The United Kingdom is set to ban foreign students from bringing their spouses and children to the UK unless they study “high-value” degrees.
According to The Times, the UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, are increasingly concerned after a near-eightfold rise in the number of family members joining foreign students.
New immigration figures revealed that 490,763 students were given visas in 2022.
The students were accompanied by 135,788 dependants – spouses and children – up from 16,047 in 2019.
The figures also showed that the asylum backlog hit a record high, with more than 160,000 migrants waiting for decisions on their applications.
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Some of the degrees considered important to the UK government include science, maths, and engineering.
The UK allows dependants to accompany their spouses or parent(s) who have a valid student visa.
In 2022, Nigeria and India emerged as the countries with the highest number of students bringing their relatives to the United Kingdom.
According to an analysis of the Home Office in the United Kingdom, 34,000 Nigerian students accounted for 31,898 dependants, while 93,100 Indian students accounted for 24,916.
Libya had 455 dependants and 272 main applicants, meaning there were more dependants than students.
The Home Office figures in August 2022 revealed that the number of visas for foreign nationals to live, study, and work in the UK exceeded a million for the first time.
Students accounted for a large proportion of overall immigration, with numbers up by 60 per cent in a year, from 256,000 to nearly 411,000 in the year to June 2022, while the number of dependants increased by 170 per cent from 29,700 to 81,100.
An analysis of Home Office data further revealed that the number of dependants of foreign students granted visas increased five-fold in just three years, from 13,664 in 2019 to 81,089 in the year ending June 2022.
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