As three U.S. senators (and several of my blogs) have pointed out repeatedly, the Department of Homeland Security is not very assertive about closing down sham universities that operate as immigration visa mills.
There's another approach, as an article from New Zealand's leading daily, The New Zealand Herald, indicates: Let the rival, for-profit schools run stings on the visa mills, and take the evidence to court.
It's a little complicated, but here's the gist of the story:
Nitin Kumar, a nonimmigrant student, was enrolled in a for-profit cooking course at School A in Auckland, New Zealand's biggest city. He apparently was unhappy there, so he went to School B (also in Auckland) and said he wanted to enroll in that school, though he did not have the money to do so. Further, there was a need to show the immigration authorities that he did have the money for the course in the second school, and also for his living expenses.
No problem, said School B, which happened to have an NK of its own on staff (in this case Nuresh Kumar), and the two NKs visited a nearby bank and Nuresh put NZ$10,000 of School B's money into a bank account in Nitin's name along with NZ$200 from Nitin, after which they had a $10,200 bank statement that Nitin apparently showed the immigration authorities. After a while Nuresh withdrew the funds, using the NZ$200 as a down payment on Nitin's tuition.
The prosecutor told the court that School B told immigration officers that Nitin had paid NZ$17,700 in tuition when he had paid only NZ$1,000. (The NZ dollar is worth about 82 cents U.S.)
Nitin then withdrew from School B and returned to School A.
Nitin, enlisting a School A official to play the role of his cousin, then visited School B twice and secretly recorded conversations with a Mr. Han, who was Nuresh Kumar's boss.
Not content with the evidence that they had so far, School A then dispatched a Chinese student named Lan Luo to apply for a cookery course at School B. She told Han that she had only NZ$7,000 in her bank account. Then, according to the New Zealand Herald report:
He [Han] took her across the road [apparently to the same bank] and put NZ$3,000 into her bank account. Once the bank statement was produced for immigration purposes, most of the money was withdrawn and repaid to Han or used toward course fees.
That sentence would seem to imply that Lan Luo's NZ$7,000 went to School B, which is one of several loose ends in the matter, such as what motives led her and Nitin to do what they did. (Han said they were bribed.)
Sadly, from my point of view, a Kiwi judge tossed the whole matter out of court on the grounds that School A was engaged in entrapment. My layman's sense of all this is that School A acted pretty much the way the FBI does in many terrorist cases, and our courts do not seem to find that entrapment.
Meanwhile, and ignoring the NZ court decision for a moment, back in the United States, School X could well play such tricks on School Y, and turn over the evidence to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — sort of a vigilante enforcement system when the government's own system lacks vigor.
Or, perhaps some ambitious American journalist could conduct a simplified version of such a sting! I like that idea.
