Theresa May’s clampdown on international students is a mystery （802 words）

是 否 +2 论坛币

k人 参与回答

经管之家送您一份

应届毕业生专属福利!

求职就业群

赵安豆老师微信：zhaoandou666

经管之家联合CDA

送您一个全额奖学金名额~ !

立即领取

感谢您参与论坛问题回答

经管之家送您两个论坛币！

+2 论坛币

Theresa May’s clampdown on international students is a mystery （802 words）

By Michael Skapinker

-----------------------------------------------------

With Brexit negotiations expected to start soon, Theresa May will strive to achieve what she believes most Leave voters want: a significant reduction in immigration. It will be difficult. Incomers from outside the EU are already subject to strict entry criteria, yet the most recent statistics show that a net 164,000 non-EU immigrants came to the UK in the year to September 2016 — nearly as many as the 165,000 that came from the EU.

If border checks have left non-EU immigration at this level, why would imposing post-Brexit controls on EU citizens bring their numbers down? That is a problem for the prime minister. A net 56,000 UK citizens left to live abroad last year, leaving the net migration figure at 273,000, slightly down on the year before, but nowhere near the Conservative government’s promise to reduce it to less than 100,000.

With hospitals, farms and sandwich shops saying they cannot manage without foreign labour, Mrs May is likely to aim at one of her favourite targets: foreign students. At the Conservative party conference in October, Amber Rudd, the home secretary, promised tougher controls on international students who wanted to enrol at UK universities.

This is alarming for the universities, and for the UK. Britain has traditionally attracted more foreign students than any country except the US. Competitors such as Australia would love to have them instead. Many UK courses, particularly at graduate level, would struggle to survive without foreign students. The associated jobs, academic and non-academic, would be at risk.

So why are students included in the immigration numbers? Mrs May says it is because international migration standards include everyone coming to the country for more than 12 months, whether to work, join their families or study.

This is true but, as Yvette Cooper, the Labour MP, told the prime minister during parliamentary committee hearings in December, while the government may need to include students in its immigration figures, there is no international norm requiring it to include them in its immigration target.

Indeed, there is no obligation on the government to have an immigration target, let alone one of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands. And if it insists on one, Oxford university’s Migration Observatory has pointed out that the easiest way to get close to it would be to stop counting international students — there were 134,000 of them last year — as immigrants.

It is not as if there is public pressure to keep students out. Most people in the UK do not think of foreign students as immigrants. A Migration Observatory poll in 2011 found that while 69 per cent of people wanted immigration to come down, only 29 per cent regarded students as immigrants.

Nor would a decision by Mrs May to stop counting students as immigrants upset her cabinet. As Ms Cooper pointed out, Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, the chancellor, and Ms Rudd have all suggested taking students out of the figures.

At the same hearing, Andrew Tyrie, a Conservative MP, said: “Most people agree that students are a huge success story for the UK. They are a major British export.” Wasn’t it time to take them out of the immigration statistics? Mrs May batted his question away.

So if the international student battle is Mrs May’s alone why is she waging it? Karan Bilimoria, who came to the UK from India as an international student and is now chancellor of Birmingham university and a member of the House of Lords, told me that when it came to immigration Mrs May was “economically illiterate”.

Does Mrs May insist on counting students as immigrants because she believes many stay on after they finish studying? The Migration Observatory agrees that official figures show that many more students arrive in Britain than leave, but the counting of people coming and going from the UK is not a science. It is based on interviewing a sample at airports and ports.

As Financial Times research has found, these interviews take place between 6am and 10pm, excluding late night flights, a third of which are to China, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Singapore — countries from which the UK attracts many international students.

The Times reported in October that a more precise government study had found that only 1 per cent of international students overstayed their visas. The government rejected a Freedom of Information request to release the report.

Mrs May has insisted on keeping students in the immigration figures for so long that it would be hard for her to change now, even though it would reassure UK universities and help her reach her post-Brexit immigration goals. I asked an adviser to the Home Office during Mrs May’s tenure as home secretary why she was so obdurate on this subject. The answer? It is a complete mystery.

扫码加我 拉你入群

请注明：姓名-公司-职位

以便审核进群资格，未注明则拒绝

分享0 收藏0 回帖