Latest Home Office data for the past year until June 2024 released last week shows a 23 per cent fall in Indian students coming to the UK for higher studies, figures that will cause concern among British universities where Indians bring in some of the highest tuition fee revenues.
While Indian nationals continue to dominate the Graduate Route visa category, a fall study visas for Indians is the first statistical indication of the impact of uncertainty around the route’s review last year and also most categories of overseas students being banned from being accompanied by their dependents.
The Home Office statistics noted: “There were 110,006 sponsored study visa grants to main applicants who were Indian nationals in the year ending June 2024 (25 per cent of the total), 32,687 fewer than the previous year.
“Most of the increase in foreign students between 2019 and 2023 were from Indian and Nigerian nationals, but numbers for these nationalities have fallen in the latest year (by 23 per cent and 46 per cent respectively).”
“In the year ending June 2024, Indian nationals represented the largest group of students granted leave to remain on the Graduate Route (67,529), representing almost half (46 per cent) of grants of Graduate Route extensions to main applicants.
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The India-UK Young Professionals Scheme, offering a two-way flow of young graduates to live and work in either country for up to two years, brought in 2,234 Indian nationals since the first ballot was held in February last year. This figure indicates a lower uptake than expected, given a 3,000-visa annual cap under this scheme.
Meanwhile, Indians continued to top the international travel revenue charts for the past year, with 25 per cent of UK Visitor Visas granted followed by Chinese nationals accounting for 24 per cent.
Under other work visa categories, the number of grants for Health and Care Worker main applicants fell by 81 per cent to 6,564 grants between April and June 2024, compared with the same period in 2023 when there were 35,470 grants. The number of grants to main applicants on other routes in the “Worker” visa category, which includes Skilled Worker visas, has increased by 79 per cent since 2021, but in the latest year has fallen by 3 per cent.
In an article penned in ‘The Daily Telegraph’, Home Office Minister for Migration and Citizenship Seema Malhotra stressed: “Immigration has always been important to Britain, but it needs to be properly controlled and managed so the system is fair, and works in our country’s best interests.
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“At the Home Office, we are determined to reform the immigration system so that it is properly working for our economy too. A disparate, disconnected system of the kind we inherited is doomed to fail. So we will ensure that the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), Skills England, the Industrial Strategy Council and the DWP are all working together to ensure our policies and decisions on immigration, skills and growth are all properly intertwined.”