The State Department recently announced it had revoked more than 175,000 visas since President Donald Trump took office. Thanks to “continuous vetting,” it’s been able to yank the visas from foreigners who abused our hospitality by committing fraud and crime.

That might sound like a lot, but in fiscal 2024 the U.S. issued 612,258 permanent immigrant visas and almost 11 million temporary visas to visitors and students.

The State Department and DHS are properly treating visas as a privilege, not a right. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, meanwhile, is targeting pervasive visa fraud, including in the H-1B visa category. They are working with Justice to “denaturalize” foreigners who had obtained U.S. citizenship deceptively.

It may shock most Americans to see what people will do to come here illegally. Not me. I was a Foreign Service officer for 23 years. Every consular officer who has served in a poor and corrupt country has seen routine levels of fraud that would blow American minds.

As the percentage of immigrants across the developed world reaches 20 percent and higher, we must get more skeptical. People in countries with widespread corruption don’t magically change when entering the West.

During my first diplomatic assignment — the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi in 2000-2001 — we had to fire both our local anti-fraud investigators. In 2024, one was arrested in Miami for “conspiring to sell export-controlled aviation components to buyers in Russia.”

Nigeria is legendary for corruption and its “419” confidence scams, named after a section in their penal code. In Ghana, where I ran the embassy’s consular fraud-prevention team from 2004-7, visa fraud was routine. We had to fire two local staff for corruption, and years later they fired others who had been bribed to fake DNA results.

One day, I got a call from a U.S. Army investigator who was looking into fraud claims. Two Ghanaians had emigrated to the U.S., joined the Army, then invented a dozen fictitious children who they put through a series of bogus illnesses to scam money from the TriCare military health insurance system. When one series of tragedies seemed too improbable, they killed the imaginary dependent child off in a fake car accident. The two men managed to scam nearly half a million dollars from U.S. taxpayers through their scheme before being caught.

It’s an unpleasant fact that some people lie to get visas and other benefits. They’d like to get free education and free health care. But Western countries’ health systems aren’t free. They’re supported by government subsidies or private payments. Native and foreign indigents who can’t pay have to be subsidized by taxpayers and insurance contributions.

Fraudulent migration through asylum scams and fake relationships is prevalent throughout Europe, the U.S., and other countries. Norway’s immigration service recently discovered that family-based fraud networks from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia have been bringing in members using false names and stories for over 25 years.

The next time you hear a call for open borders and free health care for all, consider the case of Ghanaian national Annabella Gyasi.

Gyasi arrived last May at Dulles airport outside Washington, D.C., on her way to Ohio for follow-up treatment for her child at Akron Children’s Hospital. She was pregnant with another child when she arrived. Gyasi and her son had valid visas, but CBP officers detained her for questioning. What had Gyasi said when she applied for her visa? Who was paying for her son’s health care? Was she coming to have her second child in Akron? Who would pay for that?

By checking State Department records of her visa application, CBP would have been able to match what Gyasi said at her visa interview with her current situation. Perhaps knowing what they’d find, she claimed a fear of returning home to Ghana, the first step to an asylum claim. Yet after a week in detention, Gyasi agreed to return to Ghana rather than finish her process.

Cases like this evoke our sympathy. But if we admit every indigent foreign national who wants to come here, our education, health, and welfare systems will crumble even faster than they already are.

We expect visa applicants to tell us the truth about their purpose of travel, personal information, and all other relevant facts. If they don’t, we must hold them accountable. That means revoking visas and deporting aliens who don’t follow our rules.

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Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center and author of "The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey)" from Academica Books.

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