The Home Office of the United Kingdom announced tough new restrictions on international students looking to bring dependents with them while studying in the UK.
Effective immediately, the vast majority of non-European overseas students will no longer be allowed to bring family members along on their student visas.
In a post on its X page , the Home Office reiterated that only those on postgraduate research or government-sponsored scholarship students will be exempted from the development.
Under the new rule, the UK will remove the permission for international students to switch out of the student route and into work routes before their studies have been completed to prevent misuse of the visa system.
“We are fully committed to seeing a decisive cut in migration. From today, new overseas students will no longer be able to bring family members to the UK. Postgraduate research or government-funded scholarships students will be exempt,” the Home Office said.
The controversial move represents a cornerstone of the government’s pledge to cut net migration levels. In defending the dependant ban, the Home Office stated
“We are fully committed to seeing a decisive cut in migration. From today, new overseas students will no longer be able to bring family members to the UK.” Only postgraduate research students and those on select government-funded scholarships are exempt from the restrictions.
The Home Office insisted the dependant ban is necessary to get migration under control. But opponents counter that international students are not true long-term immigrants, typically departing after graduation. They accuse the government of using students as a scapegoat for failed immigration policies.
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 per cent since 2019, to 136,000 people.”
This is as the UK government aims to bring down immigration into the country which stands at about one million.
The Home Office also noted that this new rule was not at the expense of the government’s commitment to the public to lower overall migration and ensure that migration to the UK was highly skilled and provided the most benefit.
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.”
