The Foreign Service Journal, April 2010

A P R I L 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 15 Make DNA Testing a First Resort For various reasons, State and DHS have always stressed that DNA comes into play only once all other credible evidentiary avenues are exhausted. This approach makes sense in low- fraud environments and when DNA testing is very expensive or technically difficult. But it makes no sense in high- fraud countries. Nor does it take into account the downward trend in prices for such services. DNA ancestry testing, for example, can now be done for less than $70, compared with more than $500 just a few years ago. Prices for relationship- testing services, now less than $200, are also moving relentlessly downward. (Most of the roughly $600 charged to immigrant visa applicants for a rela- tionship test seems to be due to chain- of-custody and security costs, so it could be lowered substantially through a uniformU.S. government approach.) That amount is not an undue burden given that what’s at stake is American citizenship. To take full advantage of the relative certainty of DNA testing, we need to realign our system to deal with reality. No country has a monopoly on honesty; lying and fraud to obtain benefits stem from economic and cultural factors, not race, religion or geography. Where the stakes are high enough, even normally honest people may lie. And when there is the chance to escape a poor country with no opportunities, we are naive to expect total honesty from an applicant’s friends and family. Basing our immigrant petition and visa application system on the assump- tion that all people tell the truth and that documents can be assumed to be genuine — without building in verifi- cation such as DNA testing — cripples our efforts to adjudicate cases. The determination of some consular managers to clear IV processing back- logs by ignoring the prevalence of fraud essentially means directing officers to “just hold your nose and issue.” Effi- ciency, meaning speed of processing, becomes the all-consuming goal. This approach makes the manager look good and possibly leads to promo- tion and better jobs. However, it is legally, morally andmanagerially wrong, and it saps staff morale. Furthermore, word of lax adjudication standards spreads quickly through a host country, encouraging more fraudulent petitions and increasing the consular staff’s workload — the precise opposite of what was intended. How It Would Work A better solution would be to take the easy cases off officers’ backs by in- tegrating DNA testing into the process from the start. How might this work? When petitioning for blood relatives and paying the fees, a U.S. citizen would have two processing options: regular and expedited. Expedited pro- cessing (the voluntary nature of which could preclude any Fourth Amend- ment/compulsion issues) would require each petitioner to give a DNA sample (via cheek swab, for example) for inclu- sion in the case file. The applicant would pay a fee for this service, but in return would jump ahead of non-expe- dited cases. Alternatively, a fee could be charged for refusing DNA testing; this would cover the cost of more time-consuming verification methods. The chance to save months of processing time, both in Washington and overseas, would be a huge incentive to pay. DHS would place the petitioner’s sample in an envelope, seal it, scan a bar code to associate it with the elec- tronic case file, and send the sample to a contracted lab. (The number of ap- proved labs could be drastically re- duced; or better yet, contracts for bulk processing could be negotiated with just a few. Massive demand would rap- idly cause testing laboratories to im- prove methods, technology and speed, and bring down per-sample costs.) The lab would then electronically send the petitioner’s DNA signature results to Homeland Security to be automatically loaded to the petition. When the beneficiaries showed up for the interview at the foreign post, they, too, would submit cheek swabs, placing them in envelopes in front of the interviewing officer and handing them under the window. If necessary, a local medical professional could assist with the procedure, andDNA appoint- ments could be grouped together at the same time. The officer would seal the samples, associate them with the peti- tioner’s case using a bar code on the sample envelope, place this in an outer envelope, and send it back to the U.S. for testing at the same lab. There would be no local lab in- volved, and the officer could oversee S P E A K I N G O U T Sooner or later, DNA testing for visa cases will seem as normal as using paper relationship documents, only more secure and verifiable.