Illegal Aliens Using Phony Puerto Rican Birth Certificates to Obtain US Documents

Judicial Watch has reported  that non-Puerto Rican Latin Americans are using phony Puerto Rican birth certificates to obtain U.S. documents.

It’s unsurprising, considering that all those born on the island of Puerto Rico are automatically U.S. citizens.  So why wouldn’t that be abused in this day and age of slipshod immigration and nationality policies?

Add to that the fact that Puerto Rico’s Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla announced in 2013 an expansion of rights for illegal aliens residing on the island.

It’s yet more evidence that Puerto Rico needs to be independent. Then it can manage its own foreign policy.

Back to Judicial Watch:

As if the country’s monstrous immigration crisis weren’t dire enough, an increasing number of illegal aliens are using fake Puerto Rican birth certificates to obtain authentic U.S. passports and driver’s licenses….

… There has been a rise in the number of cases involving the use of false Puerto Rican birth certificates by illegal immigrants, according to a south Florida newspaper report that focuses on the specifics of a recent case. It involves an illegal alien from Colombia arrested in Florida after trying to get a U.S. passport by claiming to be an American citizen born in Puerto Rico. The 35-year-old man, Edinson Canaveral Sánchez, used a fake Puerto Rican birth certificate to get a valid Florida driver’s license more than three years ago.  The newspaper article points out that this case is the latest in a series involving the use of fake Puerto Rican birth certificates by illegal immigrants in south Florida. In the last year alone more than 12 cases have surfaced in Miami federal court, the story reveals. The defendants, all Spanish-speaking illegal aliens, have all illegally obtained Puerto Rican birth certificates to get American passports or driver’s licenses. Sánchez has been criminally charged and is scheduled to be tried this month in a Broward County federal court.

It turns out that fraud involving Puerto Rican birth certificates has been pervasive for many years, yet the U.S. government and its various agencies accept the documents blindly. The problem got so out of control that back in 2010 Puerto Rico’s government invalidated every birth certificate and issued new ones considered to be safer. One mainstream news report called it a “radical solution to what many say has been a serious and growing crisis involving Puerto Rican birth certificates, which are used to apply for everything from U.S. passports to Medicaid.”

The same report, published in April, 2010, revealed that the U.S. State Department was well aware of the problem. In fact, the agency estimated back then that a mind-boggling 40% of all U.S. passport fraud cases involved Puerto Rican birth certificates. Four years later, a separate news report confirmed that little had changed, that the fraud is still rampant….

Illegal Aliens Use Fake Puerto Rican Birth Certificates to Get U.S. Passports, Licenses, Judicial Watch, January 4, 2016