The Home Office has released a study showing that its new Student Visitor Visa (SVV) is working well and not subject to abuse. However, the report’s release coincided with a major debate in Parliament in which many MPs criticised the government’s wider student immigration policy—although Immigration Minister Mark Harper defended the current position.
The SVV – which is widely used by language or university exchange students – allows students from outside the European Economic Area to study in the UK for a period of six months, while those eligible for the Extended Student Visitor Visa may stay for 11 months.
In the study published yesterday, the Home Office claimed the SVV was meeting its intended purposes by “attracting high value, low risk migrants who contribute positively to economic growth”.
It pointed out that most student visitors stayed for less than three months – a sign that those using the route are “genuine and do not abuse the system” by staying longer than needed.
Interestingly, around two-thirds of the visa nationals who used the SVV came from five countries: Russia, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and India and most were studying English. This cohort does not include non-visa nationals, who also use the SVV route (but can apply at port of entry, unlike visa nationals) and make up the majority of SVV holders (71%).
Of the non-visa nationals, a majority were US nationals on exchange programmes, while Brazilians were a sizeable contingent.
The most recent statistics show a 6% increase in SVVs issued over the last year , although the vast majority of students still come on Tier 4 visas – the number of which fell 22% last year due to a hardening of visa regulations since 2011.
An extract from the study published this week
Some argue that the SVV is only popular with the government because students who stay in the UK for less than a year are not included in the net migration tally, which it has committed to reduce to the tens of thousands by 2015 – the subject of a major debate in both the House of Lords and House of Commons yesterday.
However, Tony Millns, CEO of English UK told The PIE News: “Of course the timing of the release of this report was not a coincidence. However its main conclusion, that ‘the student visitor route is working as intended and abuse is minimal’, is both welcome and in our view correct.”
The main question of Thursday’s debate was whether international students should be included in country’s net migration count at all, and there was broad cross-party support for the idea they should not.
Adrian Bailey MP, argued that the government’s stance was harming an industry “with incredible potential to boost the economy nationally and locally”.
Bailey responded there remained a contradiction “at the heart of current policy”
But despite many intelligent arguments for why current policy is at best enabling our education exports to “flatline”, as one MP put it, Mark Harper, Immigration Minister, faced his opponents with the familiar line – that there was “no cap” on genuine foreign students.
Pointing to a closer working relationship between the government and HE sector, he said, “We are going to continue to work in partnership with our universities to continue to increasing the number of international students that come to our excellent universities from around the world.”
He also used the debate to touch on the London Met situation – pointing out the positive news that the university has significantly improved its processes and has an “A sponsor” rating (meaning it can re-apply for Highly Trusted Sponsor status within 12 months). He also responded to complaints about in-country processing times for students transferring visa status, saying wait times had got “immensely better”.
However, Bailey responded that there remained a contradiction “at the heart of current policy” to have a government committed to reducing net migration to under 100,000, while emphasising there was no cap on foreign students, who remained in the net migration count.
