Backing for May’s tough stance on overseas students
FOREIGN students should not be taken out of immigration figures, a major report will warn today.
A year-long study by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), which provides evidence for Government immigration policy, will conclude that it is right that students should be counted in the same way as other migrants moving to the UK.
The finding is a vindication for Theresa May, who has spent years resisting pressure to soften her stance on immigration.
The report was commissioned last year by then-Home Secretary Amber Rudd, who was leading the campaign in Cabinet to persuade Mrs May to back down.
But Whitehall sources said the study had found that the UK’s system for recording the number of foreign students was ‘very much in line with other Englishspeaking countries’.
The report is expected to say: ‘Many of the respondents argued that students should be taken out of the government’s net migration target. None suggested a practical way that this might be done.
‘We cannot see a reliable method. Even if a method were to be found, it would be unlikely to make much difference to the migration statistics.’
The study also notes that the number of foreign students in the UK has risen by almost 30 per cent over the last decade,
‘Unlikely to make much difference’
despite claims that the existing rules act as a disincentive. It will increase Mrs May’s determination not to remove foreign students from the long- standing Tory target of slashing net immigration to below 100,000 a year.
About 438,000 foreign students are currently studying in the UK – up from 342,000 a decade ago. Removing them from the statistics could make a significant difference to headline immigration figures.
Mrs May resisted the move for years as Home Secretary, warning that excluding foreign students would be seen by voters as an attempt to ‘fiddle the figures’.
But supporters of the change argue that exit checks have shown that the vast majority of foreign students do not overstay their welcome in this country.
A Home Office study last summer found that 97 per cent of foreign students either left when their visa expired or were granted permission to stay.