Nearly 400 Indian students face jail terms in US over visa fraud
WASHINGTON: US authorities have arrested 10 people from India and 11from China for alleged visa fraud involving college admission, which is likely to lead to the deportation of hundreds of Indian students.
The accused used a phony university in New Jersey to grant certification needed for legitimate student and work visas, but were not aware it was run by federal agents investigating them.
Authorities said the defendants helped more than 1,000 foreign students stay in the US legally
THE INDIAN EMBASSY HAS REQUESTED THE US GOVERNMENT TO NOT ARREST OR DEPORT THE STUDENTS, AND TO GIVE THEM ANOTHER CHANCE
with papers provided from this fake institution, the University of Northern New Jersey (UNNJ).
The accused are charged with visa fraud and making false statements, each carrying a prison sentence of five years, and H-1B visa fraud and harbouring aliens, each carrying 10 years.
Authorities are cancelling non-immigrant student visas of foreign nationals who benefitted from the racket. If applicable, they will be arrested and deportation proceedings started against them.
The Indian embassy is in touch with the US government about Indians among these students — around 370 or 380 according to official sources — and is seeking fair treatment for them.
The embassy has requested the US government to not arrest or deport them, and to give them another chance to keep their student visa by transferring to another university.
“This has been done before in the case of Tri-Valley (a fake California university busted by authorities in 2011 for running a pay-to-stay student visa racket),” said an official in Delhi.
The embassy is also awaiting consular access to the arrested Indian nationals — going by their names, 10 of them seem to be Indian or of Indian descent.
Students from India were found enrolled in vast numbers in almost every fake university busted in the US in recent years, including Tri-Valley in 2011 and University of Northern Virginia in 2013.
Late in 2015, US authorities deported hundreds of Indian students headed for two California universities from the San Francisco airport, and in some cases from their stopovers.
Most of these universities operate as fronts for pay-to-stay operations, selling I-20s — or the Certificate of Eligibility for Non-immigrant (F-1) Student Status — for Academic and Language Students — needed for student F-1 visas.
This time, agents of Homeland Security Investigations (a wing of the department of homeland security, which oversees immigration) started a university as part of a sting operation. Set up in 2013, UNNJ had no instructors or educators, no curriculum, and conducted no classes or education activities, said a statement from the US attorney for New Jersey.
But it could issue I-20s. That brought them the defendants — recruiting companies, brokers and business entities — from New Jersey, California, Illinois, New York, and Virginia.
Everyone involved — recruiting agents and their clients, mostly from India and China — knew from the start UNNJ was a phony university. Only this one was being run by undercover federal agents.