My sleepy town has never seen such excitement. Evidently , for the last so many years The “Tri Valley University ” in Pleasanton in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area has been operating as little more than a diploma mill. On January 19, ICE agents raided the home of the President of TVU Susan Xiao-Ping S. No ordinary home this. Nestled in the to-die for gated community of Ruby Hill, complete with its own designer golf course, this was a $ 1.8 million home with 5 bedrooms and four and half baths. Purchased evidently through ill gotten gains at $ 300 a credit for a course in the Tri Valley University. 95 % of the estimated 1500+ students at this University are/were Indian. Immigration got a little suspicious when when more than half of the students reported living in one apartment at 555 El Camino Real in Sunnyvale ( see : http://pleasanton.patch.com/articles/update-federal-complaint-calls-private-college-in-pleasanton-a-sham). Desi papers all over this news : ( See TOI : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/US-university-shutdown-India-seeks-report-on-students/articleshow/7372311.cms; The Hindu : http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/andhra-pradesh/article1129655.ece)
First a few facts from the ground as it were. Pleasanton is a quiet suburb with a population of around 68,000. If we had an actual University that house 1,555 students we would have known about it. The very fact that no-one around here has heard of this operation shows how shady the set up is.
The website of the University is such a hack job , riddled with typos and unbelievable claims that its next to impossible to comprehend that anyone could have been fooled into thinking that this was a genuine University.
From the various news reports, its obvious that the students ( a majority if not all) knew that this was a diploma mill. I quote from “The Hindu”:
Investigations by Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) found that while students were admitted to various residential and online courses of the university and on paper lived in California, in reality they “illegally” worked in various parts of the country as far as Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas. The ICE has called it as a “sham university”
The students ( all on F1 visas obtained via an I-20 from TVU) were attending 100% of their classes online. Major red flag there as anyone with an iota of common sense knows that on an F1 you are expected to attend a certain number of hours in -class.Many of them were not even physically in California but were working in other states through a rather liberal interpretation of what “CPT ” ( Certified Curricular Practical Training ) means.
The local newspaper ( pleasantonpatch.com) has a couple of articles on this whole mess. The comments section under those articles have exploded with mostly TVU students whining about being deported. They are calling on everyone from ICE to the US government to save them. Surprisingly , not a single student has approached the Government of India
Read more: US university shutdown: India seeks report on students – The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/US-university-shutdown-India-seeks-report-on-students/articleshow/7372311.cms#ixzz1CHSRIccZ
These are the facts.
Now for opinion and assumptions:
A majority of the students are from Andhra Pradesh. It is alleged that TVU had a “referral “system. Which means students referring other students to TVU got a “referral fee” or “cut of the proceeds”. My conclusion is that that’s how the net spread far and wide. One of the TVU students has been arrested by ICE.
The forums are overflowing with fulminations from all sides. The students are pleading for help. They now face deportation or worse. They are getting all kinds of advice – some genuine , most spurious. Others are cursing them out and asking them to take responsibility. Of course, this is all the ammunition that the anti -immigration lobby needs to start making slurs against all Indians.
Do I sound unsympathetic? That’s because I am. I have plenty of friends and relatives who all struggled to get here on F1 visas. They did it the right way . They scrimped and saved and took the GRE/GMAT and applied to Universities and got transcripts and recommendation letters and stood in line to meet unsympathetic Visa officers and sweated and waited till they got their F1s. Then they arrived here and struggled with unfamiliar surroundings and reduced circumstances but worked themselves legally through college and then sweated it out again waiting for H1 sponsors. Hell, there were those who lived through the recession and were forced to leave for the des sooner than they expected to because their Visas ran out. But they did it and did it the RIGHT WAY. No shortcuts!
I know this because I also got here the hard way – the legal way. I have had to sacrifice career growth and peace of mind , waiting for my immigration process to complete. I have had to live hundreds of miles apart from my son because I was on a work visa with a completely unyielding employer, to whom I was more or less indentured due to the immigration process and my conviction that everything needed to be done the right way. I know this. I know that however hard I work and scrimp and save – I cannot afford to go to college here. I know that however hard I work, I will NEVER own a home in Ruby Hill. So I have no sympathy for either Susan Su or the students – both thought they could get away with it.
Is this “closing the door behind me ” once I get into the room?
I don’t think so : its more of making sure that everyone trying to get in is standing in line and following the rules.
UPDATE: Looks like the students have met with the Indian Concusl. Rediff – which from the beginning has been giving this story a very sympathetic slant towards the students -in a report that refers to the students of TVU as “duped” says,
“According to the group that came to the Consulate, a large number of students had not violated any visa or immigration rules and were unaware of the fraudulent nature of the school. Their primary concern is to complete their education for which they feel that they should be allowed to seek admission in other schools,” said Ashok Kumar Sinha, Consul (Community Affairs), Indian Consulate San Francisco. (
link)
Sure. The students also have a petition up on the TANA ( Telegu Association of North America ) website that reads in part:
We respectfully plead with you not to penalise us or our families and bring shame to our entire family and the village/ towns we come from, by deporting (removing) us from the US and causing us loss of name, reputation, money, resulting in devastation to us and our families and crashing all of our dreams
Too bad that the students who did this knowingly did not think about the “shame” and ” loss of reputation” before they decided to take a risk with a diploma mill. The Consulate’s official position is that they will extend help to all students who did not deliberately break any immigration laws .
UPDATE 2: Couple of things to note in the last couple of days. The first: that the ICE employed radio tagging ( aka Electronic Monitor bracelets ) to some of the students being invesitagted for Visa fraud . And the Indian Government went ballistic : in diplomatic terms that meant that they described this action as “unacceptable”. Today’s TOI has an article (
link) where the US Government shoots back :
The
United States on Monday rejected New Delhi’s complaints about radio-tagging of some Indian students caught up in a visa and immigration scam and defended the practice saying it is “standard procedure for a variety of investigations, and does not necessarily imply guilt or suspicion of criminal activity.”
>
Secondly, I see that the tone of the reporting on the Great Tri Valley University scam has somewhat changed.Chidanand Rajghatta hada coulmn is yesterday’s TOI that sqaurely put the blame where it belongs: with the students who tried to short cut the entire immigration process (
link)
But eager beavers looking for a short cut to emigrating to the US through a questionable academic route ignored the red flags. After US authorities busted the scam, an estimated 1500 students, some of them gullible victims, some of them scheming immigrant hopefuls, face financial loss, loss of credits, loss of time, loss of face, and in some cases, even face deportation..
I feel vindicated!
UPDATE 3 : This story gets better and better ( or weirder depending on the way you look at it ) . TVU founder Dr.Sue now blames a couple of Indian staffers for the immigration fraud. she alleges that a couple of Indian students teamed up to defraud TVU, issue false visas through a consultancy and denies that she knew anything. Sure!( sarcasm)
Please notice the English used in the defence.
In the email and an attached document running into eight pages, Su claimed the TVU had not charged money from students for visa-related documents. And only 140 students out if its nearly 5,500 students had TVU I-20.
“Please see the attached TVU defend, and spread the truth, to put an end of this ’sham’ investigation!” she said.
Read more: ‘Sham’ US university blames Indian staffer for immigration fraud – The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Sham-US-university-blames-Indian-staffer-for-immigration-fraud/articleshow/7404485.cms#ixzz1CiiO7sia
And for those of you interested, here is a very intriguing discussion thread. I will let you decide for yourself:
http://www.trackitt.com/usa-discussion-forums/h1b/638882071/tri-valley-university-is-a-fraud