No evidence foreign students are abusing UK graduate visas, review finds

19 comments

1. Interested to hear the reaction from some users in a previous thread claiming the vast majority of international students are abusing the system…

   But regardless – everyone in the Higher Education sector has known there is no abuse for a very, very long time. As much as I hope this will stop the government’s attack on students, who simply want to study in our world-leading institutions, I really don’t think it will. Cleverly et al. seem immune to evidence-based decisions at the moment.

2. Here is the full report:

   [https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/analysis-of-migrants-use-of-the-graduate-route/analysis-of-migrants-use-of-the-graduate-route](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/analysis-of-migrants-use-of-the-graduate-route/analysis-of-migrants-use-of-the-graduate-route)

   The first graph shows the number of visas given afterwards and the number before this path was introduced. It went from 88% not having further leave to 47%.

   That means there wasn’t any abuse and it was being used as intended. To get a foot in the door and eventually get ILR/Citizenship.

   If thats something the government is concerned about then we are going to see restrictions being put in place.

3. Wait I’m confused, that’s not what the Daily Mail screamed in it’s EXCLUSIVE

   (I was going to link it but I’m not giving them clicks)

4. Wait, so everyone who screeches about that in here constantly turned out to be talking shite? Surely no…

5. That’s strange, there have been so many comments on here about how almost all foreign students are abusing this system.

   Surely people wouldn’t be going on the internet and talking bollocks.

6. Yeah there’s no evidence so it’s not really happening. But it is.

7. > a review ~~manufactured to be covered by the guardian~~ finds

8. It’s surprising they’ve chosen this fight. You would think that we would want as many educated workers as possible

9. Some people are abusing them, some are not. The best Unis can do is monitor attendance. If someone manages to work over 20 hours and attend classes reasonably then Idk what more a Uni can do. It is hard to catch these people but they ruin it for honest students who work under 20 hours per week and don’t misuse visas.

10. Having gone to Uni. the international students mostly came here to put an English Uni on their CV then fucked off back to whatever country they came from. Exceptions being a few countries in Africa and South America.

    The main reason was if you were not here on some grant or scheme you had to be fucking loaded. it costs a lot to come study here from abroad. It wasn’t unusual for some of the Asian students to rent multiple studio apartments to house their stuff while at uni. These private accommodation studio apartments were not cheep. 9k+ a year. more if they went for the penthouse apartments

11. So picture this – you have wealthy, UK educated and adjusted (mostly) foreigners, whose countries have fit the bill for the first 18 years of their life, who wants to stay here and do skilled work which we don’t have enough people to do, and pay tax and healthcare surcharges etc, they mostly don’t use the NHS because it’s so shit compared to the private healthcare they get back home – why are these people a problem again?

    Obviously we should be targeting UK workers at areas of massive deficit but in the short term, why not just tighten the list of jobs that qualify rather than salary limits etc. Chemical engineer? Yes. Hairdresser? No.

    Salaries like that are hard to come by outside of London for a lot of roles, even stem.

12. 114,000 graduate route visas were granted for main applicants in 2023 with a further 30,000 granted for dependants.

    Fucking hell, 144,000 people a year just via higher education

13. I work for an international college whereby students are granted study visas. A condition of the VISA is that they must attend a certain percentage of classes (80% I believe). We have had students removed due to poor/non attendance every year I’ve worked at the college.

    Currently, class attendance is poor. We are lucky to get 12 out of 18 students turn up. The poor attendance is true for all demographics: middle-eastern, Asian and Eastern European students alike.

    I do not believe the majority are abusing the system, but I am growing suspicious of a handful of our cohort who seem to take random weeks off mid-semester…

14. I wouldn’t say it’s a direct route. Standards to enter are high for international students. I don’t think you’re allowed to work on a student visa (or maybe not full-time?) And if you drop out, you still have to apply for your visa to be turned into one for employment rather than students. That’s not always a given.

    More a case that they studied here, enjoyed it, and decided they want to stay and work here. That I’m sure happens everywhere.

    If I studied a masters in NZ or Aus or Canada, I’d strongly consider staying there for work after it

15. 70% of graduate visas being issued to people from India, China, Nigeria and Pakistan doesn’t really fill me with confidence that there isn’t abuse of the system happening.

16. What a load of rubbish. The ‘review’ proves exactly what people have been saying.

    * Most international students arrive to take a bullshit 1-year Masters’ course (<40% before Graduate visa, 70% in 2023)
    * Most international students use it as a vehicle to obtain permanent residency (<20% remain in UK after studies in 2019, 55% in 2023)
    * They don’t immediately become highly skilled doctor and engineer net contributors (median pay is £23,000 per year, well below UK average. 25% don’t work at all)

    It’s a residency wheeze aided and abetted by two-bit universities who have come to rely on them for their business model.

17. Shock Pikachu!

    Seriously, how many times do we need to look into Foreigners? It’s a bloody witch hunt, they get blamed for so much shit and it’s like… No, our issues are our own… Of our own creation.

18. R/UnitedKingdom will hate it but this is better for UK HE institutions in the long run. Feels like so many unis have started turning into paper mills to attract loaded foreign students. They know all they want is a degree that says “studied in the UK” and they’ll pay extortionate fees to get it. Unis are happy to drop their entry requirements to get them in the door and to ensure they come out with good grades they’ll drop marking standards too, depreciating degree value further then it already is.

19. This is difficult because I’m one of these students. I did a bachelor’s in the U.S. at an top American uni in math and then came and did a masters at a lower ranked UK school. My now husband was also a student and did not meet the requirements to sponsor me and we wanted to be together, so I used a student visa to immigrate. I completed my MSc with a distinction.

    Im now on a spouse visa track to ILR, married to a British citizen and the mother of another British citizen. I work, am almost a higher rate tax payer, and I pay extortionate fees every 2.5 years to have a visa to stay in this country. I can acknowledge that the student visa route is definitely exploited by people with no intention of using their degrees to find good work. So fine, I’m part of the problem. Yet, I literally was speaking to my brother in law this weekend who said he doesn’t see me as an immigrant. Why? Because I’m American? Because I work a skilled job? I’m not going to pretend to be the end all be all of immigrants, but I think I pay my debt to be in this country.

    My husband and I make enough money for me to stay based on the new income requirement for spouse visas if I had to be assessed on them. But a lot of people don’t. You can say go back to your own country then, but why should British citizens be forced out of the UK to be with their spouses? This is more stream of consciousness than actual questions and answers, but it’s really difficult at the moment for families with a spouse that’s an immigrant at the moment.