Immigration Benefits - Additional Controls and a Sanctions Strategy Could Enhance DHS's Ability to Control Benefit Fraud

By GAO-06-259, US Government Accountability Office

March 1, 2006

http://judiciary.house.gov/media/pdfs/gaoimmbenefits31006.pdf

What GAO Found

Although the full extent of benefit fraud is unknown, available evidence suggests that it is a serious problem. Several high-profile immigration benefit fraud cases shed light on aspects of its nature—particularly that it is accomplished by submitting fraudulent documents and can be facilitated by white collar and other criminals, with the potential for large profits. USCIS staff denied about 20,000 applications for fraud in fiscal year 2005.

USCIS has established a focal point for immigration fraud, outlined a fraud control strategy that relies on the use of automation to detect fraud, and is performing risk assessments to identify the extent and nature of fraud for certain benefits. However, USCIS has not implemented important aspects of internal control standards established by GAO and fraud control best practices identified by leading audit organizations—particularly a comprehensive risk management approach, a mechanism to ensure ongoing monitoring during the course of normal activities, clear communication regarding how to balance multiple objectives, mechanisms to help ensure that staff have access to key information, and performance goals for fraud prevention.

DHS does not have a strategy for sanctioning fraud. Best practices advise that a credible sanctions program, which includes a mechanism for evaluating effectiveness, is an integral part of fraud control. Because most immigration benefit fraud is not prosecuted criminally, the principal means of sanctioning it would be administrative penalties. Although immigration law gives DHS the authority to levy administrative penalties, the component of DHS that administers them does not consider them to be cost-effective and does not routinely impose them. However, DHS has not evaluated the costs and benefits of sanctions, including the value of potential deterrence. Without a credible sanctions program, DHS’s efforts to deter fraud may be less effective, when applicants perceive little threat of punishment.

Results in brief

Our review of several high-profile immigration benefit fraud cases sheds light on some aspects of the nature of immigration benefit fraud— particularly that it is accomplished by submitting fraudulent documents, that it can be facilitated by white collar and other criminals, and that it has the potential to result in large profits. Although the full extent of benefit fraud is not known, available evidence suggests that it is an ongoing and serious problem. Fraudulent documents submitted included but were not limited to marriage and birth certificates, financial statements, business plans, organizational charts, fictitious employee resumes, and college transcripts. White-collar and other criminals can facilitate immigration benefit fraud. Individuals who pose a threat to national security and public safety may seek to enter the United States by fraudulently obtaining immigration benefits.

Moreover, those facilitating immigration benefit fraud, in some cases, have reaped large profits from aliens willing to pay thousands of dollars to fraudulently obtain an immigration benefit. In fiscal year 2005, USCIS denied about 20,000 applications due to fraud. In addition, in 2005, USCIS’s new fraud detection office conducted the first two in a series of planned fraud assessments—reviews of applications for religious worker and replacement permanent resident card benefits.

Based on the results of the completed religious worker assessment, which estimated that 33 percent of all religious worker applications were potentially fraudulent, we project that about 660 applications—one-third of religious worker applications submitted over a 6-month period in 2004—may have contained fraudulent information. Some findings of the religious worker assessment and facts uncovered during criminal investigations and prosecutions demonstrate that USCIS adjudicators do not always detect fraud during the adjudications process, thus allowing applicants to receive benefits for which they were not eligible.

Moreover, USCIS’s policy of issuing temporary work authorization within 90 days to those applicants waiting for their applications for permanent residency to be decided, although intended to allow bonafide applicants to work as soon as possible, can be exploited by aliens filing fraudulent applications with the intent of receiving the temporary work authorization for which they would otherwise be ineligible. These aliens can then use the temporary work authorization to obtain other official documents, such as drivers’ licenses.

Based on an estimate from the DHS Office of Immigration Statistics that about 85 percent of applicants who apply for permanent residency also apply for temporary work authorization, the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman contends that many aliens who filed a fraudulent claim for permanent residency may have received temporary work authorization....

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