A law has been implemented by the United Kingdom that bans Nigerian students and other international students from bringing their families as dependents unless certain conditions are met.
This is in an effort by the UK government to reduce immigration, which is now at roughly 1 million per year.
To prevent abuse of the visa system, the UK will no longer allow international students to switch from the student visa to work visa before their studies are finished.
Sky News also added that “there will also be a review of the maintenance requirement for students and dependents and a crackdown on “unscrupulous” education agents “who make use of inappropriate applications to sell immigration, not education”.
The new regulations will go into effect in January 2024 to give students who are commencing their studies in the UK time to prepare.
This new regulation was passed after there were hints that the UK intended to enact tighter laws to reduce the rising number of immigrants who enter the nation to pursue higher education.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman said in a written ministerial statement on Tuesday that recent immigration numbers had revealed a “unexpected rise” in the number of dependents arriving to the UK alongside foreign students.
The government’s pledge to reduce net migration, according to Braverman, led to the surge, the UK media outlet claimed.
Braverman said while the government’s strategy around international education “plays an important part in supporting the economy”, it should “not be at the expense of our commitment to the public to lower overall migration”.
Braverman, according to Sky News, claimed that the package achieves the ideal mix between taking decisive action to address net migration and safeguarding the economic advantages that students can provide the UK.
A statement on the UK’s Home Office official site adds that the “New government restrictions to student visa routes will substantially cut net migration by restricting the ability for international students to bring family members on all but post-graduate research routes and banning people from using a student visa as a backdoor route to work in the UK.
“The ONS estimated that net migration was over 500,000 from June 2021 to June 2022. Although partly attributed to the rise in temporary factors, such as the UK’s Ukraine and Hong Kong schemes, last year almost half a million student visas were issued while the number of dependants of overseas students has increased by 750% since 2019, to 136,000 people.”
The Home Office further emphasised that the government’s commitment to the public to reduce overall migration and ensuring that immigration to the UK is highly skilled and beneficial is not at the expense of this new rule.
According to them, the proposal is aimed at allowing “the government to continue to meet its International Education Strategy commitments while making a tangible contribution to reducing net migration to sustainable levels. The government has also made clear that the terms of the graduate route remain unchanged.”
The Home Office also made it clear that “the proposals announced today do not detract from the success of the government’s International Education Strategy, including meeting the target to host 600,000 international higher education students studying in the UK each year by 2030, for two years running.”
Net migration is likely to have climbed from 504,000 in the 12 months leading up to June 2022 to more than 700,000 in the year leading up to December, according to official numbers that are scheduled to be released this week, according to Sky News.
Data shows that international students brought 135,788 family members to Britain in 2018—nine times more than in 2019—while 59,053 Nigerian students brought more than 60,923 relatives in 2022.
