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Half the 38 terrorists analyzed in a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) report obtained green cards or citizenship through marriage, with a majority of those marriages being fraudulent. (Source: Center for Immigration Studies)

Immigration Fraud: The Facts

There are two types of immigration fraud: document fraud and benefit application fraud. While both are widespread, immigration investigators consider benefit fraud far more dangerous. While document fraud is prevalent, victims must often remain below the radar in fear that they will be discovered, admitted the then-INS general counsel, Paul Virtue, during 1997 congressional hearings. On the other hand, if an immigrant acquires legitimate documents and benefits through fraudulent means, that immigrant is considered "home free," said Virtue, and might never be detected.

The most common type of benefit fraud is marriage fraud, accounting for half of all immigration fraud cases. Foreigners and illegal immigrants often use short-term or fraudulent marriages to gain U.S. green cards and citizenship. Many foreign-born terrorists have utilized benefit application fraud -- especially marriage fraud -- to provide them with unfettered access to the United States, U.S. citizenship and U.S. passports.

Marriage remains the single-most common way that foreigners gain immigration status in the United States, consistently accounting for one-third to 40 percent of all legal immigration annually.

By 2004, after officials found marriage to be a key way for terrorists to gain U.S. citizenship, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was still investigating only 1 percent of all green-card marriages. When these statistics were published in a 2006 USA Today article, the DHS stopped releasing all marriage-based immigration statistics.

Prior to 1986, the INS was required to provide a green card to spouses of U.S. citizens regardless of the length of their marriage; a short-term marriage was not proof of fraud under the law. In Dabaghian v. Civiletti (1979), a federal appeals court held that an Iranian man had a right to a green card even though he was separated from his wife when the INS granted it to him -- just four or five months after tying the knot to his American bride. One month after obtaining a divorce, Dabaghian married and sponsored an Iranian wife into the country. Rulings like Dabaghian put the onus on the INS to provide extensive legal and investigative resources for each green-card marriage challenged.

When the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, warned that 30 percent of all marriage-based immigration was fraudulent in 1985, Congress created a two-year marriage requirement for all marriage-based green cards.

Despite the two-year requirement, GAO and DHS officials warn that marriage fraud remains "rampant." Immigration officials and investigators now admit that sham marriage arrangements simply grew more complex, while other immigrants just dupe Americans into marrying them, only to divorce them in two years.

Loopholes further erode the two-year marriage requirement for a green card. Congress refuses to reevaluate the lax marriage-based immigration laws, which provide a gaping loophole and easy access to U.S. citizenship. This includes a fast-track green-card status for immigrant spouses that claim abuse, with little or no evidence required. (On the other hand, an abused U.S. citizen spouse is given little or no recourse and protection from an abusive immigrant spouse.)

Marriage fraud remains an international problem. France and the United Kingdom attempted to revise marriage-based immigration laws to combat widespread fraud. South Africa created a five-year marriage requirement to combat immigration fraud. Canadian victims are aggressively petitioning the government to protect them from widespread marriage fraud.

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Immigration Fraud: The Facts