Former foreign service officer Simon Hankinson, who served at consulates in Ghana and Nairobi, among others, says Somali nationals routinely lied in their immigration applications to secure visas in the United States.
“In my consular assignments, I was lied to many times a day about every aspect of applications, including their age, name, identity, marital status, occupation, purpose of travel, wealth, income, relatives in the U.S., and intent to return home,” Hankinson, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“It’s an unfortunate fact: People lie to get visas and immigration benefits,” Hankinson said.
Hankinson, who appeared before the committee to discuss visa fraud among the nation’s immigrant population, said, “The more corrupt and poor a country is, the more visa fraud,” noting that Somalia ranks as one of the most corrupt and poor nations in the world.
“Somalia is as poor and corrupt as a country can get. In 2025, the [United Nations] ranked Somalia 192nd out of 193 countries on its human development index. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Somalia 179th out of 180,” Hankinson said:
At the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, I supervised consular operations for Somalia since we had no consular presence there. And here are some examples of the routine fraud that we saw — fraudulent claims to marriages and family relationships, fraudulent or unauthorized letters of support from the Somali government, fraudulent employment letters … and so on. [Emphasis added]
This hearing is about visa fraud, not welfare fraud, but they are connected. Like crime, corruption rates seem to follow immigrant populations to their host country at least in the first generation. Refugees in the U.S. can be eligible with no waiting period, with federal benefits including Medicaid, cash and medical assistance, social services, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, temporary assistance for needy families, and student aid. [Emphasis added]
In 2018, retired Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Charles Thaddeus Fillinger published a 30-page brief, calling a decade of Somali migration to the U.S., “the greatest refugee fraud crisis in modern times” and “possibly the biggest blunder in immigration history.”
In Minnesota alone, the Somali population has ballooned. In 1990, there were zero Minnesota residents with Somali ancestry. Today, nearly 80,000 Minnesota residents have Somali ancestry, and more than 8-in-10 Somali households are on one or more forms of welfare.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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