Britain announced on Tuesday that it would restrict the ability of certain international students to bring family members into the country as part of its efforts to reduce annual net migration, which reached a record high last year.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised to reduce legal migration as part of his campaign promises ahead of an election next year, and he said last week that he was considering a variety of options to reduce the high levels of arrivals.
According to the interior ministry, the new measures will help to reduce migration “substantially” and prevent people from using student visas as a backdoor route to finding work in the UK.
“We have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of student dependents being brought into the country with visas,” Interior Minister Suella Braverman said in a statement.
This is the correct course of action because it will allow us to retain the students who contribute the most to the economy while also protecting our public services.
According to the British government, the number of dependents of postgraduate students studying for nine months or longer has increased eightfold since 2019, reaching 136,000 people last year.
The new regulations will take effect in January, well ahead of the expected release of annual net migration estimates for 2022 on Thursday. The annual net migration for the fiscal year ending June 2022 reached a new high of 504,000.
Braverman added that numbers should return to pre-pandemic levels in the medium term, though he did not specify a time frame.
Legal immigration has long dominated British political discourse, and it was a major driving force behind the Brexit referendum in 2016.
The British interior ministry also announced that international students will no longer be able to switch from the student route to the work route before the completion of their studies.
It also stated that 486 thousand student visas were issued in 2016, accounting for the majority of all visas issued for entry into the United Kingdom.
