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Government cracks down on student visa fraud
Less than a week after temporarily suspending student visas from India, after a dramatic 650% rise fuelling concern over fraud and terrorism, Britain has imposed a new set of restrictions on foreign students from outside the EU. Although there has been speculation that it is part of Labour’s pre-election plan to appear tough on immigration, the official reason is to stop the increase in immigrants, mainly from the Indian subcontinent, coming in for work or purposes other than study. By the end of December 2009, compared to the previous year, there had been an increase in student applications from 1,800 to 13,500 students from northern India alone.
Visa applications were suspended at the end of this January in order to catch up with the sudden increase and to make sure that applications are being processed correctly. Under the new regulations applicants must prove a higher level of spoken English and are allowed to work only a minimum of ten hours per week, a cut from the previous twenty hours. Furthermore, students on short courses of up to six months will not be allowed to bring dependants, and those who are participating in longer courses will not be allowed to work in Britain.
It is hoped this new legislation will restrict those applicants who use student visas to enter the UK by signing up to short courses in phony immigrant run institutions. In relation to the government precaution, Alan Johnson said on the Andrew Marr show that ‘we closed down 200 bogus colleges’ and that by 2011 ‘we will have the most sophisticated system in the world to check people not just coming into the country but to check they have left as well’.
With an estimated annual income from foreign students at around five to eight billion pounds, concerns were raised that the suspension would affect genuine students, a major source of revenue for struggling universities during the recession, and for the UK’s economy. The UK Borders Agency (UKBA) said that the suspension would be in place for at least a month after its implementation.