Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Last week, US law enforcement charged 15 Chinese nationals for helping foreign students cheat on standardized college entrance exams in the US. These people allegedly provided fake Chinese passports to imposters who then took the GRE, TOEFL or SAT in the US on behalf of prospective students.

To many Chinese students in the US, the scandal is hardly surprising. Almost everyone knows of the existence of such ways of making a quick buck by taking a standardized test for someone else, or knows of people who are imposters for hire. So these 15 people are only the tip of an iceberg. 

Indeed, cheating on tests is only part of a system that can produce perfect college applications and obtain guaranteed admissions from colleges in the US for Chinese students. There are people who can write resumes for you, or personal statements and recommendations. And there are people who literally navigate the online filing system and file every piece of required documentation for their clients.

These backstage imposters are just as "hard working" as the fake test-takers. For example, they will study the prospective student and the subject he or she is aiming to apply for and write a customized statement. And they will file applications from different computers to avoid causing suspicion. And, unlike test imposters, the job of backstage imposters is much safer and it is even more or less protected by the grayness of the law.

Of course, cheating on tests is not a temptation to which only Chinese students succumb. In 2011, an investigation on Long Island led to charges against 20 students who were involved in impersonation or hiring imposters in the SAT test. Some students' identities were not released because they were underage. And none of those identified were Chinese.

A story in the New York Times about the scandal quoted statistics from the College Board, noting about 3,000 scores are canceled every year because of suspected cheating, including 150 for impersonation.

Also, the flaws in the use of standardized tests as college qualifications and the overblown role a personal statement plays in the admission process in the US should share some blame too. The ways in which people can use various training techniques to get higher scores and write winning personal statements make the definition of cheating ambiguous. 

Still, the sheer number of prospective students from China seeking to come to the US and the established and lucrative industry that helps them to get through the admissions process without always earning it are quite a phenomenon.

There is a real similarity to the smuggling rings in the late 1980s and early 1990s that brought immigrants from rural areas of China's coastal Fujian Province into the US. Both routes involved hefty payments, fake passports and desperate people. But the students are much luckier. In their case, the fake passports are only for the imposters to use, and they themselves can later enter the US with a legal student visa and a college admission.

Some of them will not stay on the campus. According to a report of WholeRen, a Pittsburgh-based consulting firm, about 8,000 Chinese students were kicked out from colleges in the US in the 2013-14 academic year and 80 percent of the cases involved cheating or failing classes. But it may not matter much to the students. Many of them remain in the US to do some underground odd jobs, just like those who are smuggled in.

"These students were not only cheating their way into the university, they were also cheating their way through our nation's immigration system," said special agent John Kelleghan of Homeland Security Investigations in Philadelphia in a press release.

Indeed, this might be what a modern smuggling ring looks like. Based on current market prices, a package of statements and letters, getting into a fairly OK college in the US costs about $5,000. And if you need to hire an imposter for the exams, you may need to pay an extra few thousand. Still, this is a bargain compared with the traditional smuggling costs, which is now about $80,000 per year.

So the silver lining is that the old fashioned, exploitative, and dangerous smuggling rings may soon be driven out of business by a more modern market.

The author is a New York-based journalist. rong_xiaoqing@hotmail.com