Rampant fraud puts stop to U.S. refugee program

State Department officials have suspended a program that allows refugees in the U.S. to bring family members into the country after an investigation revealed widespread fraud in the system.

Since the 1980's, the State Department has granted refugee family members who are left behind in war-torn countries priority-3 access to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program on a case-by-case basis.

After suspicions of fraud were raised last year – often involving unrelated children being claimed as family – the State Department conducted DNA testing of 3,000 applicants to the program, to see if they were actually related to the family members they claimed.

In more than 80 percent of the cases, the applicants either refused to take the tests or were discovered to have DNA that didn't match their reported family members.

"We were alarmed that the rate was so high," a State Department official – who spoke on condition of anonymity as a matter of departmental policy – told the Washington Post. "In fewer than 20 percent of cases did the applicant take the test and it checked out."

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Seyoum Berhe, an official of refugee services for the Catholic Archdiocese of Arlington, told the Post there are legitimate humanitarian reasons the DNA doesn't always match.

"A village is burning. People are running. Someone grabs a child and ends up raising him. The DNA may not be the same, but in every other way, he is the parent," said Berhe. "We certainly do not support fraud, but there is a human aspect, too. If my brother were killed in Somalia and I saved his child, according to our culture, that child is mine."

State Department officials confirmed that while many informal or wartime adoptions are impossible to document, such a high rate of unmatched DNA leads to other, very real concerns.

"We are sympathetic," a State Department official told the Post, "but when people lie about blood relationships, it raises fears that we may be facilitating child trafficking or that people are trying to bring in their servants."

The State Department began DNA testing in Africa, where, in recent years, over 95 percent of the refugee family applications originated. After a sample testing in Kenya revealed a high rate of fraud, tests were extended throughout the continent.

Most of the applications for access to the priority-3 Refugee Family Reunification Program, or P-3, have come for family members from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Liberia. Since Oct. 1, 2003, the State Department reports, 36,000 refugees have come to America from Africa through the P-3 program, while only 400 have come from other areas of the world in the same time span.

The State Department's website on the issue reports that while some applications are still being processed, no new applications are being accepted from any nationality until measures can be put in place to cut down on the fraud.

"The Department is working closely with the Department of Homeland Security to develop and implement new procedures for verifying family relationship claims," reports the State Department. "These new procedures will likely include DNA testing. The P-3 program in Africa remains suspended as noted above until we have finalized and implemented these new measures."

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