The Indian Workers’ Association(Great Britain) condemned the racist , divisive and sexist discriminatory ban on international student dependents by the Tory government and called the Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s announcement as penalising of international students community who are already paying three times the University fees compared to their UK peers. These overseas students are squeezed further in terms of housing costs, employment etc and they also make full payments for health care, which they rarely avail. All this bundled into king-size ransom must be paid just be able to enter UK, the GB observed.
The Tory government ban on foreign students for bring dependants to Britain will have hit Indian students the Most as well as Nigeria - the two countries that have filled the gap for Universities replacing Chinese students that turned away owing to hostile and racist experiences they have had at hands of Tories in Britain.
The decision announced by Suella Braverman on Tuesday , to prevent students from being joined by their dependents from January 2024 as they progress in their studies, is divisive and puts families seeking to reunite into distress.
This is a targeted and calculated step to play the immigration numbers game with an eye on the election in 2024. The Government is expecting the immigration to UK , based on the data from the Centre for Policy Studies to have gone up from 500K in June 2022 to 700K by June this year.
According to Home Secretary Braverman it is apparently ‘the right balance between acting decisively on tackling net migration and protecting the economic benefits that students can bring to the UK.”
In order to justify this discriminatory ban , Braverman claims of an 8 times increase in the number of visas granted to dependents of international students from 16 thousand to 136 thousand.
However, Braverman conveniently omits the fact that these international students annually generate £41.9 billion for the UK economy. This data from the Universities in UK reinforce the powerful economic claim that the contribution by international students vastly outweigh the costs.
This hostile act by the Home Secretary in conjunction with the Department of Education and the Treasury demonstrates the desperate attempt by the sinking Tory Government to shore up its declining vote bank based on its old divisive reactionary policies.
The Indian Workers’ Association is calling for solidarity with international students and opposition to these draconian measures. The IWA believes that they bring skills, knowledge and make a financial contribution to the UK economy which should be warmly welcomed.
International students facing financial hardship and emerging from Covid , should be allowed to work for more than the current 20 hours without facing threats of deportation and exploitation from employers.
The IWA sees these announcements as tip of the iceberg as the government prepares for further such measures, possibly:
- Crackdown on unscrupulous education agents (reminiscent of TOEIC under Theresa May as Home Secretary)
- Review of maintenance requirements for students and dependents - with a likely increase in cost.
- Prevent the ability for students to transfer from the students route to work, said Harsev Bains, the National Vice President of Indian Worker’s’ Association, GB.
