John Humphrys asks: are foreign students benefiting Britain?
Immigration has become one of the hottest issues in British politics. It is in largely responsible for UKIP’s recent successes and will stay at the forefront of political argument in the months leading up to next May’s general election. But Lord Heseltine, the former deputy prime minister, and Nick Clegg, the current one, argue that including foreign students in the immigration numbers makes no sense and serves only to damage Britain. Are they right?
The broad outlines of political controversy over immigration are clear enough. Supporters of a liberal immigration policy argue that immigration is good for the economy, for the functioning of many of our public services and for the cultural diversity of the country, making it a richer place in which to live in every sense. Opponents say large-scale immigration takes jobs away from British-born workers, especially among the lower-paid, places excessive burdens on public services such as housing, schools and the NHS, and threatens the very identity of those communities in which large numbers of immigrants settle.
The huge inflow of eastern European immigrants from newly-joined EU countries under the last Labour government was what pushed the issue right up to the top of the political agenda and the Tories promised to do something about it. But, in alliance with their LibDem coalition partners, they have set about the task in what some see as a slightly odd way.
The Tory aim - not shared by the LibDems - is to cut net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’ by next year. What’s odd about this target is that it is very difficult to control. For one thing, the net migration figure (the difference between the number emigrating and the number immigrating) is in part dependent on something over which the government has no control at all: the number of people choosing to emigrate. On the other side of the spectrum membership of the European Union requires Britain to allow anyone from another EU country to come to live and work here if they choose to do so.
That means that the only part of the equation the government can directly affect is the number of non-EU immigrants coming to Britain. Unsurprisingly then, the government is having little success in getting the net migration figures down to its target. In 2013, the figure was 212,000 more people entering than leaving, a lot higher than ‘tens of thousands’. No one expects the Tories to meet their 2015 goal.
One approach is to try to reduce non-EU immigration, including the many foreign students allowed into the country. Back in 2010 there were over 300,000. Last year the government had succeeded in reducing it to 219,000. In part it did so by closing down bogus student courses which were providing visas for young foreigners who had no real intention of studying here but who were using the student visa route to get into the country.
Lord Heseltine, the deputy prime minister in the last Conservative government, thinks the general focus on foreign students is not only misguided but also self-defeating. His point is that insofar as there are legitimate public concerns about the effect of large-scale immigration on public services and the cohesion of communities, students are ‘not the sort of people that are causing anxiety about immigration. … The public do not see students who come and go as part of the immigration problem’.
His argument is that the overwhelming majority of such students come here to study, get their degrees and then go home where, it is to be hoped, they become ‘ambassadors for Britain’. To restrict their numbers is to damage the British universities where they wish to study for the simple reason that that deprives those universities of the fees foreign students pay, fees that are usually higher than those charged to British students.
Lord Heseltine says these students, far from being a burden to Britain, are net contributors to it: ‘In talking about tens of thousands of people, the government will have to recognise that there are very large numbers of students in this country – in our universities, in our business schools – who are a great asset financially and educationally.’
In this he has been supported by Labour’s shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna, who said: ‘ Higher education is one of the UK’s biggest exports, with over £10bn a year to our economy, which this Tory-led government has played fast and loose with. We do want stronger controls on temporary student visas for short courses – because these visas are being abused – but legitimate university students from overseas, who bring so much to our economy, should be removed immediately from the net migration target.’
In India this week Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, lent support to their case. His party, the LibDems, have never gone along with the Tory focus on net migration, arguing that it doesn’t ‘make any sense’. As Mr Clegg put it in Delhi: ‘You could have a million leave, a million come in and you’ve met your target’.
Specifically, he criticised the cap on the number of places available to foreign students to study medicine and dentistry in this country and he added: ‘We just need to be alive to the fact that we’re in a race here, with an increasing number of Indian students going to America, others obviously going to Australia.’ He and others are worried that the government’s determination to control foreign student numbers in order to reduce the net migration total are sending out a message that Indian students, among others, are not welcome here and so will be deterred from applying in the first place.
But the Home Office, under the Conservative Theresa May, is resisting this pressure. A spokesman defended the current policy by arguing that foreign students do have ‘an impact on our communities and public services’. He added that the policy was not deterring genuine foreign students from applying to British universities and that applications this year were 7% up on last year.
This is unlikely to silence the government’s critics such as Lord Heseltine. He is worried by what he thinks the government’s policy is doing to Britain’s reputation abroad and by the lost economic opportunity it entails. What’s likely to weigh more heavily with the leadership of the Conservative Party, though, is the thought that if they were to follow his advice they would, in effect, be abandoning their policy of trying to restrict net migration and in an election year they almost certainly feel that is too risky a venture.
What’s your view?
- What do you make of the government’s overall immigration policy?
- Do you think the focus on net migration makes sense or not?
- Should foreign students be counted in the numbers?
- Do you share Lord Heseltine’s opinion that foreign students are ‘not the sort of people that are causing anxiety about immigration’?
- How important do you think the ‘export’ argument is, namely that foreign students provide vital revenue to British universities and that we should be trying to maximise it, not restricting it?
- And do you think it is harmful to Britain’s reputation in the world to be thought to be restricting access to foreign students who wish to come here to learn?
