{"id":21937,"date":"2019-09-19T13:29:39","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T17:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=21937"},"modified":"2019-09-19T13:29:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T17:29:41","slug":"student-visa-china-espionage-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/09\/19\/student-visa-china-espionage-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"China is Outsmarting the Visa System to Gain An Intelligence Edge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Monday, the Justice Department announced<\/a> the arrest of Zhongsan Liu on charges of conspiring to fraudulently obtain research scholar visas for Chinese government employees whose real intention was not to gain an education, but to conduct intellectual and national security espionage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the complaint, Liu tried to secure J-1\nresearch visas at several U.S. academic institutions for Chinese officials. In\nturn, those officials sought to recruit scientists, engineers, and other\nexperts to go to work in China as part of an effort to obtain American\nintellectual property. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liu, who ran a Chinese government front group called the China Association for International Exchange Personnel, also was connected to China\u2019s Thousand Talents Plan, a state-backed program launched in 2008 for the purposes of encouraging Chinese students and academics to pursue research knowledge in the STEM fields outside of China. Chinese nationals comprise about one-third<\/a> of the 1.2 million foreign students in the U.S. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRather than helping to bring students to the U.S., Liu\nallegedly conspired to defraud this country\u2019s visa system to advance his\nefforts to attract U.S. experts to China,\u201d said U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S.\nBerman.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday\u2019s indictment simply confirms the degree to which China is willing to illegitimately use the theft of technology and intellectual property to achieve its legitimate national security interests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last month, Feng Tao, a University of Kansas researcher, was indicted<\/a> on federal fraud charges for not disclosing that he also was a full-time professor at a university in China, while a former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist was charged<\/a> in May with lying to officials about his connections to the Thousand Talents Plan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July, FBI Director Christopher Wray specifically\npointed to the Thousand Talents Plan as a primary means that China is employing\nto gain access to critical economic and national security intelligence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is no country that poses a more severe counterintelligence threat to his country right now than China,\u201d Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019re doing it through Chinese intelligence services, through state-owned enterprises, through ostensibly private companies, through graduate students and researchers, through a variety of actors all working on behalf of China,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strategy is not a\nnew one, nor are China\u2019s activities unknown to intelligence specialists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking at a 2018\nAspen Institute conference, William Evanina, director of the National\nCounterintelligence and Security Center, argued that while most students \u201care\nhere legitimately and doing great research,\u201d the reality is that academia \u201cis a\ntool that is used by the Chinese government to facilitate nefarious activity\nhere in the US”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The State Department announced in June 2018 that\nlimits would be placed on Chinese (PRC) national students and others involved\nin certain high-technology fields, including increasing the number of cases\nsubject to interagency clearance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not surprisingly, members of the media<\/a> and academia<\/a> responded with the dramatic outrage which has become too common regarding the administration\u2019s immigration enforcement efforts. While those sheltered in their ivory towers or newsrooms see even the most limited restrictions on student visas as an overreach, others argue that the U.S. government and academia are falling well short of adequately combating espionage threats. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere theft of ideas, programs, plans, and technology is concerned, as with the trade imbalance, China (and almost certainly other nations as well to a greater or lesser degree) is cleaning our clocks,\u201d said Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) fellow Dan Cadman in an August report<\/a> on weaknesses in the student visa program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recognizing that there is a problem may be the easy\npart, as the solutions are likely to require some semblance of balance between\nwhat is gained by having foreign students in universities and colleges and what\nis lost by even just a few bad actors stealing American intellectual property. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the 1.2 million international students, thousands hail\nfrom nations which are openly hostile to the U.S., including some 13,000\nIranians, 10,000 Turks, 5,500 Russians, and more than 700 Syrians. It is hardly\nunreasonable to call for increased scrutiny and enhanced monitoring of all who\nare in the U.S. on student visas. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, the Justice Department announced the arrest of Zhongsan Liu on charges of conspiring to fraudulently obtain research scholar visas for Chinese government employees whose real intention was not to gain an education, but to conduct intellectual and national security espionage. According to the complaint, Liu tried to secure J-1 research visas at several<\/p>\n

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