Merchant of Death
Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible

Blood from Stones

Visit Douglas Farah's
author page at
amazon.com

Reviews/
Press Releases

Religious Visa Fraud Haunts DHS, Potential Terrorist Tool
The Boston Globe has a deeply disturbing article on another one of the gaping loopholes that give radical Islamists unfettered, easy access to the United States-the little-known R or Religious Visa, that allows visitors to enter the United States with minimal scrutiny if they claim to belong to a religious order.

The program has been riddled with abuse for years, and a 1999 GAO report found wide-spread fraud, which has since not been addressed. The 1999 GAO report highlighted persistent lapses in oversight. "Neither INS nor [the] State [Department] knows the overall extent of fraud in the religious worker visa program," the report concluded.

The Globe report, based on an internal DHS review of the program said "The probe found a particularly high fraud rate among applicants from countries the government deemed to pose a security risk, such as Egypt, Algeria, Pakistan, Syria and Iraq, the report found. There were 11 applications for people from special-risk countries among the 220 petitions that were audited -- and 8 of those 11 were fraudulent, it said."

Michelle Malkin reports that the program has already been exploited to illegally bring in more than 200 Islamic applicants:

"According to a complaint from the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York unsealed last week, Muslim religious leader Muhammed Khalil, his son Asim, and three other individuals submitted false R visa applications on behalf of more than 200 Middle Eastern aliens. Although Khalil and his cronies were nabbed after an 18-month investigation, federal authorities are mum on the whereabouts of the Middle Eastern illegal aliens who purchased fake R visas from Khalil and his colleagues."

She reports that Khalil was taped by undercover agents admiring bin Laden and hoping another attack would soon hit the United States. Along the way, he charged $8,000 to dummy up the necessary, minimal paperwork to those coming in, inventing names, university degrees, etc., that were never checked.

So, another hole large enough to drive a truck through. DHS says it is studying the problem and trying to crack down on abuse. It is probably several years too late to worry about that. Almost all the foreign workers for Benevolence International and other shuttered, designated Islamist charities were here on R visas. The Blind Sheik, Omar Abdul Rahman, was on an R visa when he plotted to destroy New York City and inspired Osama bin Laden.

No one seems to know where the 200 fraudulent visa holders Khalil helped, are now. Nor how many more there are out there, legally living in a country they long to destroy.

POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Hezbollah-al Qaeda Ties Increase Danger in Lebanon
Who is Dawood Ibrahim?
Maintained by Winter Tree Media, LLC