Nigerian students and other international students who travel to the United Kingdom for studies will no longer be able to bring family with them except under specific circumstances.
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The measure due to come into effect for students starting their courses from January 2024 is said to be a government bid to bring immigration down.
However, students on postgraduate courses that are currently designated as research programmes are exempted from the ban.
The ability for international students to switch out of the student route and into work routes before their studies have been completed will also be removed “to prevent misuse of the visa system.”
In addition to that, the government intends to review the maintenance requirement for students and dependents and will crackdown on “unscrupulous” education agents “who make use of inappropriate applications to sell immigration, not education”.
The Home Secretary Suella Braverman announced the ban on Tuesday along with several related measures in a written statement, in which she argued that the package “the right balance between acting decisively on tackling net migration and protecting the economic benefits that students can bring to the UK”.
According to the statement seen by Investogist, the package includes;
- Removing the right for international students to bring dependants unless they are on postgraduate courses currently designated as research programmes.
- Removing the ability for international students to switch out of the student route into work routes before their studies have been completed.
- Reviewing the maintenance requirements for students and dependants.
- Steps to clamp down on unscrupulous education agents who may be supporting inappropriate applications to sell immigration not education.
- Better communicating immigration rules to the higher education sector and to international students.
- Improved and more targeted enforcement activity.
In the year ending December 2022, 486,000 student visas were issued to applicants – up from 269,000 in 2019.
Last year, the number of student visas issued to dependants stood at 136,000 – an eightfold increase from 2019, when 16,000 were provided.
In 2019, when net migration stood at 226,000, the ruling Conservatives in their manifesto committed to making sure “overall numbers come down”.
Sky news reported that official statistics due to be published later this week are expected to show that net migration into the United Kingdom increased from 504,000 in the 12 months to June 2022 to more than 700,000 in the year to December.
Nnamdi Maduakor is a Writer, Investor and Entrepreneur
