The school was a sham from beginning to end – and it was created by federal authorities, who used it to arrest 21 people on charges they conspired to help more than 1,000 foreigners fraudulently keep or obtain student or work visas over the past 2½ years.
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The defendants allegedly operated companies that purported to recruit worldwide students for a USA school.
Tightening up the student visa program was one of the major recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission, after it was determined that the hijacker who flew Flight 77 into the Pentagon, Hani Hanjour, had entered the USA on a student visa but never showed up for school.
The fictional for-profit school, called the University of Northern New Jersey, had no instructors and taught no courses.
Sarah Saldana, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the alleged scheme not only compromised the integrity of the visa program, it also threatened national security.
The middlemen under arrest paid the undercover agents running the school thousands of dollars to produce paperwork that made it look as if the foreigners were enrolled at UNNJ, federal prosecutors said.
The suspects “recklessly exploited our immigration system for financial gain ” , said chief New Jersey prosecutor Paul Fishman”. They were scheduled to make initial court appearances in Newark later Tuesday.
The 1,000 foreign “students” have not been arrested, but their visas will be terminated and they will likely have to leave the country, officials said. “As a result of this operation, (Homeland Security) special agents have successfully identified and closed a gap in the student visa system and have arrested 21 individuals alleged to be amongst the system’s most egregious violators”.
They staffed offices in Cranford, New Jersey with undercover agents posing as administrators, but there were no teachers, no curriculum and no classes, prosecutors said.
Most of the foreign nationals who benefited from the scam come from India and China and were already in the USA on non-immigrant visas but looking for ways to stay. New York University has about 13,800 students now enrolled on student visas, more than any other college. “I’m seriously wondering that [the University of Northern New Jersey] will also fall in this limelight someday by some smart-ass trying to prove we are also in the same trend like Herguan”, defendant Avinash Shankar wrote to an undercover agent, according to the complaint against him.
Under proper settings, a college or university certifies that it has accepted a foreign national as a student, who then can obtain a student visa.
The 21 defendants, who are mostly in the US legally, have been charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud and conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit.
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They also allegedly also used UNNJ to fraudulently obtain work authorization and work visas for hundreds of their clients. The second charge carries a maximum prison term of 10 years.
