60,000 Bogus Students Could Have Entered the UK in 2011

Migration Watch, an UK-based think tank has released a study that indicates that as many as 60,000 bogus students could have entered the UK in 2011 alone.

The study is based on the findings of a Home Office pilot scheme which were published last week. Under the pilot scheme applicants for student visas were interviewed to determine whether they were genuine. This involved two tests – whether they were genuine as students and whether they intended to return home after their studies. The Home Office found that the highest percentage of bogus students came from Burma, where 62% would have been refused a visa on doubts about their credibility. In Bangladesh, India and Nigeria, 59% of students were considered as likely to be bogus. When these proportions were applied to the number of applicants from each country in the pilot, it emerged that the total came to 63,000 potentially bogus students in just one year.

Of those who were potential refusals on credibility grounds, 61% were applying for privately funded colleges, 17% for a publicly funded college and 14% for a university.

Following this pilot, the Home Office has introduced plans to interview 10,000 students a year and has set out the criteria on which they will be judged. But it is now clear that the government has lost its nerve and has dropped the second test (intention to return) from the student interview scheme which comes into force as the end of July.

The Australian authorities – often quoted by the university lobby as a good example of student immigration control – have this very test. Their recent major review considered it to be “The first item of business in assessing a student visa application.”

As for the scale of interviews, 10-14,000 a year have been mentioned but this is only about 10% of the number of applicants from the countries of immigration concern.

Commenting, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migration Watch UK said, “We now have clear evidence of abuse on a major scale. Bogus students come here to work illegally and thus take jobs from British workers. If it is clear from the circumstances that a student is unlikely to go home, the visa should not be granted in the first place. After all, many of the advantages claimed for foreign students depend on their going home after their studies. These half measures simply will not do. The government have bottled out on bogus students. If they are serious about immigration they must face down the self interested demands of the Higher Education sector and pursue the public interest.”

Referring to the letter to the Sunday Times signed by 37 business leaders calling for students to be taken out of net migration, Sir Andrew Green said: “It is, in fact, impossible to take students out of net migration because, unlike the US and Australia, we still have no exit checks so nobody knows how many who came as students have actually left the UK. It seems that business leaders are clueless about immigration policy and will sign whatever is put in front of them.”

Report heralds new chapter in Indo-Australia relations

“The growth of an Indian student presence in Australia has

been messy and tragic. But it heralds an important new chapter in Australia’s

place in its region.” (Robin Jeffrey)

Beyond the Lost Decade, released in Sydney on Tuesday by the Australia-India Institute, throws up some interesting facts about the student crisis and the India-Australia relations.

For instance, according to the report, the first violence against Indian students actually came from Lebanese taxi drivers, migrants from a similar background, who found the new Indian arrivals undercutting them. It was an economic battle between two migrant groups and certainly not a racist attack on Indians. The report also indicated how Indian media magnified it as official policy of racial discrimination.

However, the report stresses on the fact that the student crisis may have done India-Australia relations a good turn. “For Canberra, they have served to emphasise just how important the role and experience of the Indian diaspora can be for a host country in terms of forging ties with Indian government and society.Indian perceptions of other countries are often shaped by the conditions and achievements of the Indian community there.”

The report also ends with many valuable recommendations to improve Indo-Australia relations in higher education such as:

• Undertake as an act of goodwill to extend the visas of Indian students who were in Australia on February 8, 2010, and whose pathways towards permanent residency in Australia were affected by changes to immigration regulations in that year. Such extensions or issuance of alternative categories of visa should be granted for at least 12 months from December 31, 2012.

• Extend the post-study work entitlement currently enjoyed by international students at universities to all TAFE institutes and reputable private colleges offering vocational training.

• Expand the study of contemporary India at Australian universities by providing initial funding for twenty B-level university teaching/research positions for the next five years, after which the universities fund the positions.

India, China to lead with degrees, OECD report

China and India are fast becoming powers to reckon with in the global higher education arena.

According to the recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the two countries will produce about 40 per cent of post secondary degree-holders by 2020. The United States and some European Union countries will produce about 25 per cent.

The report, part of the organization’s series Education Indicators in Focus, takes into account higher education graduates between the ages of 25 and 34 in OECD and Group of Twenty member countries -- 42 countries in total.

The gap between China and the United States -- the two leading producers of graduates in 2010, with 18 and 14 per cent  -- will be significant by 2020. China is expected to produce 29 per cent of all higher education graduates studied in the report, and the United States is expected to produce 11 per cent of all those graduates. India, which produced 11 per cent of graduates in 2010, is expected to overtake the United States and produce 12 per cent of the share of graduates by the end of this decade.