Something called the National Migration Conference 2003 is about to open in Washington D.C. The theme: "All Come Bearing Gifts."[PDF]

One of the gifts that "migrants" admitted to the U.S. as "refugees" often come bearing: a false identity.

Under current law, the United States can admit up to 70,000 refugees annually. Over fifty percent of the typical refugee caseload is fraudulent, according to insiders in the Department of Homeland Security.  Bogus applicants lie about family relationships in order to gain access to refugee interviews. Successful applicants sell family (spouse, parent or child) "slots" to non-family members.

Refugee admissions are an overseas version of asylum.  But while asylum applications are heard in the United States, applicants for refugee status queue up at U.S. Consulates and various other locations abroad, including refugee camps.

Refugee applicants are supposed to demonstrate that they have suffered past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution in their home country on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a "particular social group," or political opinion.  Asylum applicants must meet the refugee definition, show that they are worthy of asylum in the discretion of the reviewer, and pass other hurdles in Section 208 of the Immigration Act.

As VDARE.COM has demonstrated in detail, these programs are a disaster. In effect, asylum and refugee status are really a sort of override visa – a last resort for foreign nationals who don't have a family member or employer willing to file an immigrant petition for them, or a privilege for those who have political contacts.  Thanks to cheap travel and international alien smuggling, anyone in the world has the potential of showing up at a U.S. port of entry or U.S. Consulate abroad to ask for status anytime they want, as many times as they want.

And once an alien is granted refugee status or asylum, "family reunification" chain migration begins for the entire clan. 

If one family member wins refugee status, the newly-created petitioning "slots" are worth their weight in gold.

Hence the cottage industry of selling these family tickets to the highest bidder – that is, to non-family members.

How can the fraud be stopped?

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), according to DHS insiders, has resorted to using retinal scans on refugees when handing out assistance packets – so they won't wind up being given again and again to the same woman wearing a burqua. 

So why not use biometric identification for all refugees and asylees applying for U.S. status? 

Short of D.N.A. testing, maybe biometric identification is the only way to root out fraud in refugee admissions – to verify true family relationships and separate the real family members from the opportunists.

Somehow, refugee and asylum fraud probably won't make the agenda at the 2003 National Migration Conference. [Click here to read the National Migration Conference Week prayer for more immigration – in English and Spanish! Click here to contact the sponsor, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.]

* Gun-control? That's more likely! Here's a footnote to my recent The Treason Lobby Wants To Grab Your Guns. Wonder Why? – on the treason lobby's massive gun-grab currently before Congress — H.R. 2038. Fully half of the members of the Congressional Refugee Caucus support this blatant extension of the so-called "assault" weapons ban.  And out of the bill's eighty-six sponsors, sixty-two of these enemies of the Second Amendment are self-appointed members of the Congressional "Human Rights" Caucus.

Juan Mann [send him email] is a lawyer and the proprietor of DeportAliens.com.