The Feds busted a few “schools” that enrolled students, mostly from Asia, giving them I-20 student visas, but didn’t require the students to attend classes. In essence, the students were paying tuition for a visa to visit and then live in the US:
Feds: 3 collected millions in fraudulent school scheme
The silliest part of the article is when the Feds accuse the schools of being a national security threat because terrorists could be using these student visas as cover. Puhleazee. First, the students were mostly from China and Korea, which are hardly terrorist hotbeds. Second, any student issued an I-20 student visa has already gone through a vetting process by the US government and its law enforcement apparatus. If there were any suspected terrorists among the “student” applicants, then they would have been flagged and denied well before entry. This accusation is just another federal government smokescreen to make this fraud into something it’s not really about, and play security theater (which they love).
So what is it really about? It’s about money and people from overcrowded countries wanting to come chase this thing called the American Dream. These people feel it’s a human right to live where they want to live. For most of human history, people picked up and went wherever they wanted to start new lives. It’s only in the past century that nation-states have established strict rules and regulations at the borders to keep people out. And it doesn’t work very well still. Why? Because people don’t want to live on top of each other in super crowded conditions. South Korea is an advanced country with modern amenities, but it’s also really packed with people. And that includes even the countryside (I’ve been there). Koreans come to the US not because they’re fleeing any terrible conditions in Korea, except the lack of breathing room (physically and socially). This is even doubly so for Chinese, who live in a packed country where most people live on the eastern seaboard. Even though China has made great economic strides, many Chinese want to come to the US for the space, and the opportunity to one day own a house that is not physically attached to anyone else. That’s the real American Dream in 2015: some breathing room, as economically China and South Korea are on parity with the US these days.
Some Chinese are so driven to realize this dream that pregnant mothers arrange to come to the US to give birth so the child gets US citizenship. Recently some entrepreneurs offered services that arranged for a fee to bring Chinese women to the US to give birth but they were busted by the Feds who claimed this was fraud. How is it fraud? As far as I can see, the women and the entrepreneurs played by the rules. They came to the US and gave birth, and by US law, the baby gets citizenship. That’s the rules of the game, and they played it fair and square. If the Feds don’t like it, then change the law so not all babies born in the US are citizens, instead tie citizenship to the birth of the mother as many countries do. The companies offering these services should not be shut down and arrested, the fault is not in their business plan, the fault is in the structure of citizenship law itself. Change the law and don’t punish the entrepreneurs.
mccarthyism.com 