Allegations of Visa Fraud at Universities
Ishani Duttagupta writes for the Economic Times:
It’s that time of the year when hundreds of students from India pack their bags to go and join colleges and universities in the US. And though, like previous years, there has been an increase in the number of Indians going to campuses in the US, two incidents of raids by US immigration authorities on colleges for fraudulent practices, which involved a large number of Indian students, in the past few months are causing concern.
Early this year, in January, US immigration authorities raided Tri-Valley University in California, alleging that the school’s founder and president, Susan Xiao-Ping Su, was issuing US student visas to foreign nationals willing to pay for them. Over 95% of Tri-Valley’s 1,500 students were from India, and the institution listed out the same address for over half of them. Later, in July, the University of Northern Virginia too was raided by the US law enforcement authorities on grounds of alleged visa fraud and here too, hundreds of the students were from India.
These two cases appear to be just the tip of the iceberg, and most immigration lawyers and experts in the US now feel that more and more such dubious colleges and universities will come under the scanner of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). And it is well-known that a large number of students in such institutions are from India, particularly from Andhra Pradesh.
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