George Papadofragakis on new immigration laws

According to Liam Byrne MP, Minister of State for Borders and Immigration, Britain is currently undergoing “the biggest shake up of [its] immigration system for 45 years”.

The new, stricter regulations, which are meant to tighten border control, will introduce a point-system and contain one section – Tier 4 – that applies specifically to international students.

Over the last three years, more than 300 colleges have been removed from the Register of Education and Training Providers. According to the Department for Universities and Skills, those were sham institutions that provided no legitimate qualifications, while effectively opening a 'backdoor' entry to the UK for economic migrants masquerading as students.

Under the new regulations, all educational institutions will need a licence to teach international students and all courses will have to lead to a minimum approved qualification. Meanwhile, the requirements to get a student-visa will be changing and all higher education providers will be checked by the UK Border Agency.

However, while preventing the abuse of student-visas as a means of gaining entry to the UK is understandable, and is largely dealt with by the above regulations, some of the additional measures that will be enforced raise many concerns over their necessity and effectiveness. In fact, the most controversial of those will only apply once a student has already moved to the UK.

To start with, overseas students (that is to say, international students coming from outside the EU) will be required to carry a biometric ID card. Putting ethical considerations aside for a moment, one can see that this measure can only apply once a student has already been accepted in a ministry-approved institution, has already been given a new visa and has already arrived in Britain. In other words, a biometric ID card will only be issued after we have already established, to the best of our knowledge, that the student in question is in fact perfectly legitimate.

In addition, the government will be checking and recording the fingerprints of everyone applying for a new, or extended, student visa. But according to Universities UK, there are only six fingerprinting centres in Britain that overseas students will have to use. They add: “This will inevitably lead to inconvenience with long [and costly] journeys for some students, and long queuing times in the absence of a booking system.”

Worryingly, starting from September 2009 universities will be expected to monitor the attendance of overseas students on courses

More worryingly, starting from September 2009 universities will be expected to monitor the attendance of overseas students on courses. Student unions as well as academics from several universities have already expressed their concerns, and some have stated that they are not willing to enter a spying-game with their students, whose absence they will be supposed to report to the UK Border Agency. As reported by The Yorker, academics presented a petition with 4,500 signatures, which was delivered to Downing Street last week.

It is important that we question what is it that justifies the violation of privacy and the singling out of overseas students.

Taking into consideration the wider opposition to the Orwellian principles of those measures, it is important that we question what is it that justifies the violation of privacy and the singling out of overseas students, given that the "bogus colleges” will have already been targeted and stamped out under the ministry checks/approvals and the tougher student-visa requirements. But so far, on the few occasions where this matter has been publicly discussed, the only real concern seems to be whether this will have an adverse effect on the number of foreign applicants. According to the Home Office, overseas currently contribute £2.5bn to the UK economy in tuition fees alone and as much as £8.5bn to the wider economy. The Quality Assurance Agency has stated that many universities are now financially dependent on overseas students.

The truth is that the introduction of those measures has taken aback both current and prospective international students. Those decisions seem to have been premised on the rather baseless assumption that the overwhelming majority of the 220,000 legitimate student-visa holders should be paying the price for a problem that they did not by any means create.

Getting accepted into Oxbridge or York just to get out of one’s nation is not just an unlikely prospect; it is simply irrational.

One can not reasonably argue, however, why a student attending a course in a serious academic institution in the UK, paying a life's worth of savings in tuition fees, should have to endure going through this contemptuous and clearly unnecessary procedure. Getting accepted into Oxbridge or York just to get out of one’s nation is not just an unlikely prospect; it is simply irrational.

By treating all overseas students as potential elaborate lawbreakers or, at best, as a mindless, lucrative source of revenue, the message that is being sent out is loud and clear; and unfortunately it is not a very positive one.

Alternative solutions are not only possible; as a matter of fact they could be considerably more efficient too. Through a more careful consideration of the situation, the new sensible regulations concerning student-visa requirements and ministry approvals/checks could be followed by the adoption of more thoughtful and less encroaching measures, specifically targeting false colleges and crime offenders without indiscriminately putting everyone else in the same box.

You can read Dan Taylor's take on the new immigration laws, here.

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