November 24, 2016

Audit: US Immigration Agency Lost Track Of Thousands Of Green Cards

Trying to recover wrongly delivered green cards cost $1.5M last year.

Green Card sample A sample of a U.S. permanent resident card.
Courtesy of ucis.gov

By Michel Marizco

Federal investigators have found the country’s immigration agency sent out tens of thousands of green cards created with errors. Now it doesn’t have the resources to track them all down.

Auditors found that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services created 19,000 green cards with incorrect information. Another 2,400 recipients were supposed to receive green cards for two-year periods but instead received them with 10-year expiration dates.

"We know that CIS sends out notices to try and get the cards back, and sometimes they’re successful and a lot of times they are not," said Sondra McCauley of the Inspector General's Office.

Trying to recover those wrongly delivered green cards cost the agency $1.5 million last year alone.

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