The number of people entering the UK on student visas has dropped significantly after the government cracked down on allowing overseas students to bring dependants.
From 1 January 2024, foreign students studying in the UK can no longer bring dependants with them on their UK student visa, aside from those on certain postgraduate research programmes.
This has led to an 80% drop in the number of dependants accompanying students, the Home Office said, and student visa applications dropped by 26,000 between January and March 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.
Further changes to immigration rules that came into force in February and March, including increasing the salary threshold for a skilled worker visa from £26,000 to £38,700, and the minimum income required to sponsor someone for a spouse or partner visa up from £18,600 to £29,000, have also fuelled a drop in migration figures.
Visa numbers
The Home Office added that measures that came into effect in March restricting care workers from bringing dependants into the UK were yet to bear fruit, with dependant applications on the health and care visa still outnumbering main applicants.
Since January, the Home Office has granted 139,100 visas to skilled workers, skilled workers in health and care, and students, down from 184,000 in the same period last year.
Home secretary James Cleverly said: “Ever-spiralling numbers were eroding the British people’s confidence in our immigration system, burdening public services and suppressing wages.
“When I promised to deliver the largest-ever cut in legal migration, I knew we must also work to show the impact of our action as soon as practically possible.”
Cleverly said the “significant fall” in visa numbers showed why action had been necessary to cut the number of dependants entering the country with care workers and people on student visas.
He added: “This does not mark the end of the road in our plan to cut migration, there is more still to come. Over the coming months, we will continue to show the pace of our progress as we deliver the control the public rightly expects.”
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the government’s measures were insufficient to deal with “trebling net migration”.
According to the most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics, net migration hit a record high of 745,000 in 2022, a number that was described as “unsustainable” and “unacceptable” by Conservative backbenchers.
“That is down to their incompetence in managing our borders and our labour market,” Cooper told The Times newspaper.
“They are still failing to take the comprehensive measures needed to improve skills and training – and there has been little change in the issuance of skilled worker visas outside of health and social care.”
The latest visa figures were announced just as the UK returned its first failed asylum seeker to Rwanda under a “voluntary removals programme”, separate to the controversial returns scheme that became law last week.
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