Indians paid bribes to become American citizens
Saturday November 22 2003 19:30 IST
IANS (www.newindpress.com)
WASHINGTON: Investigations into rampant corruption at an office of the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) has showed that illegal immigrants from India were among those who paid bribes to get legal status.
The staffers at the Newark office are accused of taking bribes running into thousands of dollars to issue fraudulent green cards, work permits and other documentation to immigrants, the New Jersey daily Star Ledger reported.
During a federal corruption trial, former INS workers admitted that employees often approved immigrants for legal residency not because they were eligible but because they had paid bribes to a middleman who paid off federal workers.
New Jersey resident Jerome Audige was convicted on Thursday of bribing immigration staff to issue a fraudulent green card to an illegal immigrant who paid him $10,000.
Audige is a naturalised US citizen from Haiti and an independent broker for illegal immigrants who approached him for green cards.
One of Audige's clients, Ravinder Singh of India, testified that he overstayed a tourist visa, then paid Audige $10,000 to obtain a green card.
Singh said he knew he was ineligible for legal residency because his wife, a lesbian US citizen whom he paid $2,000 to marry him and sponsor him for a green card, left him a week before their scheduled interview with INS officials.
Despite attending the interview by himself and having none of the required paperwork, Singh said, he received his passport stamp and later a green card.
Audige, 73, became the fifth person convicted in a federal corruption probe of the immigration offices in Newark, New Jersey.
He was found guilty on two counts of bribery and one count of document fraud for paying between $2,000 and $3,500 to a pair of US INS employees who had the green card issued.
Audige faces a maximum of 15 years in prison when he is sentenced in February.
He had maintained his innocence despite a pile of evidence against him, including a handwritten signed confession and an audiotape in which he promised thousands of dollars in bribes to an INS clerk-turned-government informant.
His attorney vowed to appeal the verdict.
The trial included testimony from Brenda Parmely, a former INS supervisor who said she accepted $40,000 and $70,000 from Audige and another broker between 2000 and 2001.
Parmely and the other broker, Maria Bravim, have pleaded guilty to bribery charges.
Tonya Allen, a former INS adjudication clerk who served five months in federal prison for accepting bribes, told the jury she had played no part in Audige's document ring.
However, she was unable to explain the source of more than $34,000 in cash deposits she placed in her bank account during the months prosecutors said Audige was bribing Parmely.
A third INS employee, Michael Bridgeforth, turned government informant after he was arrested for stealing thousands of dollars in immigrants' application fees.
In a February 2002 meeting with Audige, Bridgeforth secretly recorded a conversation in which Audige discusses bribing him and other INS workers to obtain more immigrant work permits and green cards.
The trial revealed shocking details about how the illegal immigration racket worked.
One former INS officer has testified he would often take the money orders, cash them for himself and stash the applications in a locker.
Another former INS supervisor testified she accepted $40,000 to $70,000 in bribes to create fraudulent work permits for more than 50 illegal immigrants.
And when that same supervisor passed a co-worker her share of a $2,200 bribe to approve green cards for two ineligible illegal immigrants from India, the woman complained the sum was too small, the woman testified.
Other workers in the Newark district, she said, were getting bigger bribes.
Audige was president of the Irvington-based New Jersey Haitian American Cultural Organisation, a non-profit agency that assisted immigrants in navigating the cumbersome immigration bureaucracy in their efforts to obtain legal status or citizenship.
His arrest, along with the three INS employees and a second middleman, stems from an investigation launched in 2001 by the US Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General targeting suspected corruption within the Newark office, according to Assistant US Attorney Michael Hammer.
When the INS, Newark, was disbanded in March, its duties were folded into the new Department of Homeland Security.
Saturday November 22 2003 19:30 IST
IANS (www.newindpress.com)
WASHINGTON: Investigations into rampant corruption at an office of the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) has showed that illegal immigrants from India were among those who paid bribes to get legal status.
The staffers at the Newark office are accused of taking bribes running into thousands of dollars to issue fraudulent green cards, work permits and other documentation to immigrants, the New Jersey daily Star Ledger reported.
During a federal corruption trial, former INS workers admitted that employees often approved immigrants for legal residency not because they were eligible but because they had paid bribes to a middleman who paid off federal workers.
New Jersey resident Jerome Audige was convicted on Thursday of bribing immigration staff to issue a fraudulent green card to an illegal immigrant who paid him $10,000.
Audige is a naturalised US citizen from Haiti and an independent broker for illegal immigrants who approached him for green cards.
One of Audige's clients, Ravinder Singh of India, testified that he overstayed a tourist visa, then paid Audige $10,000 to obtain a green card.
Singh said he knew he was ineligible for legal residency because his wife, a lesbian US citizen whom he paid $2,000 to marry him and sponsor him for a green card, left him a week before their scheduled interview with INS officials.
Despite attending the interview by himself and having none of the required paperwork, Singh said, he received his passport stamp and later a green card.
Audige, 73, became the fifth person convicted in a federal corruption probe of the immigration offices in Newark, New Jersey.
He was found guilty on two counts of bribery and one count of document fraud for paying between $2,000 and $3,500 to a pair of US INS employees who had the green card issued.
Audige faces a maximum of 15 years in prison when he is sentenced in February.
He had maintained his innocence despite a pile of evidence against him, including a handwritten signed confession and an audiotape in which he promised thousands of dollars in bribes to an INS clerk-turned-government informant.
His attorney vowed to appeal the verdict.
The trial included testimony from Brenda Parmely, a former INS supervisor who said she accepted $40,000 and $70,000 from Audige and another broker between 2000 and 2001.
Parmely and the other broker, Maria Bravim, have pleaded guilty to bribery charges.
Tonya Allen, a former INS adjudication clerk who served five months in federal prison for accepting bribes, told the jury she had played no part in Audige's document ring.
However, she was unable to explain the source of more than $34,000 in cash deposits she placed in her bank account during the months prosecutors said Audige was bribing Parmely.
A third INS employee, Michael Bridgeforth, turned government informant after he was arrested for stealing thousands of dollars in immigrants' application fees.
In a February 2002 meeting with Audige, Bridgeforth secretly recorded a conversation in which Audige discusses bribing him and other INS workers to obtain more immigrant work permits and green cards.
The trial revealed shocking details about how the illegal immigration racket worked.
One former INS officer has testified he would often take the money orders, cash them for himself and stash the applications in a locker.
Another former INS supervisor testified she accepted $40,000 to $70,000 in bribes to create fraudulent work permits for more than 50 illegal immigrants.
And when that same supervisor passed a co-worker her share of a $2,200 bribe to approve green cards for two ineligible illegal immigrants from India, the woman complained the sum was too small, the woman testified.
Other workers in the Newark district, she said, were getting bigger bribes.
Audige was president of the Irvington-based New Jersey Haitian American Cultural Organisation, a non-profit agency that assisted immigrants in navigating the cumbersome immigration bureaucracy in their efforts to obtain legal status or citizenship.
His arrest, along with the three INS employees and a second middleman, stems from an investigation launched in 2001 by the US Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General targeting suspected corruption within the Newark office, according to Assistant US Attorney Michael Hammer.
When the INS, Newark, was disbanded in March, its duties were folded into the new Department of Homeland Security.