DNA Tests Show Refugee Program Continues To Be Rife With Fraud
By
Roy Beck, Friday, December 12, 2008, 12:05 AM
A
shocking new report about the potential scope of fraud within our refugee programs: State Department DNA testing found
80% of "family" being brought into the U.S. by refugees under one program are of no blood relation.
The United States signed the
1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees and our obligation to provide sanctuary for defined refugees.
NumbersUSA has always supported the United States taking "our fair share of the world's internationally recognized special needs refugees." In many years, we take a refugee number that is equivalent to half or more of the special needs refugees identified by international bodies and re-settled in third-party countries.
We are concerned about fraud that occurs in two major ways in our refugee programs:
Fraud No. 1 by 'Refugees' themselves:
Refugees, once chosen by the U.S., may bring or send for family members. But large numbers of refugees engage in fraud through this process.
Because of the rampant nature of this fraud, in October of 2008, the State Department suspended all applications for family reunification by U.S.-based refugees under the P-3 Visa program.
The State Department
reported that DNA matches were found in fewer than 20 percent of all cases tested!
The suggestion of an 80 percent fraud rate is deeply troubling. Can there be any integrity in the family part of the refugee program?
Refugee advocates have challenged relying solely on DNA testing to validate the relationship between refugees and their family members. They say that in refugee communities kinship is often wider than blood ties.
"A village is burning. People are running. Someone grabs a child and ends up raising him. The DNA may not be the same, but in every other way, he is the parent," Seyoum Berhe, an official of refugee services for the Catholic Archdiocese of Arlington, said in a
Washington Post article. "We certainly do not support fraud, but there is a human aspect, too. If my brother were killed in Somalia and I saved his child, according to our culture, that child is mine."
The Catholic official raises an important point that certainly deserves discussion. But absent blood ties, how do our officials know that the people being claimed as family are truly family or are just another case of people trying to game our system? There are millions upon millions of refugees in the world, most of whom would love to claim some kind of family tie to get into the U.S. Our government officials have to have some way to determine true relationship.
Fraud No. 2 by U.S. Officials:
A large number of people who enter the U.S. under the refugee category do not meet internationally recognized criteria for re-settlement.
Most people have never thought about the fact that accepting refugees who don't have "special needs" is actually harmful to other refugees and destabilizes the gigantic international refugee community.
I learned this first hand when Barbara Jordan, the Chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, invited me to meet with the commission along with several international refugee officials.
I heard those officials note that the U.S. takes a lot of refugees from refugee camps who still have reasonable opportunities to return to their homeland. This has a negative effect on refugee efforts because the only hope for most refugees is for conditions in their home countries to improve to allow them to return home. Refugee experts note that when the U.S. takes refugees who are capable of returning home, it causes many more refugees to refuse to return home in hopes that they, too, will be allowed to enter the U.S. Only refugees who have no reasonable opportunity to return home in the foreseeable future, or whose lives depend on third-country resettlement, should be moved into a country like the U.S., experts suggest.
Resettlement of the wrong kind of refugees not only hurts the
American environment (through forced population growth) and
vulnerable U.S. workers (through labor market competition), it also causes a lot of extra suffering in the refugee camps where people are given false hopes that cause them to resist opportunities to go back home.
This kind of fraud by government officials and Members of Congress is perpetrated to achieve certain political goals of trading favor with other countries or with political constituencies in the U.S. But this political fraud harms the U.S. environment, vulnerable U.S. workers and the international refugee community.
ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA
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JohnT0400 of PA
Sat, 12/13/2008 - 2:11am
Re: DNA Tests Show Refugee Program Continues To Be Rife With Fra
May our Father in Heaven, bless you Mr Beck and your loved ones . I salute you. Keep up your great work. The hair stands up on the back of my neck. The power of your pen. I hope some day, you will use your wisdom and your pen, on the FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD AND BANK ???
William2294 of TX
Sat, 12/13/2008 - 12:17am
Re: DNA Tests Show Refugee Program Continues To Be Rife With Fra
What bothers me is not that the fact the fraud exists in the Refugee Program but rather who is committing the fraud. It appears from the blog it is the very people whom the program was designed to help who are guilty of trying to scam the system. While I might agree factors other than DNA might come into play when attempting “ Family “ relationship for the purposes of illegibility into the refugee program I do not believe such instances would come any where near the eighty per cent level as cited by the department. There might exist a chance the per cent number could approach the level of ten per cent but any thing higher than that, in my opinion, would constitute blatant fraud and corruption. The bothersome thing is why are the very people whom the program was designed to help attempting to defraud the system? There can be one and only one reason for their defrauding the system and that reason is simple “Greed “. I believe a through investigation into this matter will reveal the people, organizations or entities were getting paid handsomely to lie and deceive in order to scam the system. I believe government officials and workers had to be involved for the fraud to exist on such a large scale. I also believe, if such an investigation discovers such willful fraud that all refugees’ involved in the scheme should immediately be deported back to their home countries because they obviously have no respect for ours. Any and all government officials and workers proved to be involved in such fraud should all be imprisoned for lengthy stays. Harsh as these measures may sound it is the only way we will ever restore honesty and integrity back into our systems.
Stephen2704 of PA
Fri, 12/12/2008 - 9:50pm
Re: DNA Tests Show Refugee Program Continues To Be Rife With Fra
Lets face it, our immigration system is used by many to obtain cheap labor. They want un or under educated labor who can be exploited & then discarded onto the public here in America when they have outlived their usefulness to greedy employers.
Lets also face the reality that President Bush, whom I voted for, has decided to accommodate international business interests who seek even greater profits at the expense of these unfortunates and at the expense of American taxpayers.
One can not respect someone who simply ignores reality & pushes something onto people so he can make his friends happy.
The TV program "Dirty Jobs" totally discredits any statement that illegal aliens do the jobs Americans won't do. Based on this show, it is patently obvious Americans will do ANY job. That is, so long as they are paid a decent wage, have some benefits, and can have reasonable working conditions. Most illegal aliens accept ANY wage and ANY working condition. They also accept jobs with NO benefits. But by providing them jobs, all the President has done is reduce the living standards of average hard working Americans.
Worse, our President has demonstrated a total disregard of the law. Obviously there is an elite in America & around the world who think they are above all laws & that governments are there to provide them with whatever they want, no matter what the cost to others.
The president has lost most respect Americans had for him. Those anti-war types would have hated him regardless. But now, the President is losing the respect of those who actually supported him.
Adding refugee fraud to the long list of problems with our immigration system, and it becomes obvious to even the most foolish of us that we are being used & abused by those whose only concern is their own pocketbooks.
Perhaps most tragic is that these refugees become the discarded refuge of America where even the poor can live reasonably well. But in a foreign land, these refuges become Americas next criminal element & a significant burden on our society.
Thomas2924 of IN
Fri, 12/12/2008 - 2:47pm
Re: DNA Tests Show Refugee Program Continues To Be Rife With Fra
It is my impression that our government bureaucracy often simply admits enough refugees to reach the maximum quota allowed by Congress. It's not surprising that it is just treated as another loophole to be exploited in any way possible by potential immigrants.
A more fundamental question is whether immigration to this country is a sensible way to deal with most of the very large number of refugees we admit. At present, many of these people are displaced peasant farmers who have been isolated all their lives from the modern world. They often have no education and speak languages that are virtually unknown in this country. Supporting them here is enormously expensive. Rector and Kim
www.heritage.org/research/immigration/sr14.cfm found that immigrant households headed by a person with less than a high school diploma cost $19,588 more in tax payer supplied benefits each year than they pay in taxes. Many refugees are much more expensive than that. Refugees are unquestionably in a bad situation, but really no worse than a billion other, desperately poor non refugees. And, for what it costs us to support one refugee as a very privileged immigrant with extensive benefits in this country we could probably provide decent food, housing, and an education to 20 refugees in the camps, where they could live as well as most people in their home countries while waiting for the political tide to turn, as it usually does. Our refugee policy is more like a lottery than humanitarian aid.
Linda4858 of GA
Fri, 12/12/2008 - 2:20pm
Joseph4731 I actually sent a
Joseph4731
I actually sent a personal email to Roy asking him to put out an alert.....or least write about it. I then posted the CNN Transcript from Lou's report everywhere I could find a place to post. I see very little response with the exception of two. With the recent election, we may not receive an ear from our representatives...but it is worth a try.
Read...then call Washington:
For anyone doubting the contempt George Bush has for America, the Constitution, the rule of law… America’s unique middle class …or the very lives of its citizens…you have to look no further than the report Lou Dobbs had on 12/10…
BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The labor competition for farm workers just intensified. The Department of Labor posted rule changes that eliminate the requirement that farms hire U.S. farm workers first. No longer will a farm be required to show that they have looked for available domestic farm workers to get an H-2A visa. They'll just have to file a letter saying they need foreign guest workers. The H-2A visa program for agricultural workers has no cap, meaning the number of workers that can be brought in are unlimited.
BRUCE GOLDSTEIN, FARMWORKER JUSTICE: The whole point of the H-2A program is supposed to be that if there is a shortage of labor, then the employers must demonstrate that they are actively recruiting workers to try to get them to apply for their jobs, and they must offer decent wages and working conditions to attract them to those jobs.
TUCKER: Instead the new rules would slash wages for a group of workers that the United Farm Workers say now only earn roughly $15,000 a year. The proposed changes have been known for a while. They've been pushed by large agribusiness saying farm labor is in short supply. It's an argument that has a familiar ring.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm for a temporary worker program. We got to create a lawful way for foreign workers to fill jobs that Americans are not doing.
TUCKER: But unemployment levels are at 15-year highs. And there are some 20 guest worker programs -- the B-visa, H-visa, O-visa, P- visa, Q-visa, and the R-visa. And then there are some student visas which allow the visa holder to work part time. It's not clear how many guest workers were admitted to the U.S. last year, but the State Department issued roughly two million guest worker visas in fiscal year 2008.
TUCKER: Now, as for the rule changes to the H-2A program, there still is a chance that Congress could stop the rule change, but it's not likely. In fact not many in Congress appear aware of the pending changes which go into effect January 16th and it doesn't stop at Congress, Lou. A number of agricultural economists I called today had no idea that these rule changes had been posted.
DOBBS: Well I want to say this administration is going out with their legacy. This is one of the most dispiriting, deceitful, dishonest groups of people ever to make up an administration and they do so with the most sanctimonious of attitudes about it all. I think that they are -- they are a disgrace to this nation, each and every one of those people involved in this kind of nonsense.
This president, he wants a legacy. I'll tell you what his legacy is. It's one of disgust. It is contemptible what this man has done on almost every front. Bill Tucker, thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Michael2817 of CA
Fri, 12/12/2008 - 12:16pm
Re: DNA Tests Show Refugee Program Continues To Be Rife With Fra
I am guessing this Bush's last big finger to American workers and a reach around to corporate greed.
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/n...-program-continues-to-be-rife-with-fraud.html
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