The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1990 established special immigrant and nonimmigrant categories for religious workers, religious professionals, and ministers. The act authorizes special immigrants to be admitted to the United States as religious workers if, for 2 years prior to admission, they have been members of a religious denomination having a bona fide, nonprofit, religious organization in the United States; they intend to enter the United States to work for the organization at the organization's request in a religious vocation or occupation; and they have been carrying on the religious work continuously for at least 2 years immediately preceding their application for admission. The act established a limit of 5,000 on the number of special immigrant religious workers and religious professionals that can be admitted in any one year. Although the special immigrant provisions for religious workers and religious professionals were to expire on October 1, 1994, they have been amended twice and extended to October 1, 2000. Applying for an immigrant religious worker visa is a two-step process. First, a petition must be filed with INS. A petition is the form the sponsoring individual or organization must file on behalf of an alien to demonstrate that the alien meets the requirements of a specific immigration category. The petition must include supporting documentation showing that the religious worker will be working for a religious organization and how the religious worker will be paid or remunerated. The documentation should also clearly indicate that the religious worker will not be solely dependent on supplemental employment or solicitation of funds for support. INS reviewers examine the petitions and supporting documentation to determine if the alien meets the program requirements. If INS approves the petition, the alien files an application for an adjustment of status with INS if he or she is already in the United States or an application for a visa with a State overseas post if he or she is abroad. If the alien does not meet the requirements, INS denies the petition. About 85 percent of those admitted for permanent residence as religious workers in fiscal years 1996 and 1997 were already in the United States. Nonimmigrant religious workers can be admitted under the same conditions as special immigrant religious workers, except that there is no requirement for prior religious work experience, and the maximum period of stay for nonimmigrant religious workers is 5 years. The authorization for admission of nonimmigrant religious workers did not contain sunset restrictions nor any limit on the number that can be admitted. To obtain a nonimmigrant visa, the alien files an application, but no petition is required. Documentation required in support of the visa application must establish the arrangements made, if any, for remuneration, including the amount and source of any salary, a description of any other type of remuneration, and a statement indicating whether the remuneration will be in exchange for services rendered. The majority of nonimmigrant religious workers applies and receives their visas abroad through State's overseas posts. (See app. I for more information on immigrant and nonimmigrant religious worker visa issuance.) Both INS and State have expressed concern about fraud in the religious worker visa program, but they do not have data or analysis to firmly establish the extent of the problem. Their knowledge of program fraud is based on information developed primarily from fraud investigations and through the visa screening process. INS has conducted several fraud investigations since 1994 involving hundreds of applicants. In addition, fraud has been identified through INS' and State's visa screening processes. The agencies' reviewers generally deny petitions and visas to unqualified applicants, but according to the agencies' officials, it is difficult to prove willful intent to commit fraud. The types of fraud the agencies have encountered often involved petitioners making false statements about the length of time that the applicant was a member of the religious organization and the nature of the qualifying work experience. Some of the investigations involved religious organizations petitioning for more workers than they can reasonably support. Evidence uncovered by INS suggests that some of these organizations exist solely as a means to carry out immigration fraud. INS and State have uncovered incidents of fraud in the religious worker visa program, but they do not routinely investigate questionable visa petitions and applications or report fraud information by type of visa. State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the office responsible for investigating the use of counterfeit U.S. passports and visas, has not conducted any investigations of religious worker visa fraud. State's antifraud units at overseas posts sometimes review suspicious applications to screen out ineligible applicants, but they do not routinely report the results to State's headquarters. Individual cases of suspected fraud are generally not investigated, unless the suspected fraud is part of a larger scheme to systematically circumvent immigration laws. Moreover, INS does not routinely follow up on recipients of employment-based visas, including religious visas, to determine whether they comply with the law. The agencies generally deny questionable visa petitions and applications they receive. Most are not denied for fraud, but for other reasons, such as failing to comply with statutory requirements and regulations, including failure to provide requested documents. They give fraud as the reason for the denial when they have sufficient evidence that the applicant or petitioner willfully misrepresented a material fact. An INS workload report on immigrant petitions received, approved, and denied, showed that of the approximately 8,400 petitions for religious workers processed in fiscal year 1998, 3 percent were denied for suspected fraud. The reported 3-percent fraud denial rate for religious worker petitions was the third highest fraud denial rate among the 44 different immigrant petition categories listed. The fraud denial rate for most of the other categories was less than 1 percent. State Department statistics on visa denials do not identify denials by type of visa. However, a 1998 State survey of 83 overseas posts identified instances of fraud uncovered during visa processing. At our request, the Fraud Branch at INS' Office of Investigations in Washington, D.C., surveyed fraud units in INS' district and suboffices to identify the number of active and closed fraud investigations involving religious worker visas since 1994. The units identified 54 such investigations involving about 1,700 petitions during the 5-year period. The 54 INS investigations, of which about 40 are closed, ranged from cases involving individual fraud schemes to organized fraud rings. For example, the fraud unit in the Chicago District Office investigated 30 cases involving individuals who failed to meet the 2-year experience requirement. At least five investigations performed by INS since 1994 have involved individuals or organizations filing petitions for hundreds of religious workers. For example, in 1995, INS investigated a pastor who filed 450 immigrant religious worker petitions covering over 900 individuals, falsifying the number of years the aliens had been a member of the church. The pastor died of natural causes before an indictment could be returned, and the petitions were denied or allowed to expire. INS recently completed an investigation it started in 1994 involving suspects who provided false supporting documents to INS to show that the aliens met the 2-year work experience requirement. This investigation, which involved over 400 petitions, ultimately led to the arrests of six individuals, guilty pleas to charges of conspiracy to commit visa fraud, and additional investigations of several similar schemes. In another recent case, reviewers at INS' Vermont Service Center became suspicious when one organization, which had filed about 100 petitions for immigrant visas the previous 2 years combined, filed over 200 petitions the third year. The reviewers doubted that the organization could support so many full-time workers and referred the case to an INS district office fraud unit where it is currently under investigation. Some investigations were initiated because of suspicious activity identified by State Department consular officials. For example, consular officers at the U.S. embassy in Suva, Fiji, became suspicious of a church that filed petitions on behalf of 30 individuals from Fiji who were in the United States on expired visitors' visas. The information was forwarded to INS for investigation. The investigation revealed that only 1 of the 30 petitions met the requirements for a religious worker visa. The post suspected that this scheme was related to a larger one involving petitions on behalf of Tonga residents to stay in the United States illegally. Also, the U.S. embassy in Bogota uncovered a fraud scheme in which the local church was providing applicants with false documents to demonstrate that the applicants had been members of the church for the required 2-year period. The embassy's antifraud unit discovered that in some cases the applicants had recently joined the church, and in other cases, they had no membership affiliation at all. INS and State reviewers stated that they are not confident that the agencies' screening process is identifying all unqualified applicants and sponsoring organizations. They attributed the problem to the lack of sufficient information to determine the eligibility of visa applicants and their sponsors. INS, with State's support, is considering a number of steps to address this problem. INS requires the petitioner to provide evidence that (1) the organization qualifies as a nonprofit organization, (2) the alien meets the qualifications for an immigrant religious worker visa, and (3) the alien will be paid or otherwise remunerated by the religious organization. INS and State reviewers have asserted that sometimes the required supporting evidence, although minimally acceptable, consists of little more than a letter from the sponsoring organization and does not adequately establish an applicant's eligibility as a religious worker or the sponsoring organization's ability to pay the worker. The reviewer can deny the application or petition pending the receipt of additional information, but such actions take more time. The INS reviewers stated that more specific information about the applicant's training and qualifications and the exact nature of the position to be filled, including the number of petitions previously filed, should be provided up front, similar to other employment-based visa categories. In addition, unlike most other employment-based visas, the applicant can file a petition on his or her own behalf and, although supporting documentation from the sponsoring organization is still required, all of it can be submitted by the applicant. For most other employment-based visa categories, the petition and supporting documentation must be submitted by the potential employer. The reviewers believe INS should require information from independently verifiable sources. The reviewers also stated that the documents should be current.