More Poet's Place Poems

Life as a Fraud Officer

Life as a Fraud Officer

For eight years
I was a visa fraud officer
For the US Government

Combating visa fraud
In Bangkok, Mumbai
Mumbai and working
In the fraud office in DC

It was an endless task
With little support from headquaters
Although that has changed
A lot recently


I will always recall
the following case

On that November day,
an Indian American citizen
came to the embassy to see me

She did not have an appointment.
She had a request.
would I be willing
to reconsider a case?

Her father had immigrated
to the United States
and become a citizen.

And she had become a citizen as well.
She had four siblings who were in their 30s
all of whom were living in rural Gujarat, India

and all of whose visas
were held up for “administrative processing”

on suspicion of marriage fraud,
or rather fake single status,
which was the biggest
category of visa fraud.

Her father had petitioned
for them as unmarried children of U.S. citizens,
the wait was about three years,
whereas for married children of U.S. citizens,
the wait would be about seven years.

In this case, we suspected
that they were committing marriage fraud
by pretending to be unmarried
and the case had been held up
until we could send someone
out to the field to check
on whether they were married or not.

We knew culturally speaking
that rural Gujarati women
and men in their 30s
would all be married

and that they were faking being single
on paper to speed up visa processing.

I understood
and even felt sympathetic
but the law was the law
and I had to enforce the rules.

I asked her,

“So, what can we do for you?”

Yes, my father is dying
in the hospital
and it is his dying wish

to reunite the family in the United States,
could you please
reconsider issuing
the visas to them?

“Do you have any proof that your father is in the hospital?”

And she said yes,
and she pulled out
a letter written

by a Dr. Patel
in New Jersey saying

that Mister Patel was seriously ill
and then he was his dying wish
to have his children
reunited in the United States,

and that the Embassy
should reconsider issuing visas
for the children.

There was something
about that letter
that struck me as phony

I called the hospital
and I confirmed
with the duty doctor

that Mr. Patel had died
about two weeks before.

I called Miss Patel
and gave her the bad news.

We always have to give
the applicant the opportunity
to tell us the truth
and if they don't
we throw the book at them.

I started by saying.

“So, Miss Patel
when was the last time
you spoke to your father?”


“Oh, I spoke to him yesterday
just before I got
on the plane
and is he still alive.”

“He is alive right now?”

“Oh yeah, he's still alive
and he's waiting
for the immigrant visas
to be processed.”


“OK well, there's just one problem.
Do you believe in ghosts?


” What?”


“Well, you see here's the problem.

There's only one way
you could have spoken
to your father yesterday
and that is
if you spoke to a ghost

because according to the hospital,
he died two weeks ago”.
And I showed her
the fax from the hospital
confirming Mr. Patel’s demise.

She started crying.
Then I said.

“Well, you know the problem
is that you and your siblings
just committed visa fraud.

They are going to be stuck in India
and not allowed to travel
to the United States
for the next 99 years.

But planes fly both ways
and you can go visit them every year
if you want but they're not coming
into the United States.

and you could petition
for them and ask for a waiver
in about ten years or so.

She cried,
and I entered them
into the system
for visa misrepresentation.

This one was but one of
the many heart-breaking stories
illustrating how broken
the US immigration system was.

In this particular case,
if the father was still alive,
I might have reconsidered the case

and issued the visas
for humanitarian reasons
ignoring the marriage fraud,
which was always
difficult to prove,

but when the father died
the petition died with him.

I said to myself
well that's just another day

in the life of a visa officer
doing my part to
enforce a broken
immigration system.