The United Kingdom has declared that it has started enforcing its policy prohibiting international students, including those from Nigeria, from bringing in dependents through study visas.
The news was made on Monday by the UK Home Office in a post on X.
Nonetheless, the Home Office revealed that students on government-sponsored scholarships or those engaged in postgraduate research will not be affected by the change.
“We are fully committed to seeing a decisive cut in migration. From today, new overseas students will no longer be able to bring family members to the UK. Postgraduate research or government-funded scholarships students will be exempt,” the Home Office said.
FACTUALNEWSNG reports that the UK government aims to bring down immigration into the country which stands at about one million.To avoid abuse of the visa system, the new rule will eliminate the ability for overseas students to transition from the student route into the employment route before their studies are finished.
A statement on the UK’s Home Office official site adds that the “New government restrictions to student visa routes will substantially cut net migration by restricting the ability for international students to bring family members on all but post-graduate research routes and banning people from using a student visa as a backdoor route to work in the UK.
“The ONS estimated that net migration was over 500,000 from June 2021 to June 2022. Although partly attributed to the rise in temporary factors, such as the UK’s Ukraine and Hong Kong schemes, last year almost half a million student visas were issued while the number of dependants of overseas students has increased by 750 per cent since 2019, to 136,000 people.”
Additionally, the Home Office stated that the government’s commitment to the public to reduce overall migration and guarantee that immigration to the UK is highly skilled and beneficial is not compromised by this new rule.
According to them, the proposal is aimed at allowing “the government to continue to meet its International Education Strategy commitments while making a tangible contribution to reducing net migration to sustainable levels. The government has also made clear that the terms of the graduate route remain unchanged.”
