DNA Testing A Mixed Bag For Immigrants

In Visa Cases, Certainty Has a Cost, Lawyers Say

DNA testing has emerged as a powerful and sometimes controversial tool for U.S. residents seeking to help overseas relatives enter the country legally.

The tests have been invaluable for thousands of citizens or permanent residents who want to sponsor relatives but lack birth certificates or other documents to prove the family relationship. But some immigration lawyers worry that U.S. authorities are increasingly requiring DNA tests even when the paperwork is in order -- adding substantial costs and delays to an arduous process.

"What's troubling is that it seems like the availability of DNA testing is leading to a greater level of mistrust of identity documents that otherwise would have been readily accepted," said Alison Brown, a lawyer based in Silver Spring.

Last year, about 718,000 people were granted permanent residency or a temporary visa on the basis of being a parent, child or sibling of someone who was a U.S. citizen, permanent resident or temporary visa holder.

Officials at the State and Homeland Security departments said they do not track the number of DNA tests submitted by people seeking to sponsor a relative for a visa. But the AABB (formerly the American Association of Blood Banks), the accrediting organization for laboratories that do DNA testing for immigration applications, receives about 12 e-mails or phone calls a day from people seeking referrals for immigration purposes, a spokeswoman said. At Fairfax Identity Laboratories, one of two DNA laboratories in the Washington region accredited to handle immigration cases, the number of requests for tests has increased about 20 percent, to about 2,000, in the past year, said Joe Chimera, senior vice president.

Immigration lawyers interviewed in the Washington area said officials who process visa applications at U.S. consulates overseas appear to be driving the increase in DNA testing.

"In many consulates, DNA testing has really become the norm," said Daniel Park, whose Alexandria-based practice serves mostly clients from Latin America.

Parastoo Zahedi, a lawyer practicing in Tysons Corner, said she became concerned about that possibility seven months ago when an official at the U.S. consulate in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, told one of her clients that he had to submit a DNA test to prove he was related to his 65-year-old mother in Virginia, who was sponsoring him for permanent residency.

Zahedi said she was surprised because the client, a 42-year-old Iranian, had all the documentation normally required to prove his relationship to his mother, including a valid Iranian birth certificate. The Department of Homeland Security had already approved the client's petition -- the first step in any visa application. The interview at the consulate was the final step, in which he was supposed to demonstrate that there was no reason to bar his admission to the United States.

"At first, I thought it was something he said in his interview -- maybe some hesitation in one of his answers that raised suspicions," Zahedi said.

But in the ensuing months, she said, two more Iranian clients with solid documentation were told the same thing at the U.S. consulates in Abu Dhabi and Istanbul.

One of Zahedi's clients, Mehdie Halatai, 72, of Oakton, said his 17-year-old son, Mehran, got the word in Abu Dhabi. "My son said the official told him very simply, 'No DNA test, no visa.' . . . There was no explanation," Halatai said.