UK visa rules tweaked for…: British minister says new immigration policy won't affect undergraduate students
1 min read 01 Jun 2023, 02:28 PM ISTUK visa curbs primarily apply to one-year research and doctoral studies, and not undergraduate students from India, says Deputy Foreign Minister Lord Tariq Ahmad.
PremiumUK's Deputy Foreign Minister Lord Tariq Ahmad recently clarified that the new adjustments in UK visa rules do not target undergraduate students from India. Acknowledging the positive contributions of Indian students, he expressed visa curbs primarily apply to those pursuing one-year research and doctoral studies.
"We have tweaked visa rules for research and PhD students who come only for one year and sometimes don't complete their research," said Lord Ahmad said in a recent NDTV interview.
"Britain benefits from legal immigration and only wants to stop illegal immigration. Most students are from India. We want more students," added the minister.
Last week, the UK government announced tightening visa rules for international students. Informing the policy changes, Home Secretary Suella Braverman stated that only international students on postgraduate courses designated as research programs will be allowed to bring their family members, such as children and elderly parents, as dependants. Apart from that, the new law also removed the ability for international students to switch to work visa before finishing their courses.
She also pledged steps to clamp down on unscrupulous education agents “who may be supporting inappropriate applications to sell immigration not education".
The measure was put in place to pre-empt figures released which show that in the year to December 2022, net migration in the UK rose to a record level of 606,000.
Indians top cross-sector skilled work visa list
Further, the data compiled by the UK Home Office and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveals that Indians topped the list for cross-sector skilled work visas, including targeted healthcare visas to address staff shortages in the National Health Service (NHS).
“Indian nationals were the top nationality for visas in the ‘Worker’ category, representing one third (33 per cent) of grants, and were by far the top nationality for both the ‘Skilled Worker’ and ‘Skilled Worker - Health and Care’ visas," the Home Office analysis notes.
“A total of 92,951 Graduate route extensions were granted to previous students in the year ending March 2023. Indian nationals represented the largest group of students granted leave to remain on the Graduate route, representing 41 per cent of grants," it said.
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