The Prime Minister made this known in a post on the X platform with a 15-second video showing three different documents, titled “Foreign Masters Students Bringing Family Members,” “Overseas Care Workers Bringing Family Dependants,” and “Immigration Undercutting British Workers,” all stamped “stopped.”
The UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has said that the country has taken action to reduce migration by cutting down student dependant applications by 80 percent.
The Prime Minister made this known in a post on the X platform with a 15-second video showing three different documents, titled “Foreign Masters Students Bringing Family Members,” “Overseas Care Workers Bringing Family Dependants,” and “Immigration Undercutting British Workers,” all stamped “stopped.”
This comes as a fulfillment of Britain's announcement in 2023 that it would remove the right of some international students to bring family members into the country as part of measures to bring down annual net migration in the country.
Sunak had pledged to bring down legal migration and said that he was considering a range of options to reduce the high levels of arrivals, as part of his promises before the election.
According to Britain’s interior ministry, the new measures, which target postgraduate students except those on research programmes, will help cut migration "substantially" and stop people from using student visas as a backdoor route to find work in Britain.
The immediate former interior minister, Suella Braverman, had been quoted as saying, "We have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of student dependents being brought into the country with visas."
Braverman had announced that from January 1, 2024, international students studying in the UK would no longer be able to bring dependants with them on their UK student visa, aside from those on research postgraduate programmes.
Statistics from the Home Office had reportedly shown that about 136,000 visas were granted to dependants of sponsored students in the year ending December 2022, a more than eightfold increase from 16,000 in 2019.
Times Higher Education had also reported that Braverman had also in a statement said that the government would remove the ability for students to switch out of their student visa to a working visa before they have completed their studies.
The announcement came as part of a range of changes the government has made to reduce migration to the UK, while still committed to its target to host 600,000 international students studying in the UK per year by 2030.
We’ve taken action to reduce migration.
Student dependant applications are now down by 80%. pic.twitter.com/x5dWiUK1F4
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) May 15, 2024