After a drop during the pandemic, net migration has been
steadily on the rise and is reportedly expected to hit a record high this year.
Official figures published last November estimated net
migration to June 2022 at just over 500,000.
Under the new proposals, only students on postgraduate
courses designated as research programmes will be able to bring dependants to
the UK while they study.
Overseas students will be prevented from switching “out of
the student route into work routes” before their studies have been completed.
There will also be “improved and more enforcement activity”
and a clamp down on “unscrupulous agents” using education as a cover for
immigration, according to a government statement.
Some 136,000 visas were issued to the dependants of
international students last year — up eight-fold from the 16,000 in 2019, Home
Secretary Suella Braverman said in a written statement to parliament.
The minister — a Brexit hardliner whose rhetoric on
immigration has caused controversy — said overseas students played an important
part in supporting the UK economy.
But she added that it should not come at the cost of the
government’s “commitment to the public to lower overall migration and ensure
that migration to the UK is highly skilled and therefore provides the most
benefit”.
Braverman said the proposals struck the “right balance” and
would likely see net migration “fall to pre-pandemic levels in the medium
term”.
Uncontrolled immigration from the European Union was one of
the main battlegrounds of the Brexit referendum in 2016 which saw the UK leave
the bloc.
Since 2018, the country has seen thousands of people
successfully cross the English Channel in small boats to claim asylum.
More than 45,000 arrived last year, heaping political
pressure on the government which promised to “take back control” of Britain’s
borders.
One of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative
predecessors, Boris Johnson, agreed a deal with Rwanda last year to relocate
failed asylum seekers to the central African country.
But the scheme has been mired in legal battles and is yet to
get underway.
The end of freedom of movement for workers within the EU due
to Brexit and tighter immigration rules have also proved controversial for
business.
Many sectors that previously relied heavily on EU workers,
particularly agriculture and health and social care, have experienced deep
skills shortages.
Influx ‘Explosion’
Immigration figures point to an “explosion” in the number of
people relocating to Britain on the privilege of their relatives’ student
visas, a Sun UK report pointed out Saturday.
A total of 135,788 family members reportedly tagged along as
students moved into Britain for study last year — nine times more than in 2019.
“Last year, 59,053 Nigerian students brought over 60,923
relatives,” the report noted.
In its updated ‘Code of practice for the international
recruitment of health and social care personnel in England’, the UK placed
Nigeria and the other countries on its red list which was based on the World
Health Organisation Workforce Support and Safeguard List, 2023.