LANGUAGE SCHOOL IN MIAMI, FLORIDA CAUGHT IN VISA FRAUD
By Frosty Wooldridge
April 1, 2010
NewsWithViews.com
For decades, colleges and universities across America, without inspection, gifted student visas to foreign nationals without any investigation into their backgrounds. Hundreds of thousands of students used those visas, and tens of thousands abused those visas by never leaving the country.
In a recent raid, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) on March 4, 2010, agents raided Florida Language Institute for illegally giving out student visas.
Former ICE agent Michael Cutler said, “The following paragraph that appears in the press release succinctly sums up the reason why it is of the utmost importance that our nation not only seek to secure its borders against the illegal entry of aliens into our nation who circumvent the inspections process but must also provide real integrity to the system by which aliens are admitted into the United States through the inspection process and/or acquire lawful status in our country.”
"This school was fraudulently facilitating the issuance of student visas, as well as allowing foreign nationals to fraudulently maintain their student status and remain in the United States," said Anthony V. Mangione, special agent in charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in Miami. "One of the lessons learned from the September 11 attacks is that the U.S. government must be vigilant and aggressive in conducting investigations into organizations and persons who seek to exploit and corrupt America's legal immigration system for personal gain."
“The problem that our nation has is that the vast majority of those who violate our nation's borders and immigration laws do so successfully because of an abject failure of our government to provide the resources to identify, investigate and prosecute those who engage in these various criminal offenses,” said Cutler. “ I certainly laud the efforts of my former colleagues at ICE who conducted the investigation referred to in the press release posted below, but I also wish that there were many more special agents "out there" in the hunt, conducting these critically important investigations involving various forms of immigration fraud.
“The arrest of law violators, as you probably know, serves two basic purposes-- to punish those who violate the law and to deter others who might be contemplating the commission of similar law violations. When many individuals are able to violate the laws with relative impunity and where the potential for the acquisition of significant ill-gotten rewards is great, there will be no shortage of those who will take their chances and, in so doing, facilitate the unlawful entry of aliens into our country and also to enable them to embed themselves in our country by providing them with a pathway to lawful status through fraud.
“The most effective means of dealing with this would be to hire many more special agents for ICE and have these special agents engage in these critically important investigations to give serious pause to anyone who would even contemplate committing immigration-related crimes.
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“As Special-Agent-In-Charge Mangione noted, is that the attacks of September 11 clearly taught us the lesson that the legal immigration system is a vital component of national security. I would also add that the terrorist attacks of 1993- January 1993 at the CIA and the attack the following month at the World Trade Center also made this point abundantly clear. In fact, it is my contention that had our government learned the vital lessons about how immigration fraud can have serious national security implications, after the attacks of 1993, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 might have been averted.
“The continuing lack of resources devoted to the investigation of the wide spectrum of immigration law violations within our country including within the legal immigration system with the additional worrisome statements about the administration's apparent imminent plans to operate in concert with various members of Congress to enact "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" causes me to not sleep at night!
“I have to come to the conclusion that our nation's leaders are unwilling or unable to learn from our nation's previous mistakes.
“According to the ICE press release, the indictment alleges that the language school that was investigated amassed the tidy sum of $2.4 million for conspiring with the "students" to enable them to circumvent the immigration laws.
“What is also disturbing is that among the "students" who were indicted for entering into a criminal conspiracy with the school were those from countries that have been identified as being of "Special Interest," that is to say, countries that have been identified as being involved with terrorism.
“The press release claims that of the 81 aliens arrested, all but one remain in custody and are being process for removal (deportation). I certainly hope that when the wheels of justice in this case finish rotating that every last one of these aliens is indeed removed from the United States. However, I am at a loss to understand why no mention was made of any criminal charges being brought against any of these students (thus far). The point is that the owner of the school, Lydia Menocal and her employee, Ofelia Macia were identified as having been indicted for committing several felonies including conspiracy.
My point is that in order to be engaged in a conspiracy, they needed to interact with other co-conspirators. Certainly Menocal and Macia could have been conspiring with each other, but it would appear logical that the aliens who are now in custody may have also engaged in a tacit understanding with the two defendants and, if that is the case, they too participated in that criminal conspiracy. If this is indeed the case, and it can be proven, then all who participated in the conspiracy should also face criminal charges.
“This, of course, will be up to the prosecutors and the case agents to determine.
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“If our country is to survive and if our children and their children are to get their share of the "American Dream" the citizens of this nation must take their citizenship seriously!”
Michael Cutler may be contacted at www.michaelcutler.com. He has appeared on FOX NEWS, CNN and other top television and hundreds of radio shows.
Listen to Frosty Wooldridge on Wednesdays as he interviews top national leaders on his radio show "Connecting the Dots" at www.themicroeffect.com at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning in to your time zone.
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