“Congressional investigators have found that immigration fraud is now so extensive it ‘threatens the integrity of the legal immigration system,‘” The Washington Times reports.

In a little-noted study prepared for a House subcommittee on immigration released Feb. 15, the General Accounting Office found fraud to be ‘pervasive and significant.’

The GAO said immigration fraud ‘will increase as smugglers and other criminal enterprises use fraud as another means of bringing illegal aliens, including criminal aliens, into the country.’

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said Immigration and Naturalization Service officials say fraud is ‘rampant’ and that they ‘believe that some aliens are using the benefit application process to enable them to carry out … crimes of violence, narcotics trafficking and terrorism’ in this country.

So, one wonders, why has this study — which speaks to major failures within the INS apparatus — been so “little noted” by the mainstream press, while again and again we’re reminded that the GAO will use the justice system in some misguided, legally futile attempt to go after Dick Cheney’s White House energy task force notes? When are we going to get our priorities straight?

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