I read an article today titled, “Social Networking Sites and Their Importance to FDNS.”  The article discussed how officers from the USCIS’ Fraud Detection & National Security Directorate use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and similar sites in their efforts to combat immigration and visa fraud. Immigration fraud schemes have been on the rise and sentences for the same are becoming increasingly stiffer.  Recently in [...]

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced earlier this week that it is issuing a new and more tamper proof version of the Employment Authorization Card.  The most noticeable feature on the new card is the addition of a machine readable barcode on the back of the card. The update of the security features on the card is part of [...]

The New York Times reported recently that the hiring records of the Gervais Family Farms in Bakersfield, Vermont were inspected as part of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (USICE’s) enforcement efforts to inspect the employment records of 1,000 businesses across the United States.  The businesses that were inspected were either known or suspected to have hired undocumented immigrants. The USICE imposes [...]

The U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (USICE) reported this week that a man from California was arrested earlier this week and charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud. He was the mastermind of an immigration fraud scheme that involved foreign students enrolled at schools in the Southern California area including several junior colleges and, three California State University campuses. The [...]

The Orlando Sentinel reported recently that the system both Congress and the President direct employers to use called E-Verify to combat the hiring of illegal immigrants, is actually failing to identify over half of the unauthorized workers it checks, a research company named Westat has found. The research company found that E-Verify failed to detect so many illegal workers mainly because the system [...]

The Orlando Sentinel reported today that the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services  (USCIS) has increased its resources and reorganized anti fraud operations to include an Office of Fraud Detection and National Security in light of the passage of the H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004, to identify and investigate false claims in connection with green card applications based on marriage, H-1B and L-1 work visas, [...]

Officers from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (USICE) in cooperation with local law enforcement arrested nine people in Columbus, OH and charged them with conspiracy to commit marriage fraud in order to obtain permanent residence (green cards). The indictment alleged that the individuals recruited U.S. citizens and foreign nationals, mostly from countries in Eastern Europe, to enter into sham marriages to evade immigration [...]

A Los Angeles woman who was awaiting sentencing for scamming undocumented immigrants in San Diego County was re-arrested last week for the same crime. Gladis Escobar was taken into custody last week by agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  She was initially arrested in 2007 by ICE after being charged by the San Diego County District Attorney’s [...]