Lang Wallace LLC Blog

Via The Economic Times in India

As radio-tagging of scores of Indian students duped by a "sham" US university continues to cause anger back home, the controversial institute has claimed that one of its Indian-origin staff was responsible for the immigration fraud and it was not directly involved in it.

Breaking its silence, the California-based Tri Valley University (TVU), which was shut down last month, termed as "baseless" the allegations of immigration fraud against the institute and claimed that it had not duped any student.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brought "this baseless allegation and put a red-tape in the school operation for a federal investigation, causing hundreds of students to withdraw from classes (and) many instructors requested to quit teaching for the current term.

"Also, it caused a profitable university operation to quickly sink into negative in financial debt," Susan Su , President and founder of the TVU, said in an e-mail to PTI.

"Starting in April, one of student assistants Anji Reddy, who worked in TVU administrative office, teamed with another student Ram Krista Karra , who also has a consultant company, conducting a large cheating scheme by asking students to make tuition payment into Ram Krista Karra's personal account in exchange for student I-20 and CPT approval. TVU has fired these two individuals," the e-mail said.

What is PIMS?

On November 17, 2007, DOS instructed consular posts that they must verify the details of approved NIV petitions through the Petition Information Management Service (PIMS) via the Consular Consolidated Database (CCD). Consular officers access the details of approved nonimmigrant visa petitions through the CCD in a PIMS report, which links an approved petition to a base petitioner record allowing superior tracking of NIV petitioner and petition information. The electronic PIMS record created by the KCC is the primary source of evidence used by consular officers to determine nonimmigrant visa (NIV) petition approval. In addition to the information submitted by the petitioner on the I-129, many of the PIMS reports also contain information from DOS’ Fraud Prevention Unit (FPU). The FPU performs research on petitioners, and as part of a pilot project, the FPU, on a random basis, verifies factual aspects related to the beneficiaries and their proposed U.S. employment. Click here for additional details about PIMS and practice pointers. Why is PIMS delaying your visa?

The following exchange between AILA and USCIS during a December 8, 2010 teleconference highlights the problem of USCIS adjudicators not taking sufficient time to clearly explain deficiencies in a petition for US immigration benefits.

It is not unusual to submit a petition to USCIS only to receive a lengthy Request for Evidence (RFE) or even a denial, neither of which includes a clear explanation as to what went wrong. However, as noted in the following exchange, USCIS adjudicators are trained and required to consider all evidence presented in support of a petition and clearly explain deficiencies in either a Notice of Intent to Deny (NOID) or a denial letter.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services confirmed on 01/27/2011 08:01 PM EST that it has received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap for fiscal year (FY) 2011. USCIS is notifying the public that yesterday, Jan. 26, 2011, is the final receipt date for new H-1B specialty occupation petitions requesting an employment start date in FY2011.