Sunday 16 December 2012

New tough immigration measures

I see no difficulty with the proposition that mass immigration can be controlled, but we welcome the students who legitimately want to come and study in this country. This week the Home Secretary announced new measures to combat the immigration abuse associated with student visas - an issue Labour let spiral out of control. The new measure follow news, as reported on the blog last week, that the government’s tough reforms have cut net immigration by a quarter.
To tackle bogus student visa applications, the border agency’s interviewing programme will be radically extended. Recent pilots found that student visa applications were subject to abuse because many of the checks were paper-based and therefore easier to fake. To address this the number of interviews for those applying for UK student visas will be considerably increased.
Official statistics, released two weeks ago, show that in the year to March, net immigration to Britain has fallen by one quarter. This is a reduction of 59,000 people – the biggest fall in net migration since 2008.

Although the number of people entering the UK on student visas has fallen by 26% in the year to September, the number of foreign students coming to study at UK universities has shown an encouraging increase.
The Labour party made a speech on this issue this week but refused to accpet that they got it wrong when they had uncontrolled immigration. All the papers rightly rubbish the Labour position: see:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2248433/Labour-t-face-facts-immigration.html