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Immigration and Naturalization Service Collection of Fees at Air Ports of Entry
Report No. 02-42
September 2002
Office of the Inspector General
The 1989 Department of Justice Appropriation Act, Public Law 100-459, established the Immigration Examinations Fee Account. This account contains revenues from the fees the INS collects for processing various types of applications and petitions for immigration benefits.
Audit reports issued by the General Accounting Office and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) as early as fiscal year 1991 found weaknesses in the INS's fee collections. In February 2000, the OIG issued INS Collection of Fees at Land Border Ports of Entry, Report Number 00-05, which identified serious control weaknesses in the collection of fees at land border POEs. In response, in July 2000 the INS issued new fee collection procedures applicable to all POEs (air, land, and sea).
During a visit to the INS's Debt Management Center2 in Williston, Vermont, we learned that many air POEs used manual (handwritten) receipts for fee collections rather than the cash registers we found at the land border POEs.
Our objectives for this audit were to determine whether the controls in place over the fee collection process were adequate at air POEs to ensure that:
During our audit, we requested that the INS provide a universe of airports and related fee collections. However, INS management provided a listing of only 14 airports collecting fees. Because much of the airport fee data was commingled with the district offices' fee collections, there was no way to extrapolate any data that would generate an accurate estimate or the total amount collected. Therefore, from listings of international airports maintained by the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Customs Service, and the INS, we identified at least 185 air POEs where the INS might collect fees.
From that list of 185 airports, we judgmentally selected the following eight major airports to review: John F. Kennedy International (JFK), New York, New York; Hartsfield International, Atlanta, Georgia; Miami International, Miami, Florida; O'Hare International, Chicago, Illinois; Detroit Metropolitan, Detroit, Michigan; Los Angeles International, Los Angeles, California; San Francisco International, San Francisco, California; and Pearson International, Toronto, Canada.3 Fieldwork was conducted during July and August 2001.
Air POEs collect fees, usually in the form of cash, primarily for processing Form I-193, Application for Waiver of Passport and/or Visa.4 The fee for one person is $170. Other applications that were processed at the air POEs in our sample were:
The eight air POEs we reviewed deposited approximately $2.5 million into the Examinations Fee Account during the period of October 1, 2000, through June 30, 2001, as shown in the table below.
Deposits by POE |
|
Airport | Deposits October 1, 2000 Through June 30, 2001 |
Atlanta | $96,250 |
Chicago | 88,084 |
Detroit | 44,335 |
JFK | 229,750 |
Los Angeles | 328,930 |
Miami | 731,962 |
San Francisco | 103,575 |
Toronto | 833,750 |
Total | $2,456,636 |
Source: Deposit data maintained by the POEs. |
Redacted Version