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Crime Story |
Fraudulent Asylum Claims in Chinatown Will Continue Published on April 22 , 2014 via Voice of New York |
The following is a series of three articles that examine the impact of the conviction of immigration lawyer Feng Ling Liu, and the state of immigration fraud and political asylum cases in the Chinese community.(On April 14, Chinese immigration attorney Feng Ling Liu, her staff attorney Vanessa Bandrich, and office worker Rui Yang were found guilty in Manhattan federal court of one count of conspiracy to commit immigration fraud. The three were initially charged in December 2012 after a joint raid of the NYPD and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They were convicted following a 19 day jury trial.
A raid of immigration law firms in Chinatown by law enforcement in 2012 led to the arrest of immigration lawyers who were suspected of fraud. Feng Ling Liu, a Chinese lawyer, was one of them. Now, after Liu’s trial and conviction, political asylum and immigration frauds have once again become hot topics in Chinatown. A Chinese lawyer who insisted on remaining anonymous said Liu, who was charged with fabricating 2,000 political asylum cases and making $18 million through those cases, was not the first one to do so, and won’t be the last one either. He said that since the 1990s, because of the loopholes in the federal immigration law, “lawyers who know how to take advantage of the loopholes have been manipulating ignorant immigrants. They have built up a fiction workshop type of political asylum application industry which is very lucrative.”
The whole industry started in the 1990s. Peter Kwong, a scholar at Hunter College who studies Chinese immigrants, said that in 1996, in consideration of human rights, the U.S. Congress decided to allocate a 1,000peryear quota to Chinese political asylum applicants who were or could be persecuted under China’s one child policy. That was a time when the U.S. encountered a rapidly increasing influx of immigrants smuggled from China. The newly available avenue for getting proper documentation through political asylum was abused by con artists and created an industry to manufacture false asylum claims.
According to knowledgeable sources, the pioneers of the industry are Mr. Jia, who is very familiar with the procedure of visa applications in the U.S. consulates in China, and his partner Mr. Xu. They opened an immigration agency on East Broadway in the 1990s. People who were smuggled in from Fujian Province, China at that time all knew they should visit Mr. Jia once they arrived. Mr. Jia would create a persecution story based on the background of the client and coach the client to prepare for interviews with immigration officers. He also hired many Chinese students to work as interpreters for the applicants, building a factorylike assembly line for processing political asylum cases.
“Every day dozens of applicants would go to the immigration court in New Jersey, accompanied by Chinese students from Mr. Jia’s agency. The stories created for them were customized, different from the universal story offered by attorneys under investigation recently,” said a person who knows. But Mr. Jia is a very “low profile” person and he never got himself in trouble. In early 2000, amidst the notorious Robert Porges case, Mr. Jia and Mr. Xu ended their partnership. But Mr. Jia didn’t go far. People who know said he is still the driving force behind a well known immigration law firm in Chinatown.
The Porges case was the first sign that the authorities were tightening regulations on immigration law firms. Porges, a Harvard graduate who ran his law firm on the 16th floor at 401 Broadway, was under investigation in early 2000, which led to the shutdown of the firm and the arrest of Porges and his wife Sherry Lu.The couple were found to having been working with smuggling rings since 1993. They helped snakeheads to find people in the U.S. to bail out the “snakes” when they were arrested at the border, sharing profits with snakeheads and then, fabricating persecution stories for the “snakes” whom the firm represented in their political asylum applications. Fabrication was found in all the 7,000 applications filed by the law firm and the couple made $13.5 million in illegal profits out of them.
Altogether, 14 people who worked at Porges’ law firm were charged based on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a federal law aimed at cracking down on organized crimes. Porges and Lu were each sentenced to eight years in prison. Porges was disbarred. In 2002, law enforcement raided an immigration agency in Flushing that focused on H and J visa applications and renewal and arrested its Chinese manager Xin Gen Dai. At the end of 2012 authorities conducted one more sting operation and arrested Liu and other suspects.
An anonymous lawyer in Chinatown said the 2012 operation has not led to the reduction of the number of Chinese applicants for political asylum. Instead, the number has increased. “The basic situation in China has not changed. So the number of immigrants from China, be it legal or illegal, is still increasing.” He said the earliest immigrants came here for political freedom in the U.S., the later ones looked for economic freedom, and the latest came for environmental freedom. As long as the U.S. won’t shut down this avenue, the number of Chinese applicants for political asylum will only be going up.
The lawyer said: “From the start, political asylum should not have been a way for people to get immigration status.” He said the original reason Congress allowed political asylum was to offer people who were persecuted in communist countries the opportunity to enjoy freedom and democracy in the U.S. Since the end of the Cold War, many communist countries have collapsed, and fewer and fewer individuals qualify for political asylum. But the option remains. And it has become a way to obtain immigration status for those who know how to take advantage of the system.
The grant rate of political asylum is higher than many other type of immigration applications. Many people see their relatives or friends successfully getting legal status through political asylum and want to try themselves. Some of them are not qualified at all, but they still want to take a chance. That’s why there is so much fraud in this field. Another lawyer noted that in recent years many Chinese students graduating from colleges in the U.S. found it hard to get employment based visas or green cards. And they also started to look at political asylum as a way to obtain residency, “because they found this way is much easier,” said the lawyer. But the lawyer said this is a very risky attempt for foreign students: “In order to get a political asylum application granted, the applicants have to be out of immigration status during the time he or she waits for the decision on the application. This means students have to forgo their student visas and become undocumented first. If their application is denied, there is no way to get the previous status back.”
In general, most immigration lawyers in Chinatown agree Chinese immigrants should be aware that political asylum was not designed to be a tool to obtain legal status. It was established for protecting people who are persecuted. But, they also pointed out, the reason the political asylum option is being abused is that there aren’t enough legitimate ways for immigrants to establish legal status. Some lawyers took the recent application of the H1B working visa as an example. (The H1B is a visa type mainly for foreign college graduates who want to stay in the U.S. to work. This year’s application window for H1B working visas opened on April 1 and the applications exceeded the annual quota in only a week. Now all applicants have to be put through a lottery process. Those who are unlucky will have little choice but to leave the country.) “If the U.S. could offer more immigration routes for trained workers and professionals, in the long run, it would not only be good for the economy here, but also alleviate the abuse of the political asylum process,” said one Chinatown lawyer.
Kwong of Hunter College agrees. He said the situation in China won’t change overnight. There will still be people taking advantage of loopholes in the law to help undocumented immigrants achieve legal status through political asylum. “To solve the problem, one has to go back to comprehensive immigration reform,” said Kwong. “Rather than keep setting up sting operations against immigration lawyers, the U.S. government has to realize that the immigration policy here is far from perfect. Undocumented immigrants who try to get status and immigration lawyers who help them are not the only ones who should be blamed.”
Kwong said the authorities have been relying on sting operations to crack down on immigration fraud in the Chinese community. Every few years, they’d pursue such an operation. This makes it seem like immigrants who were smuggled into this country and the immigrant lawyers are the only ones who should take responsibility. But the problem indeed is rooted deeply in the nature of immigration policy.
He said Congress created political asylum based on human rights considerations. The objective was to protect people who were persecuted in communist countries and offer them the opportunity to enjoy democracy and freedom. But many undocumented immigrants have been smuggled in this country. These are people at the bottom of the social ladder who don’t have the money for investment immigration, nor do they have the education to apply for a student visa or other professional visas. They can only do it through political asylum. “It’s not like the judges in immigration courts have never been suspicious of the persecution stories of political asylum applicants,” said Kwong. “But many judges would grant the applications anyway. Because if a judge’s decline rate is too high, he or she could be sued by immigration lawyers for being racist. This would tarnish the judge’s reputation and could also led to demotion.”
“It’s not like the U.S. government doesn’t know these problems are created by imperfect immigration policy either. But the authorities still raid Chinese immigrants every few years, arrest a few people, and then let the immigration lawyers and undocumented immigrants take all the responsibility,” said Kwong. “It is also wrong to say these operations are racial profiling or to say the lawyers have done nothing wrong. But more importantly, it is time for the U.S. government to ponder all these incidents and to directly face the importance of immigration reform.”
Right now, Kwong said, immigration reform is merely a game among politicians. They talk about amnesty and promise to offer ways to legalize undocumented immigrants unconditionally. But this won’t solve the real problem. Without real improvement in labor rights, profit driven employers will still hire cheaper undocumented immigrants. Chinese will still come here through smuggling to get jobs. And they will continue to take advantage of political asylum to get status.
Kwong pointed out one way to alleviate the problem is to offer more ways to obtain legal status, especially for trained laborers, and improve labor rights. “For example, in Denmark, employers have to offer equal wages to employees regardless of their immigration status,” he said. Kwong also warned the Chinese: “From Porges to Liu, these cases should help the Chinese community to wake up. The community should be aware it is often a target of federal sting operations. And Chinese immigrants should abide by the law more strictly."
A raid of immigration law firms in Chinatown by law enforcement in 2012 led to the arrest of immigration lawyers who were suspected of fraud. Feng Ling Liu, a Chinese lawyer, was one of them. Now, after Liu’s trial and conviction, political asylum and immigration frauds have once again become hot topics in Chinatown. A Chinese lawyer who insisted on remaining anonymous said Liu, who was charged with fabricating 2,000 political asylum cases and making $18 million through those cases, was not the first one to do so, and won’t be the last one either. He said that since the 1990s, because of the loopholes in the federal immigration law, “lawyers who know how to take advantage of the loopholes have been manipulating ignorant immigrants. They have built up a fiction workshop type of political asylum application industry which is very lucrative.”
The whole industry started in the 1990s. Peter Kwong, a scholar at Hunter College who studies Chinese immigrants, said that in 1996, in consideration of human rights, the U.S. Congress decided to allocate a 1,000peryear quota to Chinese political asylum applicants who were or could be persecuted under China’s one child policy. That was a time when the U.S. encountered a rapidly increasing influx of immigrants smuggled from China. The newly available avenue for getting proper documentation through political asylum was abused by con artists and created an industry to manufacture false asylum claims.
According to knowledgeable sources, the pioneers of the industry are Mr. Jia, who is very familiar with the procedure of visa applications in the U.S. consulates in China, and his partner Mr. Xu. They opened an immigration agency on East Broadway in the 1990s. People who were smuggled in from Fujian Province, China at that time all knew they should visit Mr. Jia once they arrived. Mr. Jia would create a persecution story based on the background of the client and coach the client to prepare for interviews with immigration officers. He also hired many Chinese students to work as interpreters for the applicants, building a factorylike assembly line for processing political asylum cases.
“Every day dozens of applicants would go to the immigration court in New Jersey, accompanied by Chinese students from Mr. Jia’s agency. The stories created for them were customized, different from the universal story offered by attorneys under investigation recently,” said a person who knows. But Mr. Jia is a very “low profile” person and he never got himself in trouble. In early 2000, amidst the notorious Robert Porges case, Mr. Jia and Mr. Xu ended their partnership. But Mr. Jia didn’t go far. People who know said he is still the driving force behind a well known immigration law firm in Chinatown.
The Porges case was the first sign that the authorities were tightening regulations on immigration law firms. Porges, a Harvard graduate who ran his law firm on the 16th floor at 401 Broadway, was under investigation in early 2000, which led to the shutdown of the firm and the arrest of Porges and his wife Sherry Lu.The couple were found to having been working with smuggling rings since 1993. They helped snakeheads to find people in the U.S. to bail out the “snakes” when they were arrested at the border, sharing profits with snakeheads and then, fabricating persecution stories for the “snakes” whom the firm represented in their political asylum applications. Fabrication was found in all the 7,000 applications filed by the law firm and the couple made $13.5 million in illegal profits out of them.
Altogether, 14 people who worked at Porges’ law firm were charged based on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a federal law aimed at cracking down on organized crimes. Porges and Lu were each sentenced to eight years in prison. Porges was disbarred. In 2002, law enforcement raided an immigration agency in Flushing that focused on H and J visa applications and renewal and arrested its Chinese manager Xin Gen Dai. At the end of 2012 authorities conducted one more sting operation and arrested Liu and other suspects.
An anonymous lawyer in Chinatown said the 2012 operation has not led to the reduction of the number of Chinese applicants for political asylum. Instead, the number has increased. “The basic situation in China has not changed. So the number of immigrants from China, be it legal or illegal, is still increasing.” He said the earliest immigrants came here for political freedom in the U.S., the later ones looked for economic freedom, and the latest came for environmental freedom. As long as the U.S. won’t shut down this avenue, the number of Chinese applicants for political asylum will only be going up.
The lawyer said: “From the start, political asylum should not have been a way for people to get immigration status.” He said the original reason Congress allowed political asylum was to offer people who were persecuted in communist countries the opportunity to enjoy freedom and democracy in the U.S. Since the end of the Cold War, many communist countries have collapsed, and fewer and fewer individuals qualify for political asylum. But the option remains. And it has become a way to obtain immigration status for those who know how to take advantage of the system.
The grant rate of political asylum is higher than many other type of immigration applications. Many people see their relatives or friends successfully getting legal status through political asylum and want to try themselves. Some of them are not qualified at all, but they still want to take a chance. That’s why there is so much fraud in this field. Another lawyer noted that in recent years many Chinese students graduating from colleges in the U.S. found it hard to get employment based visas or green cards. And they also started to look at political asylum as a way to obtain residency, “because they found this way is much easier,” said the lawyer. But the lawyer said this is a very risky attempt for foreign students: “In order to get a political asylum application granted, the applicants have to be out of immigration status during the time he or she waits for the decision on the application. This means students have to forgo their student visas and become undocumented first. If their application is denied, there is no way to get the previous status back.”
In general, most immigration lawyers in Chinatown agree Chinese immigrants should be aware that political asylum was not designed to be a tool to obtain legal status. It was established for protecting people who are persecuted. But, they also pointed out, the reason the political asylum option is being abused is that there aren’t enough legitimate ways for immigrants to establish legal status. Some lawyers took the recent application of the H1B working visa as an example. (The H1B is a visa type mainly for foreign college graduates who want to stay in the U.S. to work. This year’s application window for H1B working visas opened on April 1 and the applications exceeded the annual quota in only a week. Now all applicants have to be put through a lottery process. Those who are unlucky will have little choice but to leave the country.) “If the U.S. could offer more immigration routes for trained workers and professionals, in the long run, it would not only be good for the economy here, but also alleviate the abuse of the political asylum process,” said one Chinatown lawyer.
Kwong of Hunter College agrees. He said the situation in China won’t change overnight. There will still be people taking advantage of loopholes in the law to help undocumented immigrants achieve legal status through political asylum. “To solve the problem, one has to go back to comprehensive immigration reform,” said Kwong. “Rather than keep setting up sting operations against immigration lawyers, the U.S. government has to realize that the immigration policy here is far from perfect. Undocumented immigrants who try to get status and immigration lawyers who help them are not the only ones who should be blamed.”
Kwong said the authorities have been relying on sting operations to crack down on immigration fraud in the Chinese community. Every few years, they’d pursue such an operation. This makes it seem like immigrants who were smuggled into this country and the immigrant lawyers are the only ones who should take responsibility. But the problem indeed is rooted deeply in the nature of immigration policy.
He said Congress created political asylum based on human rights considerations. The objective was to protect people who were persecuted in communist countries and offer them the opportunity to enjoy democracy and freedom. But many undocumented immigrants have been smuggled in this country. These are people at the bottom of the social ladder who don’t have the money for investment immigration, nor do they have the education to apply for a student visa or other professional visas. They can only do it through political asylum. “It’s not like the judges in immigration courts have never been suspicious of the persecution stories of political asylum applicants,” said Kwong. “But many judges would grant the applications anyway. Because if a judge’s decline rate is too high, he or she could be sued by immigration lawyers for being racist. This would tarnish the judge’s reputation and could also led to demotion.”
“It’s not like the U.S. government doesn’t know these problems are created by imperfect immigration policy either. But the authorities still raid Chinese immigrants every few years, arrest a few people, and then let the immigration lawyers and undocumented immigrants take all the responsibility,” said Kwong. “It is also wrong to say these operations are racial profiling or to say the lawyers have done nothing wrong. But more importantly, it is time for the U.S. government to ponder all these incidents and to directly face the importance of immigration reform.”
Right now, Kwong said, immigration reform is merely a game among politicians. They talk about amnesty and promise to offer ways to legalize undocumented immigrants unconditionally. But this won’t solve the real problem. Without real improvement in labor rights, profit driven employers will still hire cheaper undocumented immigrants. Chinese will still come here through smuggling to get jobs. And they will continue to take advantage of political asylum to get status.
Kwong pointed out one way to alleviate the problem is to offer more ways to obtain legal status, especially for trained laborers, and improve labor rights. “For example, in Denmark, employers have to offer equal wages to employees regardless of their immigration status,” he said. Kwong also warned the Chinese: “From Porges to Liu, these cases should help the Chinese community to wake up. The community should be aware it is often a target of federal sting operations. And Chinese immigrants should abide by the law more strictly."
