At first it was thought to be a mass kidnapping. A well organized and calculated swoop on a group of 32 Chinese students at Los Angeles Airport. The students, sons and daughters of Shanghai's elite, were about to return home after a month-long English study program in the United States.

With the help of a Chinese American woman acting as an interpreter, the program's organizers had just handed the 14 boys and 18 girls their plane tickets and said goodbye.

Suddenly several vans, driven by Asian men, pulled up, loaded the students and their luggage and sped off ­ leaving the program's organizers in a state of shock. They called the police.

The students were found 48 hours later ­ now the guests of other host families and were waiting to start another English program. At the time the students were found, the incident was simply described as confusion between competing schools. But investigations by the U.S State Department and Immigration and Naturalization Service, including interviews with the students' parents, revealed immigration loop-holes which can potentially turn short-term student visas into U.S passports. The U.S Government has described the incident as "an alien-smuggling conspiracy" and at the center of it, believe parents and officials, is the Chinese American woman.

It is believed the woman could have profited up to $10,000 for each of the 32 students she "smuggled" to other English language programs in the U.S.

"This is not a case of sending young people to study for a few years in the United States. It was a fee-for-service, alien-smuggling conspiracy," said one U.S official in Beijing. The State Department issues about 13,000 visas a year to Chinese students ­ statistics indicate as much as 90 per cent of those applicants do not return home. This case has pushed out into the open the issue of keeping track of all foreign students in the U.S.

Only Congress has the power to plug the immigration loophole, but consular officials have already said they will almost certainly re-evaluate how to interpret it.

Added to the dilemma, the Shanghai group showed every indication of returning to China at the completion of the initial English program. After all, they are the sons and daughters of high-ranking Chinese officials.

"These are exactly the kind of people we want to give visas to," said one visa officer.

The Chinese American woman told parents she would find their children another language program, for a fee, enabling them to remain in the U.S as students for as long as they wanted.

The parents said it was a pay-as-you-stay arrangement--a further payment, to be decided later, would be made after six months. The parents paid the woman's fee in cash but while they firmly placed the blame on her, a letter from the consul general in Shanghai warned parents that they could each be held accountable for misrepresentation on their child's visa applications.

"We wanted to improve the chances for our child, to give her a competitive edge," one mother said.

Later, parents were warned that if their children did not appear in person at the consulate in Shanghai, by a prescribed date, the parents would be considered accomplices to immigrant smuggling and their names placed on an international list of people who could not enter the United States. It is a list predominantly made up of terrorists, drug dealers and immigrant smugglers.

The INS also ruled that if the students remained in the U.S, they would be here illegally.

This case highlights the need for tighter visa controls and a tracking program of all foreign students and scholars studying in the United States.

It also puts the spotlight on a mooted INS student and scholar tracking pilot program called the Coordinated Interagency Partnership Regulating International Students (CIPRIS).

This is a new technology-based approach to monitoring foreign students and scholars within the U.S. At this stage, 22 schools ­ most of them NAFSA members ­ are involved in the CIPRIS pilot program. NAFSA issued a mission statement regarding the INS's proposed CIPRIS in December 1997, which stated: "NAFSA is ready, willing and able to cooperate with government agencies charged with collecting data regarding foreign students and scholars. In efforts to co-operate with the government in this matter, NAFSA seeks to ensure that the monitoring of such individuals takes place in the least intrusive and disruptive manner possible".

NAFSA has established a website to act as a forum for discussion and an information source for CIPRIS.

A major point of discussion has been the question of a membership payment for CIPRIS - should it be a one-time only fee, annually or should registration be free of charge?

Each proposal brings its own set of problems, from legality to the enormous job of tracking membership fees. Another paper published by NAFSA, dated May 7, 1999, states: "NAFSA agrees with one of the Services stated premises for the implementation of CIPRIS ­ specifically that CIPRIS will help facilitate study and exchange for those bona fide students, scholars and institutions which make up the bulk of the F, M and J programs and will allow the Service to focus its attention on identifying the mala fide abusers of these programs. The fee collection will be the first official nationwide implementation of a component of CIPRIS. It offers an exceptional opportunity for the Service to commence the program with an exemplary regulation."

As a part of working with the INS, NAFSA has made several recommendations, which can be viewed at their website dedicated to CIPRIS--http://www.nafsa.org/cipris.

From those recommendations, if implemented, NAFSA believes CIPRIS will:

• Create a welcoming environment for students and scholars that recognizes their contributions to the U.S and helps U.S institutions compete in the global market.

• Recognize the DSOs and ROs as partners in a joint effort with the Service and USIA to operate quality programs that give students and scholars maximum opportunities within guidelines to protect the integrity of the F, M and J programs.

• Reduce the amount of "busy work" (reinstatements, EADs) at the Service Centers, thereby increasing their efficiency with no loss of revenue
• Maximize the quantity of fees collected and the efficiency with which they are collected. If the payment process can be reduced to filling out a web-based form and writing a check, and if the collection process can be reduced to scanning a form, cashing a check, and issuing a receipt then the cost of collection is minimal and the bulk of the revenues can be applied to statutorily designated purposes of supporting the development and implementation of CIPRIS.

  For now, people determined to exploit loopholes in US immigration legislation are able to slip through the net.

  Relocating 32 students was indeed a bold move but it could be seen as fortuitous for a program such as CIPRIS and its implementation. In the short-term current immigration regulations have caused nothing but heartache for the 32 students and their parents.

  "Our children's lives are being sacrificed to other people's mistakes," said one student's father. "Why are they being punished so severely?" A U.S official addded: "It is quite possible these students have burned the bridge for other students to come."

  The Chinese Government, it has been reported, only recently lifted a requirement for students to post a bond before traveling abroad. It is now considering reinstalling tighter controls and even proposing a ban on all high school studies overseas.

  One consular official in China said the saddest thing of all was: "For the kids, the tragedy is that if they had done it the right way, they could have gotten a visa again."

  Now, he said, there is little possibility they will ever be allowed to enter the United States again.

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  Jilly Jiu is a staffwriter for American Language Review