Your chance to fight fraud!

[USCONGUZ]

Dear CFL Members,

 

It is apparent from your posts that most of you already know just how big a problem fraud is for the Consulate. Valuable time and resources must be taken away from the process of adjudicating visas and re-allocated to combating fraud. It is illegal to engage in a sham marriage for the purpose of avoiding U.S. immigration laws and it is our job to keep this from happening. However, due to the extremely large sums of money involved many people have no qualms about breaking the law. This causes delays in the processing of your spouses’ and fiancées visas both here and in the U.S. and is no small part of why the wait for a visa is so long.

 

The Consulate would like to enlist your help in combating fraud. We have found that petitioners and their legitimate beneficiaries are great sources of information about fraud patterns and trends. If you are interested in helping, please post any information you might have. This is especially useful if you or your spouse is approached with shady offers. Of course, you can do this anonymously if you like by sending us letters or faxes, but we feel the information will be useful to your colleagues as well. We are not asking for what you have termed “third party correspondence” or asking you to rat out anyone. We are just hoping you can help us make this process more efficient.

 

If you have read this far, a lot of you are thinking now, “why should I help these people who are the source of all our misery?” Well, here are a few reasons:

 

1. You can give us suggestions as to what kind of things you and your spouses hear about so that we can combat these problems and re-devote resources to visa adjudication in order to speed up the visa process.

2. You can help your colleagues avoid falling into the trap of getting involved with scam artists. For example, one problem we have noticed is that otherwise legitimate visa applicants are sometimes convinced by unscrupulous people that they need to “purchase” more evidence in order to strengthen their case. We usually catch the purchased evidence and this can make the entire case looks suspicious, where as it would have otherwise been fine.

3. You can make us aware of any problems your spouses might be having acquiring the required documents. One recent post mentioned that their spouse was being blackmailed into paying a bribe in order to obtain a birth certificate. We would really like to know the specifics on this, so that we can either take this up with the local officials to stop the practice or find some kind of alternate method for your spouse to obtain these documents, so that they can avoid being scammed.

 

Due to the extremely large sums of money involved and the high demand for immigration to the U.S., we do not see an end to fraud in the near future. We also do not have the resources to follow up on every single lead we receive. However, with your help, we can make some inroads and make it easier to distinguish between fraudulent and legitimate cases.

 

Sincerely,

 

Immigrant Visa Unit, U.S. Consulate, Guangzhou, China

[warpedbored]

This is a hot one. On one hand the idea of ratting people out is repugnant. On the other I am sure I speak for all of us when I say we here on CFL are against ilegal immigration. There have been stories of scammers here and a few close calls by some members but these cases are pretty rare for CFL members. There have been a couple of stories about members meeting americans at the airport who ask how much they are being paid by american strangers. It seems to me that a hefty fine combined with a lengthy prison sentence for the american party would do more good than a witch hunt for Chinese visa scammers but this is my oppinion only. I am sure others will have plenty to say on the matter.

[goneflying2000]

I think that all of us here that go through the visa nightmare of legally bringing our loved ones home would be more than happy to help fight fraud in any way possible if it could ease the burden that this process brings upon us. I for one am outraged by the amount of illegal alians that cross our borders every day with little or no consequence other than the fact thet every few years we offer them amnesty and give them resident status despite their illegal US entry.