Thread: Refugee program stayed after feds confirm fraud

Sunday, November 16, 2008
By Brian Mosely

A fact sheet released this week from the U.S. State Department reported widespread fraud in the refugee program that has brought tens of thousands of people from Somalia and other African nations to the United States.

The reported fraud spurred the State Department to suspend a humanitarian program in August which was supposed to reunite African "anchor" refugees already in the states with their family members who are still overseas.

DNA testing conducted earlier this year by the government to verify blood ties between anchor refugees and their supposed family members revealed that fewer than 20 percent of those checked could confirm their biological relationships, the fact sheet stated.

The suspension impacts the Priority Three (P-3) Program of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which grants access to those claiming to be "a parent, spouse, or minor child by certain legal residents in the United States."

Priority One (P-1) and Priority Two (P-2) refugees are admitted into the program based upon their vulnerability in their native country, through a referral from the United Nations. The P-1 and P-2 statuses of the program have not been suspended.

An applicant for refugee status must establish that he or she has suffered persecution or has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, creed or origin.

"In recent years, applications to the P-3 program have been overwhelmingly African -- primarily Somalis, Ethiopians and Liberians -- accounting for some 95 percent of the P-3 applications," the fact sheet from the U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration stated.

When asked about the fraud described, Catalina Nieto, director of advocacy and educational programs for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said that the State Department fact sheet is "a very general report and it is referring to all refugees, not particular to Shelbyville."

The rights group is made up of a coalition of immigrants, refugees and their American-based supporters who work to "improve the rights and the public's perception of Tennessee's rapidly growing foreign-born population."

"We are talking about folks who are eager to reunite with their families and are eager to bring their friends and families to a safe and peaceful place," Nieto said.

Shelbyville has seen an influx of Somali refugees within the past few years, and there has been no reported evidence that any fraud has been perpetrated by local refugees. The suspension, however, may impact local refugees who are hoping to be reunited with family members here.

"The U.S. Government has a fair share of the responsibility to help resettle refugees from war torn areas," Nieto said. "We don't want government bureaucracy to be a significant obstacle for reuniting families."

Fraud uncovered

The DNA tests were conducted after both the Departments of State and Homeland Security jointly decided to test a sample of refugee cases due to reported fraud in the P-3 program, particularly in Kenya, the fact sheet explained.

The rate of fraud varied among nationalities and from country to country, "and is difficult to establish definitively as many individuals refused to submit DNA samples," the State Department said.

Samples of some 500 refugees, who were under consideration for U.S. resettlement through the P-3 program, were initially tested in Nairobi, Kenya.

But after the sample "suggested high rates of fraud," testing was expanded to Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana, Guinea, Gambia and Cote d'Ivoire, the State Department said.

"Most of the approximately 3,000 refugees tested are from Somalia, Ethiopia and Liberia," the fact sheet said. The initial DNA testing "was limited to members of families applying for the P-3 program, and not between the applicants and the anchor relative in the United States," the State Department explained.

Family reunification processing and resettlement in Kenya and Ethiopia was halted in March, the State Department said, and the suspension was expanded in May to include the countries where the second round of DNA testing was done. The State Department also stopped accepting applications for the P-3 program on Oct. 22.

"The Departments of State and Homeland Security, along with our resettlement agency partners, are currently discussing how to handle applications that were submitted earlier this year," the fact sheet said.

Impact on refugees

Holly Johnson, State Refugee Coordinator for the Tennessee Office for Refugees said Friday that to her knowledge, the suspension "has not had a significant impact on the local program."

"It will impact refugees nationwide who have submitted a non-fraudulent application for a parent, spouse, or minor child because they will be separated from their family indefinitely," she said.

Johnson said all resettlement agencies "are under strict guidelines regarding the reporting of suspected fraud in refugee families, and we are no different."

"I take it very seriously," Johnson told the Times-Gazette. "Of the hundreds of resettlement cases that I have handled in the ten years that I have worked in the local resettlement program, there were only two cases (in the state) where I suspected the possibility of fraud."

Those cases were reported immediately to their national organization, Catholic Charities, Johnson said, and then were passed on to the State Department and/or the Department of Homeland Security. She added they were not notified of the outcome of these reports because of confidentiality guidelines.

Johnson said that Catholic Charities' focus "is on resettling refugees that the U.S. State Department selects and sends to Middle Tennessee."

"Our goal is to have them living independently within six months of arrival," she said. "The many refugees that have resettled here over the last 40 years have a solid track record of getting on their feet and joining the community very quickly."

Johnson also noted that while those who work with refugees understand the deplorable living conditions that would inspire one to attempt to flee by any means possible, "we strongly believe that the established guidelines must be followed in order to preserve the integrity of the U.S. refugee program."

"In no way do we excuse or condone the falsification of these applications, and are saddened by the fact that honest people are suffering because of the dishonesty of others," Johnson said.

Tyson comments

Gary Michelson, director of media relations for Tyson Foods, which employs nearly all of the Somali refugees that live in Shelbyville, said that Tyson has "zero tolerance for employing people who are not authorized to work in the U.S. That's why we use all available tools provided by the U.S. government to verify the documents of the people we hire."

"We check the employment documents of all new team members when they are first hired," Michelson said.

New hires are required to fill out a Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification Form and are required to present documents that prove identity and employment eligibility.

Since 1998, Tyson has also voluntarily participated in the U.S. government's Basic Pilot/Employment Eligibility Verification Program, which is now known as E-Verify, an internet-based system operated by the DHS in partnership with the Social Security Administration.

Tyson also uses the Social Security Number Verification System (SSNVS), an on-line service offered by the Social Security Administration (SSA), which allows registered users (employers and certain third-party submitters) to verify the names and Social Security numbers of employees against SSA records, Michelson said.

"If we learn one of our workers may not have proper authorization to work in this country, we take immediate measures. If they are unable to correct any discrepancies in their documentation, then they are released from employment," Michelson said.

Verifying claims

New methods of verifying family relationship claims are now being developed with the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department said, which may include voluntary DNA testing. The P-3 program in Africa will remain suspended until new measures are finalized and implemented.

However, exactly what measures will be taken against the thousands of refugees who have come into the country through the P-3 program in the last 20 years will be a question for the Department of Homeland Security to answer, the fact sheet said.

Since October 1, 2003, some 36,000 people have arrived from Africa through the P-3 program, the fact sheet explained, but also only some 400 people have arrived from other parts of the world through the program.

The P-3 program has not been suspended for non-African nationalities, the State Department said, noting that "the number of individuals applying from non-African countries, such as Burma, Cuba, etc., is very small."

Citizens from Afghanistan, Bhutan, Burma, Burundi, Central African Republic, Colombia, Cuba, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe are eligible for consideration through the P-3 Program.

http://www.t-g.com/story/1478471.html

Are we deporting those that committed fraud? I sure hope so. We shouldn't be taking them in the first place. You wait -- we will get muslim terrorist with these refugees.

We need to stop taking refugees from Asia and Africa -- that is just asking for trouble. We have too many people as it is in this country.

Originally Posted by judyweller

Are we deporting those that committed fraud? I sure hope so. We shouldn't be taking them in the first place. You wait -- we will get muslim terrorist with these refugees.

We need to stop taking refugees from Asia and Africa -- that is just asking for trouble. We have too many people as it is in this country.

vdare.com has had alot of stories about what they call the "refugee settlement industry"; it is very corrupt because government officials attempt to make money by settling the most refugees possible, and this has lead to officials lying to small communities about the potential effects of settling huge numbers of foreigners into American small towns.

The effects have been devastating with skyrocketing crime, domestic violence and drug dealers ruining neighborhoods.


http://www.vdare.com/allen/refugee_industry.htm

Time To Cap The Refugee Industry

By Thomas Allen

The town around the United Nations Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya staging ground for the current controversial importation of Somali Bantu into Middle America grew from 5,000 in 1990 to 40,000 in 2000. Kenyans from other parts of the country moved in to take advantage of social services, jobs and trading opportunities that sprang up around the U.N. camp.

So dependent on U.N. refugee camps are some areas in Kenya that local residents staged demonstrations last year to protest closure of one of them.

Worldwide, the U.N. has officially recognized about 12 million people as refugees. They may well finish up here. Since 1992, over three-quarters (77%) of the U.N.-recognized refugees who were resettled permanently in industrialized countries came to the U.S. (UNHCR, Refugees Magazine, Vol. 4, Num 129, Jan 2003 - PDF, 1.5 MB).

And, as in Kenya, a refugee industry has grown up here in the U.S. It forms an Iron Triangle exactly like the Civil Rights Industry's iron triangle that Hugh Graham described in Collision Course, his pathbreaking study of the convergence of affirmative action and immigration policy in America: 1) interest group; 2) Congressional Committee; 3) federal agency.

The refugee Iron Triangle is also aided by a lawyer lobby and a media which is seemingly incapable of reporting truthfully on the issue.

The Refugee Industry as we know it would end tomorrow if even one quarter of refugee costs were the responsibility of its champions.

The largest such champion: the Roman Catholic Church. As the Acton Institute's Father Robert A. Sirico has demonstrated, Catholic charities have become addicted to federal money. Money is fungible. Because the taxpayer pays many of the bills for its social vision, the Catholic Church has funds to spend on political advocacy and $1 billion in hush money to cover up a decades-long sex scandal. (I am afraid President Bush's Faith Based Initiative will only expand this dysfunctional model.)

The second-largest refugee resettlement contractor, in terms of refugees recently resettled in the U.S.: the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

Jewish refugee immigration from the former Soviet Union [FSU] to the U.S. has fallen off dramatically in recent years. An incredible 500,000 Jews have come here since the 1980s. But now the FSU is simply running out of Jews. Also important, Jews leaving the FSU are now being directed to Israel, instead of their preferred destinations in the West. They are needed for Israel's demographic policy.

The Forward reports (Community Questioning Open Door, by Nacha Cattan, 11/29/2002) that

Jewish immigration agencies such as the New York Association for New Americans have seen their refugee budgets halved in the past three years alone, while the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has openly debated what role Jewish immigration agencies should play in an era without large numbers of Jewish immigrants.

So what role does the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society decide to play? It opens a satellite office in Nairobi Kenya where it will most certainly be facilitating African Muslim refugee immigration to the U.S. (About 50% of today's UNHCR refugees are from Muslim countries, not including Palestinians who are counted on the books of another UN refugee agency, UNRWA.)

This may seem paradoxical, given Jewish concerns about the growing Muslim population in the U.S. But Leonard Glickman, president and CEO of HIAS and formerly a spokesman for the U.S. Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, told the Forward's Cattan:

"The more diverse American society is the safer [Jews] are."

Refugee admissions to the U.S. declined sharply in 2002 as a result of 9/11. But most experts expect this decline will be temporary. A suggestion to temporarily re-program federal money from domestic resettlement agencies to refugee assistance programs overseas where funds are quite literally hundreds of times more effective was angrily denounced by those resettlement contractors at a January 2002 meeting with State Department officials.

The State Department capitulated. It kept funding at the previous year's level even though the contractors were dealing with less than half the refugee caseload.

Additionally, State agreed to allow the refugee contractors a more influential role in picking refugees for admission to the U.S.

Make that an Iron Triangle of interest group, Congressional Committee and weak federal agency.

Remember this when advocates for higher refugee admissions start talking about the indivisibility of humankind or of refugees as a borderless problem and thus a matter of collective international responsibility.

These American refugee advocates chose to steal the paltry food rations from overseas refugee camps to preserve their cushy D.C. jobs.

The Refugee Industry has also spawned a new academic discipline, Refugee Studies. Some of its ideologists are demanding an international rights-based regime, under which individuals officially designated as refugees by the U.N. would never be confined to a camp, but automatically allowed to settle wherever they wish.

This may seem a distant dream today. But there is serious discussion about creating an international clearing house which assigns refugees more or less automatically to host countries based on a formula which weighs host country GDP, population density and other measures of stability and wealth.

The more successful the country, the larger will be its per capita refugee quota.

Guess what that means?

This is not to minimize the suffering of refugees. Nor to say the U.S. should not participate in helping find solutions.

But the U.S. is already the largest single contributor to U.N. refugee work. It pays about a quarter of the budget for the UNHCR and UNRWA.

And the U.S. could fully fund 10 UNHCRs with what it spends on resettlement of refugees in the U.S., including their ongoing welfare costs.

Personally, I can accept that it might be appropriate to resettle some refugees in America. But before any New World Order refugee resettlement regime takes form, the U.S. should re-visit legislation capping refugee admissions.

Currently, the refugee quota is set each year by the Administration in consultation with Congress and various interest groups. It is a tempting prize to hand out in exchange for political support.

A legislated cap, say to 25,000 a year, would reduce the value of the quota as a political tool. It would also free up more resources for refugee assistance overseas. Granted, overseas aid too can be politicized, as can the very designation of who the U.S. should regard as a refugee. But at least overseas refugee programs would not result in the displacement and dispossession of Americans in their own home towns.

An admissions cap was considered at the time of the original 1980 Refugee Act. The idea has been discussed from time to time since then. This may be the last chance. U.S. foreign policy increasingly converges with the global human rights agenda part of which has always called for a permanent high-volume flow of refugees to the West.

In the wake of 9-11, there would be considerable popular support for an admissions cap if it were to be openly and honestly debated.

We know who would oppose any such debate and now we know why.

Brenda Walker calls it the "Refugee-Industrial Complex".

I think that's an appropriate name.