On September 9, 2008, Manoj Kargudri, a 36-year-old Indian national, was arraigned in U.S. District Court in San Antonio on charges of visa and immigration fraud. Considered a flight risk, he was held pending trial. Kargudri was not just another run-of-the-mill illegal immigration case. This one had patterns of terrorist travel in it, taking advantage of vulnerabilities in U.S. border systems for the purpose of entering and embedding in the United States. Read more »

I have been using E Verify for over 3 years. It takes away all of the guess work in determining if documents presented are valid or not. Being close to the border you would be surprised at the amount of fake IDs that look real until they are run through the program. For the first time in my 20+ years in HR I am comfortable in knowing that we are hiring only employees who are authorized to work in the United States.
Ginny Priborsky, online comment in response to "E-Verify: Is it about to die?," HR Morning, July 11, 2008

The E-Verify program is well on its way to fixing a 20-year-old problem of determining legal employment eligibility in a manner employers can support. (The quote above is an endorsement from an end-user.) Read more »

Last week I wrote about the top ten reasons why a heist of 3,000 blank UK e-passports matters. In that piece, I laid out the many reasons why this heist is a concern to the US, mostly stemming from how these e-passports – even assuming the blank chips that hold biographical and biometric data are not susceptible to counterfeit – still present multiple opportunities for undercover terrorist travel and identity theft. Read more »

The UK Guardian report today of an old-fashioned criminal heist of a van carrying 3,000 just-printed blank UK passports and "vignettes" (used for visa inserts) from Oldham, England (just outside of Manchester) southwest to London should give us pause here in the United States. UK law enforcement says these passports have a street value of about $5 million, or over $3,000 each. Read more »

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Ombudsman released his 2008 Annual Report. Today the Ombudsman, Michael Dougherty, was at the Heritage Foundation with former INS Commissioner Doris Meissner and Heritage's James Carafano discussing the report's findings. Read more »