No early end to woes of TVU students in sight

Updated on: Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Three weeks after they lost their visa status to be in US, more than 1,000 Indian students from the Tri Valley University (TVU) are in for a "long haul" though the Indian Government has raised the issue at the highest level.

Many of the students from the California-based TVU, which has been shut down on charges of massive visa fraud, said they are stuck here without any concrete plan to get out of their dilemma.

Noting that the situation was very complex, Susmita Gongulee Thomas, the Consul General of the Indian Consulate in San Francisco said the students of the TVU, were in for a "long haul".

"It is not going to happen and closure will happen in 2 or 3 months. I feel, definitely it would be much longer than that may be 6 or 7 months or 8 months", she said.

But definitely there is a lot of hope and a lot of students whom we can possibly help to reinstate themselves and to get back to studies," Thomas said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity a student said, "We don't know what to do. We want to get our visa status back and remain in the country. We have spent too much of our parentsâ€™ money to go back".

Around 30 of these students met Foreign Minister S M Krishna today in New York to seek government assistance.

Krishna said that India was pushing the US on two fronts-the first to "safeguard the interest of the affected students" and second to "inquire into the dubious status of the university and bringing to book those responsible for perpetuating the scam".

"We have taken it up with authorities in the US at the highest level," he said.

According to a federal complaint filed in a California court in January, the University helped foreign nationals illegally acquire immigration status. The university is said to have 1,555 students. As many as 95 per cent of these students are Indian nationals, the complaint said.

Investigations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have found that while students were admitted to various residential and on-line courses of the university and on paper lived in California, but in reality they "illegally" worked in various parts of the country as far as Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas.

No early end to woes of TVU students in sight

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