U.K. Graduate Visas to Stay but Skilled Worker Better Route
The Graduate route was introduced in 2021 to increase the attractiveness of the U.K. as a destination of study, increase the number of international students in higher education and increase the value of education exports.
The Graduate visa route in the United Kingdom should be retained in its current form, a government body has recommended, although potential immigrants may be better off using the Skilled Worker visa route to settle in the country.
"We found no evidence of any significant abuse of the Graduate route" and "by abuse we mean deliberate non- compliance with immigration rules," the Migration Advisory Committee said in a report May 16. "The Graduate route has broadly achieved, and continues to achieve, the objectives set by this government. We therefore recommend that the route remains in place in its current form," it said.
But the Graduate visa route involves paying high tuition fees and now has associated the drawback of not allowing dependants into the country unless students are in a research-based programme. Besides, post-graduate students are allowed to work for up to two years only after their courses and PhD students for three years and this time doesn’t count towards settlement. They must switch to another visa route to qualify to settle in the U.K.
Those looking to immigrate may be better served by using the Skilled Worker visa route as companies in the U.K. are continuously looking for highly skilled employees, especially those who would be willing to invest in the employer company with correspondent benefits. Skilled Worker visa holders can also bring their dependants to the country with their children having access to free education and they will qualify to apply for settlement after five years.
The Graduate route in its current form was introduced in 2021 to increase the attractiveness of the U.K. as a destination of study and assist the government in achieving its ambition to increase the number of international students in higher education and increase the value of education exports.
MAC’s review was commissioned by the Home Office in March following figures of a surge in immigration and allegations that foreign graduates were flooding the jobs market. The U.K. issued 114,400 graduate visas last year, a 57 percent rise from the 73,000 in the preceding year, MAC said, citing Home Office data. It also issued 25,900 visas to dependants of graduates in 2023 compared to 14,000 in the preceding year.
The government is under pressure to curb net migration, which climbed to a record 745,000 in 2022, about three times the annual average before the pandemic. Curbing the inflow of foreigners was a key election plank of the Conservative Party.
The Home Office has said that the immigration numbers will start falling once a series of measures announced in December start to take effect.
They have included scrapping dependant visas for care workers, increasing the threshold salary to qualify for a Skilled Worker visa to £38,700 from £26,200 and disallowing foreign students not involved in research to bring in dependants from January 1, 2024. All of this should help to cut net migration by about 300,000 a year.
MAC said the change seems to be having an impact already with early indications suggesting a 63 percent reduction in the number of deposits paid for the September 2024 intake by international postgraduate applicants compared to the same time in the previous year.
"Any additional restrictions on the Graduate route will likely further exacerbate the decline in international student numbers," MAC said.
The likely consequences would include failing to achieve the target set in the International Education Strategy of 2019, which sought to boost U.K.’s education exports to £35 billion per year and have 600,000 international students studying in the country by 2030. Besides, universities in the U.K. will experience further substantial financial difficulty leading to job losses, course closures and a reduction in research, and possibly result in some institutions failing.
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