The owner of the Florida Language Institute and one employee pleaded guilty last week to charges of making false visa applications on behalf of students applying to study English at their school.
The school, in the suburbs of Miami, was raided in March following a 12-month surveillance operation by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As well as the arrest of the two defendants and seizures of $2.4m in assets, 81 students from 12 countries were also detained in the Miami area.
The defendants are alleged to have failed to report that the majority of the school's students did not attend classes regularly.
Cases involving suspected visa abuses linked to education and the threat posed by allegedly bogus students grab headlines in other countries. The US, Britain and Australia compete to attract students travelling abroad for study – numbers that, according to OECD estimates, exceeded 3 million in 2007. Institutions must be seen to be safeguarding both their national security and the reputation of their education sectors.
The first line of defence against bogus applications is the application process itself. In the US last year, more than a third of the 490,000 student visa applications made were turned down. The UK rejected a similar proportion of the 350,000 requests it received. Yet only Australia has published a detailed analysis of why students are being refused visas, and by doing so, it has shone a light on the scale and impact of student visa fraud.
The evidence from Australia is that fraud is limited and that the detection and prevention procedures currently used by the department of immigration and citizenship (Diac), which are similar to those used by the US and UK, are fit for purpose.
Countries targeted for scrutiny include India, Mauritius, Nepal, Brazil, Zimbabwe and Pakistan. China, where only government registered agents are allowed to dispatch students and which sent 18% of Australia's 2008 total, was held up by Diac as a model for other countries.
The UK is also keen to improve the quality of agents, who are responsible for placing one in five foreign students. A British Council-led initiative has brought together representatives from the main countries offering English language courses to work on co-ordinating policies.
However, a categorical assessment of the risk posed by student visa fraud will require greater transparency from immigration authorities. Otherwise it is not possible to erase these problems completely.
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