DNA Testing A Mixed Bag For Immigrants

Testing ultimately proved the relationship -- as it did for Zahedi's two other clients.

But the test cost about $800, and because there is no U.S. consulate in Iran, the family had to pay hundreds of dollars more in travel expenses to send Mehran Halatai back to Abu Dhabi for the test and a second consular interview. The back-and-forth also has added several months to Mehran Halatai's wait.

Priscilla Labovitz, a lawyer practicing in the District, said a similar situation has delayed a Cameroonian-born client's reunion with his two teenage children in Mali for nearly two years.

"There's no alarm bell that goes off when you look at their documents," she said. "Yet this man has had to put up with hassle after hassle to arrange the DNA tests."

Zahedi wonders why her clients had to submit to them in the first place.

"I think they are being picked on because of where they're from. . . . After all these years of practice, why am I only seeing this coming into use now? It makes no sense unless someone from above is saying that they need to have more scrutiny of people from these places."

Tony Edson, deputy assistant secretary for visa services at the State Department, said consular officials are warned about credibility problems with particular types of documents from particular places. But he said that there is no blanket DNA test requirement for applicants based on nationality and that it is against agency rules for consular officials to require DNA testing in individual cases.

"Our policy is explicitly that it is not required. It is always voluntary," Edson said.

Edson added that a DNA test is one of a variety of types of supporting evidence that consular officers will accept from applicants whose primary documents are deemed insufficient.

"The confusion may arise," Edson said, from the fact that "we do require applicants to prove they are who they say they are. If everything else they present doesn't prove that, then we may suggest genetic testing."

Some lawyers counter that growing awareness of the accuracy of DNA testing -- which has been available since the late 1980s -- has caused consular officials to become unduly mistrustful of other legitimate forms of evidence.

"It seems like in the past they were more accepting of the fact that a lot of Third World countries may not be as sophisticated in their production of documents as the United States," said David Goren, a lawyer based in Silver Spring. "Now, if there's so much as a typo or some whiteout, it's just assumed that it's a fraudulent document."