United States, 5th December: US administration has initiated a crackdown on immigration scams in the nation aimed at undocumented immigrants.
Giving details about the move, federal officials said immigration scams are becoming quite sophisticated with fraudsters making online advertisements having close similarities with US government agencies.
US government raises awareness about immigration scams—Federal officials are spreading awareness among legal as well as undocumented immigrants with regard to increasing incidents of immigration scams in the US.
The campaign, a collaborative effort between DHS(Department of Homeland Security) and FTC(Federal Trade Commission), focuses on education and collaboration between immigration advocates and immigration lawyers.
Hence, the motive of this interagency initiative is to tell undocumented immigrants and legal US immigrants not to trust unlicensed service providers mimicking US official government websites.
Such immigration scams cheat innocent immigrants by promising to offer legal or other related services. However, once they manage to get money from innocent immigrants, they fail to provide them with promised services.
Thousands falling victim to immigrant service scams—A large number of immigrants including men and women in the US are falling prey to the network of immigrant service scams. And the worst thing is that many immigrants becoming victims of such immigrant service scams are facing deportation for no fault of theirs.
Take the case of Sagario Mendoza, a 48-year-old mom of three kids, who came to the US around five years back. To get help, she sought the services of a man promising to help her for becoming a legal US immigrant. She paid $1,000 but to her dismay and disbelief, what she got was the risk of getting deported from the US.
She is not alone. 35-year-old Facundo Purez is another immigrant who fell prey to the immigrant services scam. He emigrated to the US in 2005 from Mexico and paid around $3,000 for getting legal US immigration status but got nothing in return.
He still is without any legal documents.
Report immigration scams-immigrants told—To provide increased communication and information, a large database with nearly 6 million consumer scam complaints to agencies and organization have been opened by the Federal Trade Commission.
And the immigrants have also been asked to come forward and report about immigration scams. Majority of such scams go unreported for the fear of arrest and imminent deportation for the concerned immigrant.