Foreign Student Fraud Case Highlights Serious Problems
Dangerous weaknesses in oversight at DHS, the State Department, and the university
By Jon Feere on August 26, 2024
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Blatant, widespread fraud has become a central part of America’s foreign student program, and the government agencies responsible for putting an end to it have been asleep at the wheel for far too long. This despite the fact that the 9/11 Commission report 20 years ago highlighted “the need for attention to America’s porous borders and the weak enforcement of immigration laws”, including “imposing tighter controls on student visas”.
The latest example involves a foreign student who lied his way into the United States and also obtained a full-ride scholarship by lying to Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. None of the fraud was uncovered by the U.S. government, and it wasn’t until the Indian national admitted to committing extensive fraud on a lengthy post on the Reddit online forum, and was subsequently reported by a Reddit moderator to Lehigh University, that the fraud came to an end. He is now in ICE custody and faces deportation.
On a Reddit forum, a foreign student from India named Aryan Anand wrote a post titled, “I have built my life and career on lies”, and screen caps of the post are in the Appendix at the end of this report. As a freshman at Lehigh University, Anand explained that he hasn’t “seriously studied for even 2 hours” since being a high school sophomore in India, “barely passed” his junior year, is “not able to understand anything in physics, chemistry” and only able to understand math “a little”. Knowing that he didn’t have the necessary academic record to get into a quality American school, Anand planned “a very, very structured fraud plan” that would result in admission to a school that would provide full financial aid. If he hadn’t admitted to his fraud on Reddit, it’s likely Anand would still be living his life of lies in the United States.
https://cis.org/Report/Foreign-Student-Fraud-Case-Highlights-Serious-Problems?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=addtoany
