When It Comes to English Instruction for Migrants, Erin Go Bragh

By David North on May 19, 2014

Yet another nation reminds us how badly our Department of Homeland Security handles schools that teach English to foreign students. (Such schools produce a high proportion of visa abusers.)

This time the nation is Ireland.

As we reported earlier, DHS has used prosecutorial indiscretion to ignore Congress on the subject.

Congress said that by December 14, 2013, all English-language schools for nonimmigrant aliens had to be accredited by accreditation agencies recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Congress gave these institutions three full years to meet this common sense requirement.

Some schools evidentially did not make the grade, and the ever-sleepy DHS unit in charge, the Student Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) of ICE, decided that only if a language school had been rejected by an accreditation agency would it be denied a license to issue the I-20 forms that lead to F-1 visas. Such agencies are much more likely to not act on an accreditation request, rather than to formally reject one.

We have also reported on several occasions that both Great Britain and New Zealand have cracked down vigorously on fourth-rate educational institutions seeking to import foreign students, closing numerous questionable institutions in the process.

How does Ireland handle this challenge? Fortunately like its former colleagues in the former British Empire, and not like the United States.

According to RTE (the website of Ireland's NPR), the Irish government suspended the issuance of visas to students at four (presumably lesser) educational institutions in the last few weeks.

In one case, the institution involved, Millennium College, posted the following notice on its door:

[W]ith deepest regret that I would like to inform you that the Board of Millennium College Dublin decided to cease the trading due to the suspended by immigration services the company arising financial crisis.

The quality of that text reminds me of the below-par language that was used by Herguan University (a once-raided visa mill) in its announcement of a graduation ceremony last year, as we reported in an earlier blog. Herguan subsequently dropped the item in question from its website.

The difference, of course, is that Millennium College (in Ireland) has been closed by the Irish government, but thanks to the somnolent SEVP Herguan, in California, continues to pass out F-1 visas.

Erin go Bragh!