90 more students, mostly from India, held from fake US university
Washington: Federal law enforcement agencies have arrested 90 foreign students, mostly from India, enrolled in a fake university established by the US government to check immigration fraud, a media report has said.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has so far arrested more than 250 students, who were lured to enroll in the now-closed University of Farmington in the Detroit metropolitan area by the Department of Homeland Security.
The ICE had in March arrested 161 students from the fake university established by it. When it was closed in March, there were 600 students, mostly Indians, enrolled in it.
The latest news of arrest of additional 90 students in recent months, first reported on Tuesday by the 'Detroit Free Press', has resulted in outrage with #AbolishICE hashtag gaining ground on Twitter and other social media platforms on Wednesday.
According to an ICE spokesperson of the 250 students arrested so far, "nearly 80 percent were granted voluntary departure and departed the United States."
Of the remaining 20 percent, about half of them have received a final order of removal, the official was quoted as saying. Federal prosecutors claim that the students knew that this was a fake university as there were no classes. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leading Democratic presidential candidate, described the move as "cruel".
"This is cruel and appalling," she said in a tweet. "These students simply dreamed of getting the high-quality higher education America can offer. ICE deceived and entrapped them, just to deport them," Warren said.
ICE had filed criminal charge sheet against eight recruiters. Seven of them have pleaded guilty. These eight recruiters have been indicted for conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harbouring aliens for profit by the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Students enrolled in the university, a significant number of whom were from India, came to the US legally on a valid visa issued by the US embassy in India.
The US "trapped the vulnerable people who just wanted to maintain (legal immigration) status," Rahul Reddy, a Texas attorney who represented or advised some of the students told Detroit Free Journal. "They prayed upon them," he alleged.
The fake university charged around USD 2,500 per quarter for graduate programme and the average cost is USD 1,000, the daily reported.
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Cabinet nod for Census 2027; Rs 11,718 cr sanctioned, 30 lakh enumerators to be involved
New Delhi (PTI): The Union Cabinet on Friday approved Rs 11,718 crore for conducting the Census of India, 2027, which would include the caste enumeration for the first time.
Addressing a briefing, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the proposal to conduct the Census which will be the first digital exercise.
Around 30 lakh enumerators would be involved in the entire exercise.
The 16th edition of the Census since Independence will also provide an option of self enumeration to the citizens.
The decadal exercise which was scheduled to take place in 2021 got postponed due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic across the country.
The minister said the Census will be conducted in two phases -- house-listing and housing census from April to September, 2026; and population enumeration (PE) in February 2027.
For Ladakh and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the PE exercise shall be conducted in September, 2026, the minister said.
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"This will become the first-ever digital census," Vaishnaw told reporters.
Around 30 lakh enumerators will visit each and every household and canvass a separate questionnaire for houselisting and housing census and population enumeration. It will generate 1.02 crore human days of employment, the minister said.
Vaishnaw said the entire digital census system has been created as a very robust system and all personal data protection laws will be applicable. The census will collect the micro-level data of every individual and household and present a macro-level data, he added.
"Data of the micro-level will be collected from each household and a macro picture will be present. Individual data will be kept confidential while the macro-level data of the Census will be published," the minister said.
"All the Census functionaries will be paid a suitable honorarium for the work of the Census as they will be doing this work in addition to their regular duties," a government statement said.
The Census 2027 will also capture caste data electronically in the PE phase, Vaishnaw said.
In the first-ever digital Census, data will be collected using mobile applications that will be available for both Android and iOS versions.
Use of a mobile app for data collection and the central portal for monitoring purposes will ensure better quality data, Vaishnaw said.
Data dissemination will be much better and in a user-friendly way so that all queries on required parameters for policy-making will be available with a click of a button, he said.
"A dedicated portal, namely Census Management & Monitoring System (CMMS), has been developed for managing and monitoring the entire Census process on a real-time basis," a government statement said.
Census-as-a-Service (CaaS) will deliver data to ministries in a clean, machine-readable and actionable format, he said.
The largest administrative and statistical exercise in the world will be done using a mobile app for data collection and the central portal for monitoring purposes will ensure better quality data.
"The current endeavour would be to make available the coming Census data at the shortest possible time across the country. Efforts will also be made to disseminate Census results with more customised visualisation tools. Data sharing to all, up to the lowest administrative unit i.e. village/ ward level," the statement said.
Houselisting block (HLB) creator web map application will be another innovation for Census 2027 which will be used by the charge officers.
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The statement said around 18,600 technical manpower will be engaged for about 550 days at the local levels which would imply that around 1.02 crore man-days employment would be generated.
"Further, the provision of technical manpower at the charge/ district/ state-level will also result in capacity-building as the nature of the job will be related to digital data handling, monitoring and coordination. This will also help in the future employment prospects of these persons," it said.
The provision of technical manpower at various levels will also result in capacity-building as the nature of the job will be related to digital data handling, monitoring and coordination.
"This will also help in the future employment prospects of these persons," the statement said.
The mammoth exercise is the biggest source of primary data at the village, town and ward-level providing micro-level data on various parameters including housing condition, amenities and assets, demography, religion, SC and ST, language, literacy and education, economic activity, migration and fertility.
The last comprehensive caste-based count was done by the Britishers between 1881 and 1931. Caste was excluded from all Census operations conducted since Independence.
The decision to include caste enumeration in the upcoming Census was taken by the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 30.
In 2010, then prime minister Manmohan Singh had assured the Lok Sabha that the matter of caste census would be considered in the cabinet.
However, the previous Congress-led government opted for a survey instead of a caste census, known as the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC).
The population of the country according to the Census 2011 was 1,210.19 million of which 623.72 million (51.54 per cent) were males and 586.46 million (48.46 per cent) were females.
