A new ban on students coming to the UK from four countries where there is war and human rights abuses will drive more people use small boats, campaigners have warned.
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced a bar on student visas from Sudan, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Cameroon on Tuesday evening. It will come into force on 26 March.
The home secretary said it is an “abuse” for people from these countries to claim asylum “in country” after finishing their studies. Home Office sources say that study routes should not be the mechanism for claiming asylum. But critics say that very few safe and legal alternatives exist.
Sudan is currently being torn apart by war and Afghanistan is accepted to be a repressive regime where women and girls are routinely persecuted and denied their rights and any opponents of the ruling Taliban regime are punished. According to Amnesty International’s most recent country reports, Myanmar has seen a surge in atrocities by the ruling junta in the five years since the military coup took place and arbitrary detentions and crackdowns on human rights in Cameroon have been documented.
According to the Home Office’s own data, the number of people from each of these countries who are granted student visas and go on to make asylum claims are only in the hundreds, in some cases fewer than the number who cross the Channel in small boats on a moderately busy day. Just 13% of total asylum claims last year came from people who had previously come to UK on a study visa.
Louise Calvey, director of the charity Asylum Matters, said: “Our government says it wants to stop people from making dangerous and often deadly Channel crossings to seek sanctuary. But its approach is doing exactly the opposite.
“This government has already put family reunion applications on hold, now it wants to ban a small number of people from leaving conflict zones to continue their education and then claim asylum instead of being sent back into danger.
“It is driving people who will continue to need protection into the hands of people smugglers. This next attack on what was a safe, regularised method of travel is just the latest in a series of anti-refugee laws which completely ignore the reality that people whose lives have been torn apart by war need sanctuary, and if they don’t have a safe route to seek it, they’ll be forced to find more dangerous ones.”
Mahmood, said: “Britain will always provide refuge to people fleeing war and persecution, but our visa system must not be abused. That is why I am taking the unprecedented decision to refuse visas for those nationals seeking to exploit our generosity. I will restore order and control to our borders.”
