Prime Minister David Cameron has attempted to allay fears in non-EU countries that overseas students are no longer welcome in Britain by announcing that there are “no limits” on the number of genuine students who can study in the UK.
Speaking on his second visit to India, Mr Cameron said: “My message is very clear. We want to attract the brightest and the best to Britain whether you’re a student, a post-grad, entrepreneur or businessman. If you’re a genuine student studying at a genuine institution, you will get your visa. There are no limits on numbers”.
Mr Cameron is known to be courting Indian and Chinese investment as the economies of the two Asian giants continue to buck international trends. He has been noticeably less effusive about encouraging students from other non-EU nations.
The importance of Britain as a place study for students from Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, cannot be overstated. After China and India, Nigeria sends the highest number of students to study in the UK. According to UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA) statistics, 78,715 students came to study here from the People’s Republic of China in the academic year ending 2012. India provided 29,900 and Nigeria 17,620 over the same period. However, when the populations of the respective countries are taken into account, a significantly different picture emerges. China’s total represents 5.7 students for every 100,000 of the country’s population, while India sends 2.4 students per 100,000. For every 100,000 Nigerians, 10 come to the UK to study – more than four times the number, per capita, that come from India.
The impact of measures widely seen as an effort to ‘freeze out’ non-Europeans has been felt most keenly in Africa, where delegations despatched specifically to allay concerns in this regard are notable for their absence. The recently shelved visa bond scheme was abandoned earlier this month largely, one suspects, due to threats from Indian investors.
Indeed the Cameron/May/Harper triumvirate seem to have created a science out of announcing outrageous policies only to then recant as the ‘good guys’. The cynic in me cannot shake off the idea, for example, that immigration minister Mark Harper knew he could not, in all conscience, reintroduce his unpopular ‘go home or face arrest’ victimisation vans, but was even more aware that the continuing controversy he could inevitably cause by grimly clinging to the threat of doing so would ensure more people would become aware of the vans than would ever have seen them on the streets.
Mr Cameron and his government are caught between two stools; their desire to “attract the brightest and the best” to study and work in Britain and their manifesto commitment to cut net annual immigration to “tens of thousands”, interpreted as below 100,000 a year.
Immigration from Commonwealth countries to the UK has been a bone of contention for some time. In the days of the British Empire, there was relatively free migration between the UK, the colonies and the other territories for those that could afford it but, until the onset of mass air travel in the latter part of the twentieth century, travel between continents was comparatively rare.
When West Indians started to come to Britain in large numbers 60 years ago, it was a response to the ‘mother’ country’s need to rebuild following six years of war. Those hard working men and women were the descendants of millions of men and women whose own hard work might have been useful in building the continent of their birth, had they been allowed the opportunity. Instead, the weak and infirm whose value as beasts of burden was limited were left with the task.
The infrastructure that is proving so attractive to overseas students and workers was created using resources, both human and mineral, pillaged from the very nations that the British government have the temerity to term ‘high risk’. If these nations are indeed ‘high risk’ it is because their people feel ‘at risk’. At risk because of historical atrocities and double-dealing that, perhaps understandably, successive British leaders and those they lead feel no particular responsibility for, but which, they will have to concede, created a world order whose balance it is time to redress.
I am reminded of a debate I once had at school too many years ago for me to readily admit to. I responded to one teacher’s contention that “the slaves were given their freedom” by suggesting that freedom can only be taken. For whoever holds the power to confer freedom must surely have the power to take it away at will. Perhaps it is for this reason that I would have liked to see the visa bond trialled, if only to witness Mr Cameron’s reaction to the affirmative action by the affected nations that would certainly have ensued.
