{"id":221,"date":"2010-03-03T14:21:42","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T13:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colindgordon.net\/?p=221"},"modified":"2012-08-25T14:49:14","modified_gmt":"2012-08-25T13:49:14","slug":"overseas-students-face-severe-new-uk-visa-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/2010\/03\/overseas-students-face-severe-new-uk-visa-restrictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Overseas Students Face Severe New UK Visa Restrictions:"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How\u2019s your level of English? Not so good? In which case, if you\u2019re from outsidethe European Union and thinking of applying to follow a course in the UK \u2013 don\u2019t bother. The British Government doesn\u2019t want you here. That much was already clear from Prime Minister Gordon Brown\u2019s speech on immigration in November 2009 . He promised \u2018consultations\u2019, but in practice appears to have given scant attention to the views of the UK\u2019s Universities and the ELT (English Language Teaching) profession. Sympathetic MPs (Members of Parliament) were lobbied , petitions circulated, all to no effect. In an interview with journalist Andrew Marr\u00a0 (BBC TV1; Sunday 7<sup>th<\/sup> February 2010), Home Secretary Alan Johnson confirmed that the new regulations would come into effect immediately \u2013 that there was no need for additional legislation. His justification for the more stringent measures was that 30% of the people entering the UK do so on student visas and that many of them enrol for \u2018phoney\u2019 short courses, not for university degrees. The Government, he declared, had already closed down \u201c200 bogus colleges\u201d. He did, however, acknowledge that Britain is the\u00a0 \u201csecond most popular international destination\u201d for Higher Education and so they have to be very careful \u201cnot to damage a major part of the UK economy which generates between \u00a35 &#8211; \u00a38 billion for the country\u201d. That, nonetheless, is exactly what many in the UK ELT sector believe could now happen.<\/p>\n<p>The UKBA (UK Border Agency) has subsequently published on its website the\u00a0 details of the \u201ctougher rules\u201d. Among the most significant changes: Students entering the UK for courses of less than 6 months duration are banned from bringing dependents with them. If the enrolment is for a longer period but not for a university degree, their dependents can accompany them but are not allowed to work. Those who do will be removed from the UK. Students following a course \u201dbelow first degree or foundation level\u201d can themselves now work only 10 hours per week during term-time \u2013 a reduction of 50%.\u00a0 Furthermore: \u201c A good standard of English (equivalent of holding just below a GCSE in a foreign language)\u201d\u00a0 &#8211;\u00a0 described as \u201cIntermediate\u201d by the Home Secretary in his BBC TV interview \u2013 \u201cwill be needed to come to the UK to improve English language competency\u201d. The criteria for identifying which course providers count as \u201chighly trusted sponsors\u201d of foreign students will become far more rigorous. Mr Johnson \u201cmakes no apologies for setting out the necessary steps which will maintain the robustness of the system\u201d. He also anticipates that by 2011,Britain will have \u201cthe most sophisticated set-up in the world for checking the people coming into and leaving the country\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>All this raises several crucial issues. Presumably, students already in the UK will be permitted to continue working 20 hours per week \u2013 otherwise they would instantaneously become illegal.\u00a0 Not all Colleges and publishers will agree with the Government\u2019s definition of \u201cIntermediate\u201d. Enrolments for the Beginners, Elementary, Preliminary and Pre-Intermediate courses run by many language schools have traditionally tended to come from non-EU parts of the world such as Latin America. This will no longer be the case and could clearly have an adverse impact on student numbers, income and staff job security. As David Blackie, Director of\u00a0 \u2018International Education Connect\u2019 has pointed out: \u201cMany British institutions, in both the private and public sectors, are faced with a serious problem because of this draconian &amp; arbitrary ruling\u201d. How would we feel, he asks, if the Russians would only give visas to British students wishing to learn Russian if their knowledge of the language was of GCE standard?\u00a0 The solution to \u201cthe rogues in the ELT business\u201d, he asserts, is to deal with them \u2013 not to inflict damage on an industry which does so much for the country\u2019s international standing, contacts and invisible exports.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How\u2019s your level of English? Not so good? In which case, if you\u2019re from outsidethe European Union and thinking of applying to follow a course in the UK \u2013 don\u2019t bother. The British Government doesn\u2019t want you here. That much was already clear from Prime Minister Gordon Brown\u2019s speech on immigration in November 2009 . [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-immigration-visas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223,"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}