A few days ago, it was published that the U.S. government arrested a group of eleven (11) persons, six of them Filipinos living in Los Angeles, who participated in a big Green Card scam.

           It started when one of them set up a phony “employment agency”, through which they identified people who actually needed Green Cards. Then they offered them – SURPRISE, SURPRISE – Green Cards, not employment. How? By marriage to American citizens. Not just any marriage, but a “failed” marriage.

           It seems that Step One of the scam worked. The government claims that they found at least four hundred (400!) victims for this scam.

           Step Two would be to provide a U.S. citizen spouse for the victim and file the petition and application on behalf of the couple. But the scammers had the bright idea of doing the marriage case without an American spouse – by claiming that the victim was “abused” by the American spouse and was self-petitioning under the VAWA (Violence Against Women Act), which is done without participation of the abusive American spouse. Great – is it not? If you lie about the marriage, you may also lie about the existence of the spouse.

           Immigration fraud never has much chance of success - especially not when it is done as a “business”, on such a grand scale. The scammers get caught and the victims get denied. But the real harm to the victims over and beyond to the loss of money is that they get exposed to the Immigration Service and will be treated, most probably, as guilty of fraud and of sham marriages, with all the negative consequences.

           Can the U.S. government operate a Scam? Yes, if they want to scam the scammers. The story is unusual.

           Some years ago, the Immigration Service decided on an operation to catch school brokers and recruiters who sought to abuse the foreign student system of the U. S. (SEVIS), by promising student visas (F-1) to non-citizens who were interested in staying in the U.S. as “students” without actually attending school. For this program (scam?) the government created a FAKE university under the name of University of Northern New Jersey (UNNJ) in a store front in a small town in New Jersey. ICE agents put up an enticing website and started to receive applications and providing documents necessary to apply for change of status (Form I-20). Of course, ICE agents who operated the fake university did not provide any classes, lectures, exams or education.

           This fake university operated for approximately two and a half (2 1/2) years, and enrolled a little more than 1,000 students. The brokers