“Immigration is too high. Today we’re taking radical action to bring it down,” Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, tweeted on December 4, which sent a wave of worry across groups of Indian students who are already in the UK or aspire to go in the next few years. As Canada and Australia have also been tightening their immigration policies, including for student visas, the UK was not a country that Indians were expecting to hear this line from, especially at a time when the government is being led by someone of Indian heritage.
According to a report published by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) in 2018, there are over 750,000 students who head to the UK to study each year – in higher and further education, in independent and language schools. Some come for short English language courses, others for PhDs at the frontier of scientific research. Since that report, there has been a large rise in the number of student visas issued. The total number of visas issued in 2019 was 404,400, growing to 623,700 in 2022, as per the latest MAC report.
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