Indian students victim of immigration fraud

Radio collar tagging evokes uproar, NHRC gets India’s External Affairs ministry to take solid action
The students of Tri-Valley University (TVU) in California, 90 percent of them from India, faced the prospect of deportation after the varsity was found to be a sham and was shut down.

Nearly 1,500 Indian students affected by the sham were left in lurch unless they secured admission to another school to maintain their visa status. Out of them, 18 Indian students were radio-tagged to prevent their fleeing. This happened in mid-January and now by March end about one-third of them have finally managed to secure admission in other American schools, as per an update sent by US authorities to India.

It has been conveyed that 688 of the former TVU students have begun the process of transfer to other academic institutions guided by the US Homeland Department’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

Of the 1550-odd students enrolled at TVU, near 95 per cent were from India — mainly from Andhra Pradesh. The California- based university was closed down on January 19 this year for alleged immigration fraud and other irregularities, including misuse of visas, permits and money laundering. While TVU was authorized to admit a limited number of foreign students, it did not enjoy government accreditation.

However, during the investigations, it was found that the Indian students were in the US on valid visas, a fact reiterated by the Indian authorities. The Indian government, in the course of hectic diplomacy that followed, continuously pointed out to US authorities that most of the students were themselves victims of fraud and therefore should be given adequate time and opportunity to transfer to other universities, readjust their visa status or return to India.

The issue was also discussed in Parliament with Congress MP from Lakshdweep, Hamdullah Sayeed asking for a titfor- tat policy, recalling experiences of Indian students in Australia and now in the US.

Meanwhile, detailed profiling of the Indian students enrolled at TVU, shared by MEA with the HRD Ministry, shows that while some 115 students had come directly from India on F1 visas issued by consulates in Chennai and Hyderabad, the bulk of Indian students were on F2 and H4 visas and had taken transfer from other US universities, mainly because TVU not only charged low fee but also issued work permits immediately after joining. It also did not mandate compulsory class attendance. Another category of students consisted of H1B visa holders who had lost their jobs and then enrolled at the varsity.

As far as the issue of radio collars tagging is concerned, radio collars have been removed from 12 out of 18 students of the sham Tri Valley University in California, said the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) which had issued a notice to the Indian ministry of external affairs on the issue.

The MEA, in response to the NHRC notice, has informed that radio collars have been removed from 12 out of 18 students and the same are expected to be removed from the remaining students very soon, a statement said.

Taking suo motu cognizance of media reports alleging human rights violation of the students who were victims of visa fraud, the commission had issued a notice to MEA through its secretary Feb 7 calling for a report in the matter.

'The Indian government has strongly protested with the US government the clamping of radio collars on the ankles of Indian students of Tri Valley University,' it added.

A communication from Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said that India had strongly protested radio collars as unacceptable, demanding should be removed immediately. 'We have also conveyed that we expect the US government to take steps to prevent such universities from exploiting foreign students,' Rao said.

Meanwhile Foreign Affairs minister S M Krishna had urged Indian students to exercise caution and verify antecedents of foreign universities before applying for higher studies abroad.

"It is for the students themselves to make verification with their friends and on the web," Krishna said.

Noting that the government was also monitoring various educational institutions in the US, the minister said the expected the US administration to take steps to prevent such universities from exploiting foreign students.

Indian-American scientists develop alternative to radio tags

A team of Indian-American scientists has developed a smart tracking system, which could very well provide an honorable alternative to the radio tags that were recently tied to the ankles of some Indian students whose California-based university was shut down on charges of visa fraud. "We want technology to be natural and unobtrusive. We don't want you to carry around an RFID (radio frequency identification) tag and we don't want cameras everywhere. We want technology to be assistive and not become Big Brother," said Bharat Jayaraman, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Buffalo, who led

the team that developed the new system. The new smart tracking system can track people's whereabouts without the use of invasive technologies, such as constant filming or RFID tags. The team that developed the new system also included Vivek Menon, an assistant professor of information systems at Amrita University, apart from Venu Govindaraju, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the University of Buffalo's Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

The research will also be presented next week at the "Indo- US Workshop on Developing a Research Agenda in Pervasive Communications and Computing Collaboration (PC3)," cosponsored by the National Science Foundation, a university report said.

"When researchers ran computer simulations of the tracking system, they were able to identify and trace the whereabouts of individuals with a high degree of accuracy, even when employing images from low-quality cameras as the means of identification," it said.

"Our goal is to develop systems that could enhance quality of life at homes and hospitals, productivity at the workplace and security of critical spaces," Jayaraman was quoted as saying.

A peer-review paper, "Three R's of Cyber-Physical Spaces," describing the new tracking method, appears online in Computer, the flagship magazine of the IEEE Computer Society, and the print edition will carry the article in a future issue.