Students from overseas coming to the UK will be banned from bringing dependents as part of the government's latest attempt to curb net migration.
The only types of students excluded from the rules, which will be enforced from January 2024, will be postgraduates on research programmes. The government says the package will amount to the "single biggest tightening measure a government has ever done".
The move could hit universities which rely on foreign student fees and could also harm the UK’s reputation as an international destination, experts warned.
Read more: Join the FREE Manchester Evening News WhatsApp community
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told his Cabinet that roughly 136,000 visas were granted to dependents in 2022. This is up from 16,000 in 2019.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman told MPs: “This package strikes the right balance between acting decisively on tackling net migration and protecting the economic benefits that students can bring to the UK. Now is the time for us to make these changes to ensure an impact on net migration as soon as possible. We expect this package to have a tangible impact on net migration.
“Taken together with the easing of temporary factors, we expect net migration to fall to pre-pandemic levels in the medium term.”
The measure also includes reviewing the maintenance requirements for students and dependents and steps to increase pressure on "unscrupulous education agents who may be supporting inappropriate applications to sell immigration, not education", the Prime Minister's spokesman said.
There will also be improvements to communication around immigration rules to the higher education sector and international students with "improved and targeted enforcement activity".
Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) think tank, said: “This is not a wise move because every part of the UK benefits from the presence of international students and, if they are discouraged from coming to the UK, they won’t stay at home but instead go to our competitors.”
Jamie Arrowsmith, from Universities UK International, said that the “vast majority” of international students will not be affected by the changes to the rules. “I think it’s really hard to say at this stage what the scale of the impact might be,” he told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme.
He added: “We do know that the vast majority of international students are not accompanied by dependents. So the vast majority of students will be unaffected by this change. There will of course be some impact, otherwise the government would not be introducing the change. So in the coming days and weeks, we really need to work closely with the government to understand what the scale of that impact might be and what, if anything, we need to do as a sector to mitigate that impact.”
The leader of the Russell Group of universities said that the new immigration rules are likely to have a “negative impact” on universities’ plans to diversify their student intakes. Tim Bradshaw said overseas students bring “vital income to support education for UK students and world-leading research”.
He said: “Global competition for international students is fierce and some of the announcements made today are likely to have a negative impact on universities’ plans to diversify their international student intakes. However, we welcome the Government’s recommitment to the graduate route and that students coming to study on postgraduate research programmes will still be able to bring dependants.”
Read next:
- “My daughters are frightened”: Terrified mum exposes plague of 'cat-sized' rats causing chaos in neighbourhood
- Gay Village adult store Clonezone attacked for FOURTH time in two months as CCTV captures thugs on red motorbike
- Man and woman arrested on suspicion of attempted murder as victim left fighting for life after intruder attack
- Killing of schoolgirl Emily Jones at hands of paranoid schizophrenic 'could not have been predicted'
- Emergency services swarm street as two people cut from Audi that was flipped over onto roof in crash
