The federal government is charging four Somalis with fraudulently obtaining green cards via the visa lottery and chain migration, and will deport them if they are found guilty.
“We cannot tolerate fraud, deception, and abuse of our legal immigration system,” said a November 6 statement from Elaine Duke, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security. “Fraudulently obtained citizenship is an affront to our American values, the rule of law, and all those who honestly attained their immigration status.”
“Deterring, detecting, and investigating U.S. passport and U.S. visa fraud are essential to protecting the integrity of consular processes and safeguarding our national security,” said Carl Risch, and assistant secretary of state.
Officials did not state if the four people have used their alleged fraud to sponsor other migrants. But prior government reports suggest that fraud was nearly universal among Somalis seeking to bring supposed family members into the United States.
The charges come as GOP legislators step up their criticism of the visa lottery, which has provided chain-migration green cards to roughly 5 million people since it was created in 1990, without any significant screening for health, education, productivity, or ideology. One of the recipients was an Uzbek Muslim, Sayfullo Saipov. He was allowed into the United States in 2010, even though his first name means “Sword of Allah.’ In New York, he kept his Islamic wife isolated and hidden under a niqab cloak, and he then used a rented truck to murder eight people in New York on November 1.
Since the attack, Trump has stepped up demands that Congress end the chin migration system, which has doubled the annual inflow fo legal immigrants since the 1980s.
President Donald Trump has also reduced the refugee program, which has imported tens of thousands of Somalis into Minnesota and other states. The population of roughly 90,000 resident Somalis has sent tens of young men back to Somalia to fight for Islamic militia groups Several Somalis have also been convicted of terror charges or have committed terror attacks while living in the United States. Breitbart News reported:
Somali refugee Dahir Adan attacked nine Americans with a knife at a mall in St. Cloud, Minn. before an off-duty police officer shot and killed him on Sept. 17, 2016.
Somali refugee Abdul Razak Ali Artan attacked 11 Americans with a knife and then a car on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus before a campus police officer shot and killed him on Nov. 28, 2016.
The main charges were laid against a Somali woman who used her 2001 visa-lottery win to get residency for unrelated people who she claimed were part of her family. According to the federal statement:
Fosia Abdi Adan, 51, a native of Somalia, applied for and received a diversity visa from the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, under the Diversity Visa (DV) Program on Jan. 10, 2001, and used her visa to unlawfully obtain beneficiary visas for the below individuals who were ineligible to be beneficiaries. Adan arrived and was admitted to the United States on Jan. 29, 2001, on her diversity immigrant visa as a permanent resident. Throughout the diversity visa application process, Adan fraudulently claimed that she was married to Jama Solob Kayre, the fictitious identity used by Ahmed Mohamed Warsame, and that she and Kayre had three children together. Such children included Mohamed Jama Solob, the fictitious identity used by Mustaf Abdi Adan, and Mobarak Jama Solob, the fictitious identity used by Faysal Jama Mire. Adan and Warsame, who used the fictitious identity of Jama Solob Kayre, obtained a divorce in Minnesota for their fictitious marriage after Adan was admitted as a permanent resident. Adan continued to fraudulently represent her previous fictitious marriage and fraudulently represent her fictitious parentage of Mohamed Jama Solob and Mobarak Jama Solob, throughout the naturalization process. Adan naturalized on Aug.16, 2006. Adan has been residing in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Among other counts contained in the complaint filed against Adan, the United States alleges that she was not lawfully admitted for permanent residence because she engaged in alien smuggling as defined by the Immigration and Nationality Act, and thus was never eligible to naturalize.
If found guilty, the four Somali would be sent home and lose any citizenship of the United States, said the statement.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the citizenship of a naturalized U.S. citizen may be revoked, and his or her certificate of naturalization canceled, if such naturalization was illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.
Late in President George W. Bush’s administration, officials began using genetic tests to verify family-relationship claims by Somalis seeking to bring supposed relatives into the United States. For example, a State Department document noted in 2008 that:
We were, however, only able to confirm all claimed biological relationships in fewer than 20% of cases (family units). In the remaining cases, at least one negative result (fraudulent relationship) was identified, or the individuals refused to be tested … We initially tested a sample of some 500 refugees (primarily Somali and Ethiopian) in Nairobi, Kenya under consideration for U.S. resettlement through the [family reunification] P-3 program. After that sample suggested high rates of fraud, we expanded testing to Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana, Guinea, Gambia and Cote d’Ivoire. Most of the approximately 3,000 refugees tested are from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Liberia, as these nationalities make up the vast majority of P-3 cases.
The fraud levels in a Somali-used family unification program was so high that officials suspected the program, according to a 2010 report by the Center for Immigration Studies. It reported:
Most of the “family reunification” provisions in the U.S. refugee program have been suspended for the past 2 years. The Priority 3 (P-3) resettlement category was closed for refugees since summer 2008 when U.S. officials found that most refugees from Africa using the P-3 program were not related at all. The fraud rate among Somali refugees was reported to be as high as 90 percent.
New regulations to combat fraud in the U.S. State Department program were published in the Federal Register for public comment earlier this month with a 60-day public comment period…
There are at least two shortcomings with the proposal. The initial refugee family unit is not verified for relationship. The initial family in many cases will come over as a husband with one wife, as required by the U.S., but with children from several wives. Much if not most of the current refugee influx is from polygamous societies.
The children from this original family unit could legally bring in their mothers. Presumably this is not a problem for the planners, who may even have designed the program for this outcome. But, since there is no verification of the original family unit, completely unrelated children will come in who then have the right to put their biological parents into the enhanced priority program. These individuals will then be able to legally bring in their other children and their parents who, in turn, can bring in relatives and so on.
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