In my practice, I often get clients from so called "developing" nations sometimes referred to as "third world" countries where government corruption is high. Actually, it is a daily facet of life. For many clients, paying off a government official to speed up a case or get an approval is not only routine, it IS the rule of law. So sometimes, we engage in an awkward, uncomfortable conversation where they are assuming that I, as a private attorney, have some know-how or behind the scenes "connection" to guarantee a speedy or successful outcome in their immigration cases. Of course, that is not the case but even when I protest that not only I don't have any such connections, it is completely morally unethical and criminally illegal to engage in such practices, they often shrug their shoulders or smirk like they don't believe me.
News stories like this one about Constantine Kallas, a former government immigration attorney who DID take hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to obtain immigration status for foreigners, (including his housekeeper's daughter!!!) make my protestations seem even less credible. I would like to think that people like this are aberrations and that on the whole our government is not rampant with corruption. At least, there is some comfort knowing the federal prosecutors went against him with all their might and they did not just slap him on the wrist. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison. But it does not make the situation any better for all those individuals who obtained what they thought was lawful status through Mr. Kallas.
What I mean is that it could certainly be possible that the people who paid the bribes to this government attorney, who falsely claimed to them sometimes that he was an immigration judge, and basically let them know it was within his power to grant them relief in what was often a life and death situation, could very well have believed that this was just more of the same bureaucratic corruption that ran rampant in their own countries. That this was the way things were done here. So does that make them accomplices in a crime? Or victims of fraud themselves?
I actually had a client once who was told by a man posing as an immigration officer (with a uniform and badge and everything)at a seminar she was attending that he would speed up her work permit application if she paid him a "fee". My gullible client did, not believing she was doing anything wrong but actually thinking this was a legitimate filing fee, since she was filing her green card application by herself and without any assistance from an immigration attorney. When she came to our office and my then boss researched her case and told her due to the fraudulent activities of that fake officer, she had been placed under a deportation order unbeknownst to her, the poor woman actually FAINTED right then and there in our office, because she was in such shock. Fortunately, when we exposed all the facts to the Immigration Judge and the Department of Homeland Security attorney, they agreed with us that this was case where she should get a chance to undo the mistake and she actually eventually obtained her Green Card. This case was many many years ago when there was not such a frenzy of anti-immigrant sentiments in the popular media. How many victims of Mr. Kallas today will get the same understanding by authorities?
More information about this particular case can be found on the Los Angeles Times website here.
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