The Large Number of Criminal Victim Visas

U-visas are a special class of temporary immigration visas for victims of serious crimes—anything from murder, torture, rape, to perjury and domestic violence—through the I-918 form from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

In exchange for helping law enforcement with the prosecution of the perpetrator, the victim receives a temporary visa, work authorization, sometimes visas for family members, as well as a pathway to permanent resident status.

But what might seem like a niche category for those immigrants that are unlucky enough to be victims of serious crimes amounts to tens of thousands of permits per year. In 2022, there were 17,426 applications approved with 315,539 pending.

Every year, on average, an additional 22,656 new cases are added to the pending backlog, and the department regularly hands out more visas than the 10,000 annual cap.

Based on a 2020 USCIS report, the most common crimes are domestic violence and felonious assault, regularly representing over 40 percent each in any single year since 2012. Between 2012 and 2018, 59 percent of cases resulted in an arrest and 27 percent led to a conviction or plea bargain.

Forging Docs and Faking Crime

A recent incident in Houston, Texas highlighted the program’s potential for abuse. A would-be bank robbery was foiled by a bystander with a gun. But the attempted bank robbery was actually fake, only intended as set-up to help one of the perpetrators apply for a U-visa after testifying against the other. The bystander just happen to break-up a staged robbery, killing the fake robber in the process.

A 2022 report by the USCIS Office of Inspector General (OIG) detailed how the system was ripe for abuse as petitions were being approved with “forged, unauthorized, altered or suspicious law enforcement certifications,” and there was little effort to tell if the program was working as intended. Petitions were regularly granted without evidence that the case was ongoing. A survey of law enforcement officials showed 70 percent considered the whole program “unhelpful.”