The racket of which you speak certainly did exist, and millions of "students" from all over the world came to this country on student visas & just disappeared & started new lives as Americans. For decades, it was one of the prime avenues for illegal immigration from overseas, and easy-money for universities since they were taking in million$ in tuition from folks they didn't have to expend any resources to actually teach.
After 9/11, the feds required universities to report its no-shows, which is why MSU contacted the authorities when these men never made it to Bozeman. So, a system that was terribly broken for decades actually worked here through post-9/11 reforms.The new policy has essentially shut down the racket & now only the occassional strays make the news, whereas before millions disappearing into the woodwork annually went completely unreported.
One would think that freepers would take some heart out of this, but it seems sometimes even good news is bad news here.Some people here seem to think that the success had by the US in tracking down the Bozeman 11 is evidence that Homeland Security is bungling it or hiding something or worse. I'm not quite sure why.
As long as they have the money, colleges didn't report this........BEFORE. But I think that the foiled terrorist bomb plan shook things up here; for now, anyway.