% the previous year.

In addition, Deasy said, many of his members are concerned that the
government is contracting out site visits to people whom they view as
inadequately trained in immigration law.

"We’re seeing a whole lot of employer heartburn," Deasy said.

The federal push on immigration fraud began after a 2002 study by
government auditors found that immigration fraud was "pervasive and
significant" and that immigration officials were poorly equipped to
fight it.

The report expressed alarm that criminals were increasingly using the
application process to gain legal entry into the U.S. for narcotics
trafficking, terrorism and other illegal activity.

Since then, the government has increased resources and reorganized its
anti-fraud operations, including the 2004 establishment of the Office
of Fraud Detection and National Security to find false claims
involving marriage petitions, work visas, green card renewals and
other immigration benefits. Gallagher heads the nation’s largest
regional program, which is based in Laguna Niguel and covers
California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii.

In the last six years, the number of anti-fraud officers nationwide
has grown from 100 to 600. Offices have been established in Mexico and
Germany, with others being considered for the Philippines, China,
India and South Korea.

The number of fraud leads investigated has jumped from 2,620 in 2005
to 31,827 last year.

And the fraud office’s budget has swelled to $95 million in fiscal
year 2009, up from about $20 million five years earlier. To help fund
the operations, Congress approved a $500 "fraud fee" on certain
business visa applications, raising millions of dollars a year for
investigators in the Homeland Security, Labor and State departments.

Addressing a key criticism in the 2002 report, officials have created
a national case management system to allow investigators to share
information across state lines.

That system allowed Gallagher and his staff to learn that one Southern
California man suspected of business visa fraud had moved to South
Carolina and was trying to win legal status through marriage to a
U.S. citizen.

The couple withdrew their petition in November after an immigration
officer found in an interview that the Chinese suspect and African
American woman were 15 years apart in age, did not speak each other’s
native language and shared no common address. His green card
application was denied in November and he has been ordered to appear
before an immigration judge.

New technology, including an enhanced computer system with expanded
access to databases, has also aided the fight against fraud, Gallagher
said.

For green card renewals, for instance, officers can now see the photos
and other biographical information in the original application to scan
for potential fraud. That advance has helped keep fraud rates low for
green card replacements — less than 1%, according to an internal
review.

"We are by no means less vigilant than we were in 2002," Mayorkas
said. "But our vigilance is far better equipped than it was then."

Mayorkas added that better collaboration with other agencies has also
helped the anti-fraud effort. In Los Angeles, the immigration services
and customs and enforcement agencies have collaborated to break some
major fraud cases. But site visits have proved to be one of the
biggest keys to success, Gallagher said. An applicant’s paperwork can
raise red flags: A new subsidiary claiming it needs four or five
foreign managers, for instance, will probably be scrutinized.

But nothing clinches a case like face-to-face encounters,
investigators say. Once, Gallagher drove out to a north Los Angeles
County community to visit a supposed applicant for a managerial visa.

Instead, he found a farmer loading fruit and vegetables into a trailer
who knew nothing about the visa petition.

His name had been used by a man whom officials ultimately found had
filed more than a dozen fraudulent visa petitions.

U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who has led the fight for
tougher anti-fraud efforts, praised the progress that has been made
but cautioned that the problem was a "vicious cycle that never really
ends."

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com
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