Ministers are devising plans to prevent family members of international masters students at British universities from joining them in the UK. Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak braces himself for record-breaking numbers of net migration to the UK.
Interestingly, the Conservatives promised to bring the overall numbers down significantly at the 2019 general election. However, official data is expected to indicate that net migration broke all records in 2022.
A government insider has been reported as saying that the numbers will be high when the data is released by the Office for National Statistics on 25 May.
Consequently, Ministers are now busy developing plans to deal with one area of legal migration that has seen a significant boom recently. That’s right; the plans tend to tackle the number of dependants or family members who accompany overseas masters students to Britain, mostly from Nigeria and India.
The Home Office, the Treasury, and the Department for Education are devising a plan to prevent dependants of masters students on one-year courses from coming to the UK.
An official claimed that the majority of these courses have a duration of nine months, so the new plans would not have any crucial impacts on the UK’s ability to attract talented individuals from different parts of the world.
Another minister also confirmed that the primary focus is now on reducing the number of dependants of masters students migrating to the UK while stating that the government is a long way from David Cameron’s promise to bring down annual net migration drastically.
Furthermore, the Treasury and education secretary, Gillian Keegan, has also accepted the political need to prevent the number of dependants of overseas students from coming to the UK. Don’t forget the Treasury has always been in favour of higher migration previously.
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