FRAUD SUMMARY - BRIDGETOWN

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BRIDGETOWN 000199

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR CA/FPP, INL/HSTC; DEPT ALSO
PASS TO KCC; POSTS FOR FRAUD PREVENTION
MANAGERS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: KFRD CVIS CPAS CMGT ASEC KCRM BB
SUBJECT: FRAUD SUMMARY - BRIDGETOWN

REF: 05 STATE 205073

a. COUNTRY CONDITIONS: Embassy Bridgetown's consular
district covers seventeen islands - seven independent
countries, three British islands, four French islands
and, for visa purposes, three Dutch islands. The
islands have widely varying levels of development that
affect the level of fraud. Barbados, with a strong
economy based on tourism and financial services, has
the lowest refusal rate and the lowest levels of
fraud. Refusal rates and levels of fraud are higher
on other islands in the Eastern Caribbean, such as St.
Lucia and Dominica, where the economies are less
developed and unemployment is high.

In the last few months, St. Vincent, St. Kitts and
Nevis, and Dominica have started issuing machine-
readable passports with digitized photos. These
passports are a significant improvement over the
previous, non-machine readable versions with hand-
written bio-data. In our consular district, only St.
Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda continue to issue non-
machine readable passports with handwritten bio-data
pages. Barbados and Grenada have both issued machine-
readable passports since 2004 and 2001, respectively.

b. NIV FRAUD: Post has not detected significant fraud
in any particular NIV category. Most of the fraud
encountered is the use of fake or padded job letters,
bank statements, and other supporting documents by
applicants for B1/B2 visas. One area of concern is
applicants from St. Lucia. We have detected a
disturbing increase of fraudulent documents from
applicants from St. Lucia, including one verified case
of an applicant with a fake backdated St. Lucian entry
stamp. There have also been reports of Guyanese
nationals receiving fraudulent St. Lucian passports in
order to travel visa-free to Canada.

Another area of concern is the large number of third
country nationals on the islands in our district,
particularly Guyanese and Jamaicans in the British
Virgin Islands, Dominicans in Dutch St. Maarten, and
Haitians on the French islands of Martinique,
Guadeloupe, and St. Martin. These applicants have a
higher refusal rate than our other applicants and, not
surprisingly, are more prone to use fake documents
when they apply. Although many of these applicants
are bona fide long-term residents of these islands, we
have detected some fraudulent documents used by these
third country nationals to exaggerate the length of
their legal residence on these islands.

At least two of the island states - St. Kitts and
Nevis and Dominica - also have economic citizenship
programs that allow third country nationals to buy
local citizenship. While not specifically fraudulent,
these programs have raised concerns because the
majority of those who take advantage of these programs
are from countries of concern including the former
Soviet Union and countries in the Middle East and East
Asia.

c. IV FRAUD: Post has detected very few cases of IV
fraud. A small percentage of IV applicants are
employment-based, and nearly all of them are nurses
who are well qualified. The vast majority of IV
applicants are family-based, and most of those cases
are straightforward. The most problematic cases that
we have encountered are spouses of U.S. citizens who
have overstayed their visas or entered without
inspection. While most of these IR1 applicants admit
to their illegal entry and overstay, some have used
fraudulent means to conceal an overstay. In one case,
a St. Lucian applicant attempted to conceal her 3-year
stay in the USVI with a fraudulent, backdated St.
Lucian entry stamp. At the interview, her story
unraveled and she admitted to mailing her passport
back to St. Lucia and paying someone to get a
backdated entry stamp. We have expressed our concern
to the government of St. Lucia about the backdated
entry stamps and the prevalence of fraudulent
documents from St. Lucia.

Post accepts relatively few IV petitions, generally in
cases when the U.S. citizen petitioner is a resident
of our consular district. In one case, an American
citizen who lived in Texas attempted to file an IV

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petition for his Cuban wife. The petitioner had
recently met his wife on the Internet and they were
married in Jamaica just a few days before coming to
Barbados. The petitioner's passport showed recent
travel to Korea and Russia, and he admitted that he
had traveled there to see women whom he had also met
on the Internet. The consular officer refused to
accept the petition because it was not clearly
approvable. Two weeks later, Barbados Immigration
arrested the American citizen and his Cuban wife for
attempting to leave Barbados with fake U.S. birth
certificates and driver's licenses. The U.S. citizen,
who used to work at the Texas Department of Motor
Vehicles, made a fake driver's license and birth
certificate for himself to match his wife's. Although
Barbados Immigration eventually released the U.S.
citizen, Post entered a lookout and notified DHS about
his fraudulent activities.

d. DV FRAUD: Post processed fewer than 10 DV cases in
2005 and encountered no fraud.

e. ACS AND PASSPORT FRAUD: The vast majority of our
passport applicants are children born in the U.S. to
non-U.S. citizen mothers with tourist visas. Post
experienced a significant increase in passport
applications in 2005, largely because consular
officers and consular agents made regular visits to
other islands to accept passport applications. These
consular visits have made it easier for American
citizens on other islands to apply for passports,
since they do not have to make an expensive trip to
Barbados to appear before a consular officer. The
increase in passport applications from consular visits
raised some concerns in CA/FPP about the possibility
of non-U.S. citizens fraudulently applying for U.S.
passports. Post temporarily suspended the consular
visits while consulting with CA/FPP on fraud-
prevention measures. Post recently resumed the visits
and incorporated a number of CA/FPP suggestions,
including requiring applicants to make an appointment
in advance and no longer using consular agents (who
can accept but not approve applications) for consular
visits to other islands.

Post has detected a few cases of applicants making a
false claim to U.S. citizenship. In one case, a young
Guyanese applicant claimed to be a U.S. citizen who
lost his passport. His story fell apart when he could
not remember the name of the school he attended in New
York and said that he "sat for the SAT exam". Post
contacted Barbados immigration, which confirmed that
he was living illegally in Barbados and deported him.

f. ADOPTION FRAUD: Post only processes about 15-20
adoption cases a year, although these cases are
sometimes problematic because the U.S. citizen
petitioner adopts a relative and the adopted child
does not meet the definition of orphan. For example,
one adoption case was refused when it was discovered
that the 14-year-old "orphan" was actually living with
her biological mother in Grenada. Most of these
adoptions take place not in Barbados but on other
islands in our district, making it very difficult for
consular officers to conduct a field investigation.
To classify a child as an orphan in these cases, we
rely on documentation from a competent authority in
the country where the adoption takes place. This
documentation usually consists of a letter from a
court, welfare officer, or social worker that the
biological parent is not capable of providing proper
care and has irrevocably released the child for
adoption and emigration.

g. ASYLUM AND OTHER DHS BENEFITS FRAUD: Post has not
processed any asylum cases. In 2005, Post issued 72
boarding letters to LPRs with lost, stolen, or expired
green cards. In these cases, we routinely verify with
DHS that the applicant is an LPR. We detected one
case involving an Antiguan man with a fake expired
green card who applied for a boarding letter. After
DHS verified that the A number on his green card
belonged to a Brazilian woman, we denied the boarding
letter and entered a P6C hit on the applicant.

h. COOPERATION WITH HOST GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES: With
a consular district spanning many islands, Post is
hard-pressed to maintain close contacts with host

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government authorities. Our closest contacts are with
Barbadian authorities, which generally take fraud
matters seriously and have cooperated with the Embassy
on a number of cases. They have also expressed
interest in receiving specific USG training to detect
fraudulent documentation because of the increasing
numbers of eastern Europeans and others they perceive
using Barbados as a launching point for entry into the
U.S. and Canada. Government authorities on the other,
less-prosperous islands have limited resources for
fighting fraud and illegal migration. For example,
cash-strapped Dominica allows Haitians to enter
Dominica by paying a $400 bond that can be refunded
when they exit the country legally. Dominican
authorities acknowledge that the vast majority of
Haitians never collect their bond because they leave
Dominica by boat to illegally enter the nearby French
islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Of the more
than 11,000 Haitians who have entered Dominica since
the program started in 2003, only about 100 have
collected their bond.

i. AREAS OF PARTICULAR CONCERN: Given the proximity of
Caribbean islands to the U.S. and lax immigration
controls on some of the islands, it is not surprising
to hear reports of alien smugglers and economic
migrants using the islands as transit points to the
U.S. Post has encountered a few cases that lend
credence to these reports. In the summer of 2005, two
applicants from Ghana applied for transit visas,
claiming they needed to transit Miami to travel to
Belize for work. They had traveled from Ghana to
Moscow to Jamaica to Barbados, a travel pattern
consistent with alien smuggling. More recently, Post
received a request for an emergency visa appointment
for 10 Mongolians who said they needed to transit the
U.S. on their way from Grenada to Mongolia. They
claimed to represent the Mongolia-Grenada Cooperation
Society, although the two countries seem to have no
diplomatic or economic relations and no reason to have
a cooperation society. Post granted their request for
an early appointment (partly to investigate possible
fraud),but the Mongolians could not come for the
interview because Barbados immigration denied their
entry to Barbados.

We consistently hear reports throughout the region of
alien smuggling via private boats. Most are
attempting to reach the USVI. One American citizen
was arrested last year when a French naval vessel
discovered illegal drugs and 7 aliens from St. Vincent
on his boat near Guadeloupe. Just last week, a
sailboat with approximately 10 Cubans onboard was
discovered in St. Martin.

j. STAFFING AND TRAINING: The section does not have a
formal FPU. Because of staffing shortages, the FPU
Chief position is temporarily filled by IV Chief Scott
Urbom. When the section is fully staffed, the FPU
Chief typically devotes 50% of his time to NIV
interviews. Post does not have any LES devoted to the
FPU but occasionally uses NIV FSNs to call to verify
documents. We are working to develop a more effective
FPU and considering hiring an LES fraud investigator.
We have also requested funds to conduct an initial
validation study.

KRAMER