Row over 75,000 visas handed out each year to foreign students who never go home

By James Slack

PUBLISHED: 00:31, 13 June 2012 | UPDATED: 00:31, 13 June 2012

Foreign students who fail to return home at the end of their courses push the country’s population up by 75,000 every year, a report revealed last night.

The study by the Migration Watch think tank claims 25,000 remain here illegally.

The remainder either take jobs or are given permission to settle down with a partner or undertake further studies.

Here to stay... A report by Migration Watch claims 75,000 foreign students every year remain in the country after their studies have finished

The report undermines the view of 68 university chancellors who say overseas students should be taken out of the Government’s migration statistics.

The number of students coming into the UK is logged, but the figure for those leaving is not.

In a letter to Prime Minister David Cameron, the Universities UK umbrella group argued that because students went home at the end of their courses there was no need to log them at all.

Migration Watch chairman: Sir Andrew Green

Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable has also pressed the Home office to take a more relaxed attitude to student visas.

In a speech yesterday, he again said: ‘One of our biggest and most successful export industries is higher education. If we are to strengthen it there must be confidence that bona fide overseas students are welcome here, and have the opportunity to work on a managed basis.’

But Migration Watch argues that removing students from Britain’s net migration of 250,000 – which is the difference between the number of people entering the country and those leaving – would ‘destroy public confidence in the Government’s immigration policy’.

Mr Cameron has pledged to cut net migration to ‘the tens of thousands’.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migration Watch, said: ‘Foreign students are valuable, but the present system is far too easily abused. Sadly, the student route has become the back door to Britain and it is wide open.’

The study says that since 2002, two million non-EU and 500,000 EU students have been admitted to Britain to study for more than a year.

But because they are not counted out, the Government ‘has not the slightest idea how many have actually left’.

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