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Liying Lin, 30, a Queens church deacon, faces 25 years in prison after she was found guilty of conspiracy and immigration fraud for coaching Chinese immigrants on how to lie to authorities as they sought asylum in the United States.
She broke the law by teaching God’s law.
A Queens church deacon is facing up to 25 years in prison after being found guilty of conspiracy and immigration fraud for helping Chinese immigrants lie to authorities as they sought asylum in the United States based on bogus claims of religious persecution.
Prosecutors said she was part of a lucrative criminal machine that cranked out hundreds of phony asylum applications.
Liying (The Deacon) Lin taught lessons on the tenets of Christianity in her Flushing, Queens, church to the immigrants, who were referred to her by crooked law firms.
In exchange for the lessons, Lin, 30, asked for donations to her place of worship, the Full Gospel Church, her lawyer said.
Her students were asylum applicants attempting to game the U.S. system by pretending to be Christians unable to practice their religion freely in China, prosecutors said.
Lin also was paid to accompany asylum applicants to interviews with immigration authorities, acting as a translator. She told certain clients before their interviews that she would kick them to let warn them off any wrong answer, prosecutors said.
“Liying Lin fraudulently exploited a program designed to provide a safe haven for actual victims of persecution,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.
“She coached asylum seekers on how to lie … even signaling applicants when they deviated from her fraudulent script.”
The Queens woman was convicted Tuesday of one count of immigration fraud conspiracy and two counts of immigration fraud.
She was acquitted of one count of immigration fraud.
Lin, one of more than two dozen people prosecuted in the last two years on criminal charges tied to Chinese immigration in New York, claimed her motivations were pure.
“She was an employee with the title of deacon at her church and many of her congregants were people in the Chinese community who were seeking political asylum coupled with the claim that they were Christian,” her lawyer, Kenneth Paul, said Wednesday.
“She provided them with basic background information regarding Christianity. … Her only intent was to have these congregants learn about Christianity.”
The verdict hasn’t shaken Lin’s faith, her lawyer said.
“She’s very disappointed. But she’s very religious, so I know she feels this was ordained by God and she’s prepared to deal with it,” Paul said.
She is set to be sentenced on June 2.
More Chinese immigrants apply for asylum than any other immigrant group and New York is a magnet for Chinese immigration.
Prior to a series of raids on immigration law firms in late 2012, authorities complained that an uptick in bogus applications was causing a substantial case backlog.
Most lying Chinese applicants claimed they were victims of forced abortions, persecution for their belief in Christianity or persecution for their participation in the spiritual discipline Falun Gong, which is banned in China, prosecutors said.
The situation has put authorities in a bind as they try to separate the cheaters from the genuine believers.
Last month, a New York judge was slapped down by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals for denying asylum to a Chinese man after he failed a Bible quiz.
The man was set to be booted from the U.S. in part because he couldn’t tell the judge what year Paul converted to Christianity.
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