UK Visa Policy: New Immigration Rule Bars Foreign Students From Bringing Family

In a move that could hit Indians, the Rishi Sunak government has announced that international students will no longer be able to bring family members to the UK under new immigration curbs.

"Only international students on postgraduate courses currently designated as research programmes will be allowed to bring in their family members, including children and elderly parents, as their dependants," UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman said in a written statement.

"The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published data in November 2022 which estimated that net migration in the year June 2021 to June 2022 was at 504,000 - up significantly on the previous year, and higher than pre-Brexit volumes. They partly attributed this rise to temporary factors, such as a post-Covid surge and safe and legal routes, like the UK's Ukraine and Hong Kong schemes," he said.

"The immigration statistics also highlighted an unexpected rise in the number of dependants coming to the UK alongside international students. Around 136,000 visas were granted to dependants of sponsored students in the year ending December 2022, a more than eight-fold increase from 16,000 in 2019, when the Government's commitment to lower net migration was made," it added.

"The International Education Strategy plays an important part in supporting the economy through the economic contribution students can bring to the UK, but this should not be at the expense of our commitment to the public to lower overall migration and ensure that migration to the UK is highly skilled and therefore provides the most benefit," the statement said.

UK's new immigration policy: Top 5 takeaways

• Removing the right for international students to bring dependants unless they are on postgraduate courses currently designated as research programmes.
• Removing the ability for international students to switch out of the student route into work routes before their studies have been completed.
• Reviewing the maintenance requirements for students and dependants.
• Steps to clamp down on unscrupulous education agents who may be supporting inappropriate applications to sell immigration not education.
• Better communicating immigration rules to the higher education sector and to international students.
• Improved and more targeted enforcement activity.

"This package strikes the right balance between acting decisively on tackling net migration and protecting the economic benefits that students can bring to the UK. Now is the time for us to make these changes to ensure an impact on net migration as soon as possible. We expect this package to have a tangible impact on net migration. Taken together with the easing of temporary factors, we expect net migration to fall to pre-pandemic levels in the medium term," Braverman said.

Notably, Indians overtook Chinese as the leading nationality granted study visas to the UK. According to the recent data available, there were 87,045 Indian first-year enrolments in 2020-21.