January 2012 marked the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama’s Startup America Initiative, designed to further stimulate economic recovery by, inter alia, encouraging foreign investment and tourism and attracting highly skilled foreign nationals to remain in the U.S. work force.1 Against this administrative agenda is the political backdrop of vocal congressional naysayers, who, for the third congressional session (going back to the presidency of George W. Bush), have failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform and continue to promote a regulatory climate that is antagonistic to foreign-born professionals and corporations. In particular, without any hard data, despite a number of programmatic reviews that began in 2000, Senator Charles Grassley and others continue to charge that the system by which immigration benefits are adjudicated is overwrought with fraudulent filings that present an imminent threat to our national security and to U.S. workers.
The call for stricter scrutiny of and tougher adjudication standards for employment-based visa petitions has practically paralyzed the allocation of work visas through the L-1 and H-1B visa programs, for example, as well as business visitor visas. This has, in turn, impeded the entry of foreign nationals who hold skills that are essential to our economy and it has deterred foreign investment in the United States. This article will review a number of reports produced by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Office of Inspector General (OIG), and the Fraud Detection and National Security division (FDNS) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the past decade, which have investigated immigration benefits fraud.
Benefits Fraud Investigations
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