Illegals Yell ‘Crime,’ Get Status

More than 65,000 illegal immigrants have gained legal status since 2008 in the United States under a little-known program for crime victims that critics say has morphed into a back-door immigration program.

The “U visa” program is one of a seemingly never-ending list of ways illegal immigrants can avoid deportation. Critics argue that like many such visas, the Obama administration has stretched what originally was a narrowly tailored program into something far more expansive.

“The administration has been doing kind of a sales pitch” to encourage illegal immigrants to seek U visas, said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform. “It’s unnecessary … It’s an invitation to fraud.”

The idea behind the law was to encourage crime victims to come forward and cooperate with law enforcement authorities. If illegal immigrants remain silent for fear of deportation, the thinking goes, law-breakers will go unpunished and put American citizens at risk.

In addition to the illegal immigrants, more than 50,500 relatives have gained legal entry.

In addition to the illegal immigrants, more than 50,500 relatives have gained legal entry under a provision that allows U visa recipients to sponsor immediate family members.

After issuing 5,825 U visas during the program’s first year in 2008, the government has hit the annual cap of 10,000 every year since. It is a good bet, based on a backlog of applications, that it will reach the cap again this year.

Victims of a wide range of crimes are eligible. They include serious offenses like rape and murder to less serious crimes, such as stalking and witness tampering. Crime victims or the relatives of victims must get local law-enforcement authorities to certify that they are at least likely to be helpful in the criminal investigation. Federal authorities then make a final determination.

U visas are good for four years, and a visa holder can apply for a green card and permanent legal residency after three years.

David North, a senior fellow as the Center for Immigration Studies, said the statute gives authorities wide latitude in determining whether an illegal immigrant was helpful to a criminal investigation — even if it did not result in a conviction or even an arrest.

“It’s bad public policy to make it so broad,” he said.

Federal officials said there have been no attempts to quantify how many illegal immigrants have tried to avoid deportation by reporting false crimes, but anecdotal evidence abounds.

Critics also fret about the potential for fraud. Federal officials said there have been no attempts to quantify how many illegal immigrants have tried to avoid deportation by reporting false crimes, but anecdotal evidence abounds.

WSOC-TV in Charlotte, North Carolina, for instance, reported last year that an illegal immigrant named Oscar Beltran told police two men approached him in a parking lot, hit him in the forehead with a gun and stole $6,000. But police later determined he had staged the robbery in an attempt to get a U visa before an immigration hearing.

Authorities charged Beltran with delaying a police investigation.

Tim Counts, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman, downplayed the risk of fraud. He said the government thoroughly vets each application.

“We have fraud-detection and national security officers, hundreds of officers scattered throughout,” he said. “There are multiple safeguards in place to prevent fraud.”

Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., sponsored legislation in 2013 to prohibit U visa holders from sponsoring relatives, but the bill went nowhere. Likewise, efforts by Democrats that year to increase the annual cap on U visas to 15,000 failed.

North said that since the statute allows relatives to come to the country, it is like many immigration programs.

“There doesn’t seem to be any technique that those chains (of migration) get broken,” he said.

A 2013 manual published by the Community Justice Project at Georgetown University Law Center boasts that the U visa offers “great potential for creative and innovative advocacy” for immigration lawyers.

The manual counsels attorneys on how to frame arguments on behalf of illegal immigrant clients. It offers a hypothetical example that might qualify: An illegal immigrant pays $1,000 to a man promising to get him legal immigration status. The immigrant, according to the publication, could claim to be a victim of fraud.