The new rules will go into impact beginning January 2024. (Representational)

New Delhi:

The United Kingdom’s visa reforms designed to curb migration by limiting postgraduate college students from bringing dependents or utilizing their tutorial standing as a conduit to employment will plug immigration loopholes and shut a backdoor to work, a minister has mentioned.

“The significant rise in students bringing family members is putting untenable pressure on public services,” Suella Braverman, the nation’s Home Secretary, mentioned on Twitter. “Tightening the student route will help to cut migration by restricting post-graduate students from bringing dependents or using the route as a backdoor to work.”

The UK authorities introduced new immigration guidelines on Tuesday geared toward limiting the variety of members of the family that worldwide college students can convey into the nation. The transfer is a part of a broader effort to curb a pointy rise in visas granted to dependents of scholars.

Ms Braverman mentioned in a press release to the House of Commons that the foundations would now solely permit members of the family of worldwide college students on postgraduate analysis programmes to affix them in Britain.

The new coverage comes after the variety of visas issued to pupil dependents jumped eightfold to 136,000 within the yr ending December 2022, up from 16,000 in 2019.

“This package includes: removing the right for international students to bring dependents unless they are on postgraduate courses currently designated as research programmes,” Ms Braverman mentioned.

Other measures embody stopping worldwide college students from switching to work visas earlier than finishing their research and reviewing the monetary necessities for college kids and their dependents.

The UK authorities additionally plans to extend enforcement towards schooling brokers suspected of aiding within the submission of inappropriate purposes.

Ms Braverman clarified that the phrases of the graduate route, which permits college students to remain within the UK to achieve work expertise after their research, stay unchanged.

“We are committed to attracting the brightest and the best to the UK. Therefore, our intention is to work with universities over the course of the next year to design an alternative approach that ensures that the best and the brightest students can bring dependants to our world-leading universities while continuing to reduce net migration,” she mentioned.

The newly minted rules, which can go into impact beginning January 2024, are anticipated to drastically cut back the variety of postgraduate college students who can convey their spouses or youngsters to the UK, slashing the restrict from the present 30,000 to 10,000 per yr.

This change comes because the UK’s internet migration figures are anticipated to point out a big enhance from 504,000 between June 2021 and June 2022. The Conservative Party-led authorities has pledged to cut back immigration following the UK’s exit from the European Union.

Jamie Arrowsmith, Director of Universities UK International (UUKi), the consultant physique for 140 UK universities, voiced concern concerning the impression of those adjustments on feminine college students and people from particular nations.

“We, therefore, urge the government to work with the sector to limit and monitor the impact on particular groups of students – and on universities, which are already under serious financial pressures,” he mentioned.

UUKi welcomed the federal government’s dedication to sustaining the Graduate route visa, which lets college students keep and achieve work expertise within the UK for as much as three years after their diploma.

Indians just lately overtook the Chinese because the main nationality granted research visas to the UK, with the bulk accessing the visa launched in July 2021. Nigerian college students, nevertheless, high the listing of these bringing dependents, adopted by Indians.