Shocking stories told at a US universities conference in San Diego described Donald Trump’s assaults on research grants, academics and students. Foreign students face deportation for infractions as minor as parking or speeding tickets. A reported 500 student visas have been suddenly revoked – with some students sent to deportation centres, and others told to “self-deport”. With a million foreign students warned by their universities not to travel abroad for fear of never getting back in, that’s a strong deterrent to others deciding whether to study in the US.
Jo Johnson, former minster for universities, King’s College London visiting professor and chair of the Lords education committee, listening to this list of persecutions, spoke to me from San Diego. “The UK should be extending the warmest of welcomes, a safe port in a storm,” he says. Concerns about immigration numbers shouldn’t enter the calculation about attracting foreign students. “We need these highly motivated, highly educated people.” He reels off the great benefits they bring: “They are our second largest export after finance, bringing over £40bn to our economy. Our workforce needs them, with an ageing population and a falling birthrate.” If Britain turns such students away, there will be global competition for them.
But the cabinet in London is tussling between conflicting objectives. Around the table, ministers have agreed immigration numbers need to come down. But agreement ends there. As a result, a white paper on immigration promised for January has been put off until “after Easter”. The conflict divides the Home Office – where, like it or not, Yvette Cooper will be judged on immigration numbers – from other departments needing migrants to meet their goals. The high housing target needs 225,000 more construction workers to build homes and work on green energy projects. With 131,000 vacancies, we need care workers, alongside nurses and medics. And we need the best scientists we can get to swell our life sciences and artificial intelligence ambitions. Add in chefs and hundreds more missing skills.
Of course, that’s not satisfactory. As the Home Office rightly protests, we never trained our own people. Native British snobbery meant we never invested in non-university skills, with further education and apprenticeships rottenly underfunded. It’s good that the government is accelerating this now. But we are where we are. The results will take time, and growth can’t wait.
Meanwhile, some universities are teetering towards bankruptcy, relying on overseas students’ fees – up to £60,000 for an MBA – to subsidise UK students. Overseas students contributed £11.8bn in fees in 2022-23, accounting for 23% of total income. University towns need their spending.
Now the US is crashing in international repute, and the extraordinary fact is that at the last count in 2023, more than a quarter of the world’s countries (58) were headed by someone educated in the UK. Why would we want anything other than more of that mighty soft power? The Home Office says, of course, it wants the world’s brightest and best – but at the same time it says it wants to clamp down on feared abuses of the system.
It doesn’t know how many, but some of the 10,000 people in asylum hostels who first arrived on a visa came as students, and claimed asylum after their degree and two permitted working years had expired. A review last year for the government by the Migration Advisory Committee found that those on a graduate visa earn a similar amount and are in the same level of jobs overall as domestic graduates, many of whom are also not in “graduate jobs”.
Labour is also acutely aware that 52% of the public want immigration cut. Roughly 38,000 asylum seekers are living in publicly funded hotels. A third of asylum claimants arrive undocumented, mostly in small boats. That’s a problem, as any state needs to assert its power to decide who comes in: loose borders feel like losing control. But don’t promise what you can’t deliver: Labour’s “smash the gangs” is barely more convincing than the Tories’ “stop the boats”.
The salience of immigration fluctuates with rising and falling boat numbers: numbers rose 25% last year, and have been rising again this year. The government responds with action, increasing by 21% the number of enforced returns of those refused asylum, with 38% more arrests and visits over illegal working, often in exploitative conditions. Every government has to do all it reasonably can, but the plan to bar naturalisation for anyone who has made a dangerous journey is strongly opposed by migration experts as a useless deterrent that blights tens of thousands of people as “second-class citizens”.
As anti-immigration sentiment has been falling for years, from 86% in 1979 down to 52%, with 66% saying migrants have a positive impact on the economy, don’t fear voters as if they were all Faragists: treat them as grownups. The Institute for Government’s wise report on Thursday calls for an annual migration plan “to end decades of incoherent, disconnected and unpredictable” policies around work visas to “more honestly weigh up the pros and cons of migration”. It would, it says, end the antagonistic relationship between the Home Office and other departments, and give certainty to employers and universities.
Honesty is the key word. Stop treating people as idiots. When asked in detail about immigration, people give sensible answers. Asked who should be admitted, they are positive about every occupation. Though in principle against the “low skilled”, they are in favour of jobs in areas such as hospitality, farming and care work being filled.
How about students? The public are in favour, by 61% with only 27% opposed, according to British Future. Since students make up 40% of total “immigrant” numbers, why not remove from the statistics all except those who eventually stay? Youth mobility for the under-30s will be part of resetting closeness to the EU, and is popular in Britain: these numbers, too, should be kept separate.
The government’s white paper may threaten tighter controls on student visas, but each tightening deters some: the Tories barring students’ dependents just before the election caused a 15% fall, since students from India and Nigeria have families much younger. If growth really is the prime goal, then this is the moment to welcome more people to Britain to study, shunning the hostile US.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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