Report: UK to introduce new rules governing work rights for international students

[Hoyoung& Lorne]

The British government will reportedly introduce new rules this week to eliminate the opportunity for non-European Union students to work part-time during their studies in the UK. Further, non-EU students will be required to leave the country at the conclusion of their studies and will only be able to apply for a work visa from outside the UK.

The changes were signaled by two government ministers in recent days, and reports also have it that related proposals are circulating within the British cabinet to prevent spouses and other dependants of foreign students from working in the UK.

Speaking in Birmingham on Friday, Business Secretary Sajid Javid said, “We do not want a system where some people see studying as a motive to settle in Britain and that is their only motive. People who come to study in Britain should be coming to study.” The minister added during a BBC Radio interview the same day, “We’ve got to have a system that doesn’t allow any abuse where people are using the right to study as a way to achieve settlement in Britain. So it shouldn’t be about settlement. We’ve got to break the link and make sure it’s focused on people who want to study and then, once they’ve had their studies and completed that, then they leave.”

The Daily Mail reported yesterday that Home Secretary Theresa May is due to announce further details of the government’s plans later this week.

The move is a dramatic reversal of an earlier rejection of similar proposals from the Home Secretary. Ms May moved late last year to revive a plank from the governing Conservative Party’s 2010 election manifesto that would require overseas students to apply for a UK work visa from their home country after graduating. The idea was roundly criticised, perhaps most famously by British entrepreneur and inventor James Dyson who wrote in The Guardian at the time: “Train ’em up. Kick ’em out. It’s a bit shortsighted, isn’t it?…Our borders must remain open to the world’s best. Give them our knowledge, allow them to develop their own and permit them to apply it on our shores. Their ideas and inventiveness will create technology to export around the world.”

Perhaps because of such criticism, the government opted not to proceed earlier this year but it appears that very similar plans are now back on the table, with the intended goal of eliminating the link between study and work and thereby reducing the number of international students that remain in the country after their studies. The Daily Mail quotes Immigration Minister James Brokenshire who says the move was “part of [the government’s] plan to control immigration for the benefit of Britain. Immigration offenders want to sell illegal access to the UK jobs market and there are plenty of people willing to buy. Hard-working taxpayers who are helping to pay for publicly funded colleges expect them to be providing topclass education, not a back door to a British work visa.”

Echoing Mr Dyson’s earlier arguments, however, both universities and business leaders have warned that any further restrictions on work rights for foreign students could both damage the UK’s international education sector and deprive Britain of a key source of skills and innovation.

Seamus Nevin, of the business leadership group the Institute of Directors, said, “The Business Secretary’s proposals to eject foreign students after graduation are misguided and would damage the British education system, our economy and global influence. Other countries welcome such students. Britain already makes it difficult and artificially expensive for them to enter and stay, and now these proposals would eject them ignominiously when their studies are finished…In the interests our education sector, our businesses, and our international standing, the Business Secretary should reconsider this proposal.”

And Sir Christopher Snowden, the vice-chancellor of the University of Surrey and president of Universities UK, said to The Australian today, “The current UK policies on immigration for international students have put the UK at a disadvantage in recruiting talented students compared with the US and Australia for example. This proposal will discourage legitimate students with spouses from studying here.”

The UK government, however, has shown its determination to tighten the immigration system in a drive to reduce net migration levels. The inclusion of international students in British net migration statistics has been hotly debated within the UK in recent years, and the strong Conservative victory in the recent national election has likely set the stage for further immigration controls.

If these latest proposals are indeed confirmed this week, they will represent a sharp contrast to the policies in place in other major international study destinations, which, if anything, have been moving to expand post-graduate work opportunities.

We will continue to follow the story in Britain this week and will update this post as events unfold.

http://monitor.icef.com/2015/07/uk-rules-governing-work-rights-for-international-students/   <---클릭