Since the 9/11 attacks, I’ve reported and blogged extensively about the national security risks posed by the religious worker visa program (“R visa”).

One of the points I’ve tried to stress in the homeland security/immigration debate is that it’s not just back-door illegal immigration that remains a big problem. Front-door exploitation and lax enforcement of visa requirements greased the skids for the 9/11 hijackers–and with DHS still facing understaffing, mismanagement, and massive backlogs, those avenues are still open.

The R visa program has been abused by two major groups–radical clerics who should never have been allowed to set foot here in the first place and people who lie to consular officials and pose as “religious workers” in order to circumvent lengthy waits and scrutiny. There’s a new report out today on dozens of fakers from Pakistan who got caught:

Dozens of Pakistani immigrants who came to the United States posing as religious workers were arrested Wednesday, authorities said, as Homeland Security agents tried to close a commonly exploited avenue for illegal immigration.

Immigrants who were supposed to be teaching or conducting religious ceremonies were arrested across the East Coast, where authorities said many worked as gas station attendants, taxi drivers, landscapers and factory workers.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have been scrutinizing the religious worker visa program, which a 2005 review found was rife with problems. Homeland Security officials found fraud in one of every three religious visas they reviewed.

“What we see are religious institutions such as churches that may exist only on paper but are sponsoring people,” ICE spokesman Dean Boyd said. “Our concern is we don’t know who these people are. They’re obviously not who they say they are and they don’t have religious training.”

Those arrested include a textile factory worker in Atlanta, a truck driver in Philadelphia and a gas station attendant in New York, officials said. Most of the 33 people were from Pakistan.

Though most were not performing religious work, authorities said two Massachusetts imams were arrested for using fraudulent documents.

In the report released last year, officials found cases where workers could not be found and addresses could not be verified. In one incident, the address on the visa application was found to have been used by a terrorist suspect, though Boyd said there was no indication of a terrorist threat in Wednesday’s case.

He said the aliens paid large fees to get people or organizations to sponsor them for visas.

Arrests were made in Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

I’m glad they got caught. But why are they still getting in in the first place?

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Visas for radical Muslim clerics
The religious worker visa scam
The radical Muslim cleric importation plan