It has been reported that British immigration authorities have been advised to take a more relaxed approach to foreign students who have overstayed their visas, and not deport them right away unless they have been involved in fraud or have proof of corruption against them.
This has come about as students have been complaining that they were being put under pressure to leave the UK even though they were faced with a genuine delay in seeking to renew their visas.
One example is of a Chinese student studying at Manchester University was handed a deportation order despite the fact that she had made the application for a visa extension. The process was held up because she accidentally put the wrong bank details on the application.
Chief executive of the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) Lin Homer, who stepped in to stop the deportation of the student explained that the student had corrected the mistake and sent the correct payment which arrived a couple of days after her leave expired. Due to the tougher rules introduced, it was refused and she was presented with the deportation orders. Homer acknowledged that it was taking things too far. In order to avoid cases like this, the Director of Enforcement at BIA, Jonathan Lindley, put out a memo to directors last month communicating his concern regarding the forced removal of international students, without taking into consideration the reasons for their overstay.
The memo, which was leaked outlined that due to the current changes to immigration law, there had been a significant increase in the amount of refusals for international students who made applications to remain in the UK once their visa expired. Individuals whose application was out of time by as little as one day were refused leaved to remain and some of those refusals led to enforced removal.
In other parts of the memo Lindley said that he was surprised that such cases were priorities for enforcement teams and that students were being removed so quickly. He goes on to instruct enforcement teams to cease enforcing cases of student refusals unless there is evidence that the students are a priority due to harm.
Tories and Shadow Home Secretary David Davies criticised the move stating that the government had warped priorities that encouraged immigration authorities to ignore those who have no right to remain in the UK.
Fee paying international students are encouraged by British universities because they pay up to three or four times more than British students.
