Corruption in Immigration Departments

Introduction

The topic of this paper is a corruption in immigration departments. This is a very important and hot topic of these days, since the immigration laws have been being changed and it is way harder to get into the country and live here for illegal immigrants. This fact opens a big space for corruption of immigration officers and opening new ways for immigrants to get into the country hidden behind the "supervision" of corrupted immigration officers. With the increasing costs of border protection and application of immigration laws, this is a big problem, since the effectiveness of the costly restrictions and new immigration law would be diminished and all the money spent to protect (especially the Mexican) border would be wasted.

This paper will address the basic logic behind this problem, as well as to address the specific corruption cases and studies available to the public. Even though this is not exactly a new issue occurring over last few months, since the corruption connected to immigration has always been here, it has been escalating, as mentioned above, due to the new laws and rules making the immigration (mostly from Mexico) to United States harder and complicated.

Another part of this paper will be a discussion over a behavior of immigration officers and their approach to this problem, as well as a discussion over an attitude - meaning if the immigration or police officers are mostly "grass eaters" "meat eaters". This is an important point to discuss, because the attitude of immigration officers towards bribery and the possible active seeking of the corruption in this case can have very serious consequences for both, immigration officers, as well as for the entire United States and its national defense and immigration policy.

Discussion and Basic Definitions

First of all, there are some definitions that need to be addressed first before the specific cases are discussed. The definition of corruption, according to Dictionary.com, is a "dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery or action of making someone or something morally depraved or the state of being so." There are several forms, scales, and types of corruption. The three major corruption scales are petty, grand, and systemic. The petty scale of corruption is a smaller scale corruption and often occurs especially in cases when a public officers or servants feel underpaid and they take small improper gifts, etc. in exchange for their favor. The next is "grand" corruption, which is a bit higher on the corruption size scale, since this type of corruption occurs "at the highest levels of government in a way that requires significant subversion of the political, legal and economic systems. Such corruption is commonly found in countries with authoritarian or dictatorial governments and in those without adequate policing of corruption by anti-corruption agencies" (CIS, 2009). The third type of corruption size-wise is a systemic corruption, which is "primarily due to the weaknesses of an organization or process" (Alcazar, Andrade, 2001). Factors encouraging the systemic corruption include "conflicting incentives, discretionary powers; monopolistic powers; lack of transparency; low pay; and a culture of impunity" (Alcazar, Andrade, 2001). If we talk more specifically about the systemic corruption, the main types of corruption used in this case are bribery, extortion, and embezzlement, where the corruption becomes the rule rather than the exception which is connected more to "meat eaters" than "grass eaters" (Znoj, Heinzpeter, 2009). This type of between two main sub-categories: centralized and decentralized systemic corruption. This diversification mainly depends on the level of the institution being involved in the corruption.

The forms of corruption connected to the corruption in immigration departments are bribery, abuse of discretion, and possibly even extortion and black mail. Bribery is the most common form of corruption in this case. By definition, bribery is "improper use of gifts and favors in exchange for personal gain. Bribery can sometimes perpetrate further corruption, as well as this type of corruption might make officials more susceptible to blackmail or extortion" (Funk, 2011). Bribery might have many different forms, but the most common type of bribery in this case includes money, jewelry, gold, cars, houses, etc. Another forms of corruption are extortion and blackmail which mainly focus on the use of threats (for example violence or kidnapping), commonly used and practiced by organized crime groups focusing on smuggling people across the (mainly Mexican) border to United States. Another form of corruption would be in this case abuse of discretion. Abuse of discretion is basically a misuse of an immigration officer's powers and decision-making facilities, usually in connection with some form of benefit or bribery.

Illegal Immigration and Corruption

According to Mortensen, "corruption is involved in virtually everything illegal aliens do." The reason is that those illegal immigrants usually come from countries where corruption is fairly rampant. With that being said, the illegal immigrants usually enter the United States illegally or "lie to consular and immigration officials in order to obtain visas and legal entry" (Mortensen, 2009). The corruption doesn't simply end with illegal immigrants, but according to Mortensen, the corruption "extends to the Social Security Administration and Internal Revenue Service". The recent growth of the corruption between immigrants (or organized crime) and immigration officers started rapidly rising after the President of United States Barrack Obama offered the "immigration plan". According to the study conducted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the corruption volume has been rising rapidly all over its ranks, and started causing more and more problems in the whole process of protection of the national border, especially between United States and Mexico.

The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration is the biggest federal law enforcement organization with over 60 thousand employees, and so corruption within this organization is a big issue (Becker, 2013). This agency has a big problems with their disciplinary system, and since, in other law enforcement organizations (like police, etc.) applies "code of silence", which protects somehow the corrupted officers from being exposed (Becker, 2013). This agency is struggling with its size and structure due to the addition of thousands of new agents due to the new rules and law applied in last few years on the border between United States