Indian Students are Caught Between Shifting Policy Winds of the UK and the US

Indian students pursuing higher education abroad have long gravitated toward the United Kingdom and the United States with hopes of quality education, secured employment and a better quality of life. Yet, recent developments on both sides of the Atlantic have underscored the precarity of these options. 

Within a span of weeks, the UK and the US both introduced measures that directly or indirectly squeeze international students. Indian nationals who now form one of the largest contingents of foreign students in both countries, as a result, find themselves caught in the crossfire of domestic politics and immigration crackdowns. 

This confluence of shifting policy winds in the West raises urgent questions about how India can protect its students’ interests and future mobility.

The UK’s new immigration policy

In the UK, a newly unveiled white paper on immigration policy – a document intended to set the policy tones rather than an actual enacted policy – has set off alarm bells for foreign students. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government released the white paper in May 2025 announcing a shift in policy with a slew of proposed, but not yet enacted, measures to impose stricter rules aimed at curbing record-high net migration. 

Key changes include doubling the qualifying period for permanent settlement from five to 10 years, imposing tougher English-language requirements for dependents, and crucially, shortening the post-study work visa (the Graduate Route) from two years to 18 months. This rollback means international graduates will have less time to find jobs in the UK after finishing their degrees, hampering one of the major incentives that drew many to British campuses in recent years.

Indian students, who constitute one of the largest groups in the UK’s higher education, are particularly impacted by this. 

The British government’s rationale is domestic: Starmer has promised to get tough on immigration, declaring that without these measures the UK risked “becoming an island of strangers”. The tightening of student visa rules is part of a broader political narrative of control. Yet, for Indian students on the ground, this ostensibly internal policy change has very personal consequences – from recalculating the return on investment of a UK degree to scrambling for jobs within a shorter time frame to secure a foothold in Britain. 

The US’s crackdown

Hot on the heels of the UK’s policy shift, an even more drastic development unfolded in the United States. The US state department issued guidance effectively halting new student visa interviews worldwide. The pause is part of Trump’s onslaught against elite US institutions like Harvard and Columbia, which he deems to be national. 

In practical terms, this policy translates into significantly longer wait times and uncertainty for new student visa applicants. There is no definite end date for the moratorium, leaving students worldwide especially those admitted for the upcoming academic year in September in the lurch.

For Indian students, the impact is immense. India has in recent years overtaken China to become the largest source of international students in the US. Over 3.3 lakh Indian students were enrolled in American institutions in 2023-24, accounting for nearly 30% of all foreign students in the country. As a result, by sheer numbers, India stands to be hardest hit by a global visa interview freeze. 

Many Indian families are now anxiously unsure if their children will receive visas in time for program start dates in the later half of 2025. The comparison to the UK situation is striking – in one case a door is narrowing, in the other it has been temporarily slammed shut.

Taken together, the UK and the US developments paint a larger picture of Indian students’ precarious position in global mobility. Despite being courted for the economic and academic value they bring, these students remain subject to the political winds of host countries. Indians are facing the twin onslaught – of a Labour government succumbing to right wing pressures in Britain as well as the fierce inward-looking Trump administration. 

The common thread is clear: Indian students often end up as collateral damage of domestic policy debates abroad, be it about migration numbers or national security fears; and each time, India’s response has largely been limited to reactive appeals or quiet diplomacy, with little influence over the outcome.

Need for structural protections

It is increasingly apparent that India needs to move beyond issuing hopeful statements and develop structural protections and policy frameworks to safeguard its students’ interests. At the very least, New Delhi could more systematically integrate student mobility into its bilateral engagements. 

For instance, India’s recently concluded Free Trade Agreement only makes mention of mobility of professionals, ignoring students’ vital role as important stakeholders. In contrast, the EU-UK deal, which was also recently announced, had a more concrete mention of a “Youth Experience Scheme”. This scheme would allow young Europeans to visit, work and study in the UK and vice-versa. Similar arrangements were made with Australia and New Zealand. 

The lack of commitment to emphasising Indian student’s large economic and intellectual potential in these negotiations of a comprehensive bilateral agreement is shocking. India can seek formal understandings with destination countries that students already enrolled will be grandfathered under old rules if policies change, or that mechanisms will exist for students to complete their education without sudden disruption. 

Proactively putting student concerns on the diplomatic agenda would signal that India views its students not just as statistics, but as a strategic human resource.

Another prong of a structural approach is boosting support for students before and during their overseas education. Through a more regulated and systematic program of supporting foreign admissions, India would serve two objectives. First, Indian students would be better advised and prepared for their future abroad, saved from the risk of fraudulent agents who dupe thousands with false promises of work and education abroad. Secondly, it would assuage concerns of host countries who are keen on eliminating those who seek to abuse their visa status and risk their national security.

Looking forward

Crucially, India must also reckon with why so many of its students feel compelled to brave these foreign policy fluctuations in the first place. The demand for quality higher education and global opportunities is something India can address by first improving domestic institutions and creating enticing opportunities at home. 

However, with arrests of university professors and clamping down on academic freedoms, Indian academia is only getting further stifled. The plans to attract foreign universities to set up campuses in India have only been met with lukewarm support amid the lack of specificities on measures to ensure equitable access to all instead of just the elite and wealthy Indians. 

Over the long term, building a world-class higher education system domestically is the most structural solution of all: it ensures that studying abroad is a choice but not a necessity driven by lack of options.

Indian students are not political pawns. They are investors, contributors and ambassadors of a relationship that goes beyond policy cycles. If Britain wants to restore “control” or the United States wants to limit students for “national security”, it must not do so by closing the very doors that kept it connected to the Global South for decades. 

And if India wants to lead the global path in the coming century, it must stop treating its students as export goods and start treating them as strategic citizens. The future lies not in gatekeeping, but in partnership – one that respects mobility, values talent and remembers that education is not a privilege granted by one nation to another, but a shared pursuit of progress.

Amaan Asim is an MPhil student at Oxford University. He previously headed the NSUIs’ National Research Department. 

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