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A recent ABC report should be of concern to all Americans and to our elected leaders. It regards Shirwa Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen who is believed to have committed a suicide bombing in Somalia and – even more disturbing – may have been involved in the recruitment of young men of Somali descent here in the United States. The news report further states that more than a dozen such men, perhaps as many as 40 and mostly in their 20s, have "disappeared." Here are the most important questions: How did Shirwa Ahmed acquire citizenship through the naturalization process? Did...

Widespread problems, fraud found in H-1B programU.S. study finds incidents of forged documents, fake degrees, 'shell' companiesAn internal report by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) examining the H-1B visa program has found evidence of forged documents and fake degrees, and even "shell" companies giving addresses of fake locations.The USCIS report, released Wednesday by U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), indicates that serious violations of the H-1B program by employers are so common that one in five visas are affected by either fraud or "technical violations." This means that potentially thousands of employers may be violating the rules, some willfully.Employers...

U.S. immigration agents investigated only 139 suspected fraud cases referred by the main anti-fraud unit of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services last year, or less than 1 percent of 1 percent of about 6 million applications for citizenship, green cards and other benefits, federal investigators reported yesterday.

The Northern Virginia office of the federal agency that processes immigration applications will hold its first public forum next month to answer questions from immigrants. The forum also is intended to spread word that the agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, is distinct from its feared federal cousins, the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. "We don't want people to fear us," said Greg Christian, director of the Vienna office of USCIS.... The agency is often assailed...as an impenetrable bureaucracy with complicated forms and a help hotline that dispenses unreliable information. It has also recently...

A criminal investigations report says several U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees are accused of aiding Islamic extremists with identification fraud and of exploiting the visa system for personal gain. The confidential 2006 USCIS report said that despite the severity of the potential security breaches, most are not investigated "due to lack of resources" in the agency's internal affairs department.

...Since 2005, the backlog of legal U.S. immigrants whose applications for naturalization and other benefits are stuck on hold awaiting FBI name checks has doubled to 329,160, prompting a flood of lawsuits in federal courts... In his annual report to Congress last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ombudsman Prakash I. Khatri called the backlog of FBI name checks "unacceptable from the standpoint of national security and immigration benefits processing." Calling the delays the "most pervasive problem" in processing, Khatri concluded that they "may increase the risk to national security by prolonging the time a potential criminal or terrorist...

Police: Woman dragged to death under minivan FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (AP) -- A woman trying to stop a motorist from fleeing after a collision was dragged for several miles to her death under the man's minivan, officials said Monday. Authorities said they were still searching for the minivan's driver. Sandra Hall was in a Cadillac that was struck by the minivan Sunday night, Broward County sheriff's officials said. The minivan was driven away with the Cadillac in pursuit, and when both vehicles were stopped in traffic Hall got out and stood in front of the minivan, authorities said. The minivan...

WASHINGTON -- Last June, US immigration officials were presented a plan that supporters said could help slash waiting times for green cards from nearly three years to three months and save 1 million applicants more than a third of the 45 hours they could expect to spend in government lines. It would also save about $350 million. The response from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services: No thanks. Leaders of the agency rejected key changes because ending huge immigration backlogs nationwide would rob it of application and renewal fees that cover 20 percent of its $1.8 billion budget, according to...

EE Times: Semi News With The H-1B Visa Cap Filled In Record Time, Reform Is In The Air http://i.cmpnet.com/infoweek/1133/133NAfiles_r_110.jpg Marianne Kolbasuk McGee Page 1 of 3 InformationWeek (04/07/2007 12:00 AM EDT) For both critics and supporters of the H-1B visa, two days last week revealed everything you need to know about the foreign worker program, one of the most controversial topics in business technology. In the first two days that the U.S. government accepted applications for H-1B work visas, 133,000 envelopes poured in with applications seeking 65,000 openings. The crush was enough that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services cut off...

USCIS REACHES FY 2008 H-1B CAP WASHINGTON – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it has received enough H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally mandated cap for fiscal year 2008 (FY2008). USCIS will use a random selection process (described below) for all cap-subject filings received on April 2, 2007 and April 3, 2007. USCIS will reject and return along with filing fee(s) all petitions received on those days that are not randomly selected. Cap Procedures: In keeping with USCIS regulations, USCIS will use the following process to handle H-1B petitions subject to the FY2008 cap: • USCIS...

WASHINGTON - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told Congress on Wednesday that overhauls of the nation's schools and immigration laws are urgently needed to keep jobs from going overseas. "The U.S. cannot maintain its economic leadership unless our work force consists of people who have the knowledge and skills needed to drive innovation," Gates told the Senate committee that oversees labor and education issues. Gates, whose charitable foundation has given away more than $3 billion since 1999 for educational programs and scholarships, noted that about 30 percent of U.S. ninth-graders fail to graduate on time. "As a nation, we should start...

The government agency responsible for granting immigrants permission to live in the United States legally has lost thousands of crucial alien background files used to determine eligibility as well as deportation. The Alien files (also known as A-files) are a key to approving an immigrant’s U.S. citizenship yet the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved 30,000 applications for aliens with missing A-files. The USCIS is the agency within the Department of Homeland Security responsible for processing non citizens’ applications to live or work in the U.S. or to become a citizen. Every foreigner who applies to live in...

To document the interactions of aliens with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and other government entities, USCIS creates alien files, or A-files. While deemed critical, especially in making citizenship decisions, A-files are sometimes missing during adjudications. In 2002, naturalization was granted to an alien whose A-file was missing and who was later found to be associated with a terrorist organization. GAO focused its review on (1) how often USCIS adjudicates naturalization applications without an A-file and why, (2) the effect that missing A-files can have on the adjudication process, and (3) steps...

An immigrant application screener who spoke out earlier this year about his agency's security failures has lost his job, despite a recent decision to extend the contracts of hundreds of other employees like him. Sultan Farakhan, an immigrant benefits application adjudicator, was terminated from employment Friday at the National Benefits Center in Lee's Summit, Mo., one of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' largest immigration application processing centers. "They are upset with the fact that I spoke out," Farakhan said Friday. "I don't understand why they want to keep the truth hidden, because this is about the national security of our...

In the late ‘70’s when the American embassy was overrun in Tehran, Iran, the task fell to the former INS to locate Iranian citizens in the United States to make certain that they were not posing a threat to our nation's security. As a special agent of the INS back then, I was involved in that effort and we were all frustrated by a lack of information and resources to accomplish this important mission. Of course, the need to be able to conduct that sort of field operation was, at the time, a unique situation that we had never confronted....

A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration officer is out on bail after being arrested on charges she issued a visa to illegal immigrants and forged a visa admission stamp for use on other official documents. Maria Barillas, an immigration information officer in Los Angeles, was taken into custody Wednesday on state fraud and forgery charges by officers with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General's Office and agents with USCIS Office of Security and Investigations.Barillas is accused of forging and counterfeiting a U.S. Government immigration visa admission stamp; issuing a false visa to an illegal...

WASHINGTON - Our nation’s security has been seriously compromised by a legal immigration system that provides access to government-issued documents and benefits while ignoring basic security procedures, such as requiring fingerprints from each applicant and making sure they’re not on a terrorist watch list. On April 6, former USCIS Director of Security Michael Maxwell told stunned members of Congress that only six personnel security experts at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — which awards coveted green cards, work permits and Social Security numbers — were detailed to handle a crushing backlog of 11,000 employee background investigations and 2,771 internal affairs...

A congressional panel is calling for an investigation and hearing into reports that applicants for green cards, work visas and other immigration documents were not properly screened against the U.S. terrorist watch list. Employees at the National Benefits Center in Lee's Summit, Mo., said they did not know that a simple key stroke would have allowed them to fully check the background of applicants against the terrorist database, according to the report first published by the Daily Bulletin this past week. That report was based on federal documents obtained by the newspaper and interviews with employees at the Missouri center....

WASHINGTON - They are called the Alien Files - or simply, the "A-Files." There are 55 million of them, each up to hundreds of pages thick, stashed in a government warehouse in Missouri. Though they detail no science-fiction secrets of UFO landings or beings from distant planets, they can prove an irritating mystery to those who need them most - immigration officers deciding who can stay in the United States. The "aliens" are people from other countries seeking work permits, residency or citizenship. The records contain their applications, photos and fingerprints. Each time an immigration officer weighs an outsider's destiny,...

The Senate immigration bill makes the same mistake as the 1986 amnesty by restricting the ability of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to share information on illegal alien guest-worker applicants who are criminals and terrorists, the agency's director said yesterday. Emilio T. Gonzalez, whose agency would have to administer a guest-worker program, said not allowing the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to share information on someone who applies means they cannot begin the process of removing criminals and national security threats, even after they are rejected from the guest-worker program. "It is important for us to be able to...

The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) has dealt the fatal blow to the controversial concept of Guest Worker Amnesty to 12 million illegal aliens now living in the United States in defiance of our laws. The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress charged with examining matters relating to the receipt and payment of public funds. In a devastating report released today, the GAO charges the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) – this is the agency under the Department of Homeland Security that would be in charge of proposed Guest Worker Amnesty – with a failed organizational...

Immigration officers barred from key data Ex-official raises security concerns By Jerry Kammer COPLEY NEWS SERVICE March 7, 2006 WASHINGTON – Many immigration officers handling requests for green cards, citizenship and other immigration benefits do not have access to key law enforcement and national security databases, said a top federal security official who quit over the issue. The officers' access to the databases, which would allow them to check whether an applicant had a criminal record or was on the terrorism watch list, was cut off because the government has failed to complete required background checks on the immigration adjudicators....

Washington, D.C. – Last night (on January 4, 2006) Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson swore in Dr. Emilio Gonzalez as the new Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Nominated for the position in September 2005, Dr. Gonzalez appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 18, 2005, and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 23, 2005. “It is an honor and privilege to have been selected by President Bush to lead the USCIS team,” said Director Gonzalez. “The outstanding work of my predecessor, and the countless contributions of dedicated employees have established a...

Top officials at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services acknowledged in internal e-mails that some of their employees are able to decide visa applications without being able to do full background checks, even in important national security cases. SNIP But the e-mails show turf battles within that agency and with other agencies in the Department of Homeland Security are hindering the department's national security mission. In one situation, the acting deputy director purportedly ordered one investigative branch not to provide information to a top-level team deciding the toughest cases because of turf conflicts with another branch. Meanwhile, other adjudicators do not...

This is the second time in the last couple of months that we have seen a news story about naturalized United States citizens who have spied on our country. ...naturalized citizens were able to become a United States citizens because of flaws in the naturalization process ... many aliens were naturalized through the program known as Citizenship USA which was created by the Clinton administration to naturalize as many citizens as possible and was terribly flawed. According to the GAO thousands of criminal aliens were naturalized. Many of these criminal aliens not only should not have been naturalized, they should...

AREA MAN INDICTED FOR ROLE IN THREAT ON FEDERAL BUILDING Man claimed former girlfriend was planning to bomb immigration office FRESNO, Calif. – A Salvadoran national indicted for contacting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and claiming that his former girlfriend was going to drive a car bomb into the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office made his initial appearance in federal court here this morning. On August 16, ICE agents received an anonymous call from a man later identified as Hugo Vasquez-Cruz, 45. Vazquez told agents that a woman named Asusena Kalah was upset with immigration and planned...

This is a long read which is an update from a thread I wrote in January 2004. Please read, if you can help.Family Adoption: Did We Do the Right Thing? (Freeper Advice Requested) Being a Conservative goes beyond posting to FreeRepublic. Or, it should. So, when a family member got into some legal trouble and couldn’t care for her child, my wife and I stepped in. Not the first time. When you come from a family with six kids, chances are that one may not turn out to be a productive member of society. My mom raised six of us...

A hitch in bureaucracy threatens a woman's green card application - and the couple's life plans. TAMPA - Lynda and Michael Arazie had a new car, a new house, and they were expecting an adopted baby to arrive in a few months. But in early December, Lynda Arazie, 33, got a call that threatened to upend the life they were building. Her work permit had been yanked, her attorney told her. Worse yet, immigration officials canceled her application for a green card, or permanent residence visa, because she and her husband missed an interview in November. She could be deported...

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has now changed its website to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services website. This has probably already been posted...if not, here it is: Click here for new website.

This year's cap of 65,000 H-1B guest-worker visas is already close to being reached, as employers snap up the controversial visas. Last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services posted notice on its Web site that in the first quarter of fiscal year 2004, 43,500 H-1B visas had either been approved or are "pending in the queue for adjudication." The federal fiscal year started Oct. 1, 2003. This year's quota for the visas, which allows skilled foreign workers into the country for up to 6 years, is a drop from the annual limit of 195,000 that was in place for 2001,...