Suella Braverman has announced a crackdown on overseas students bringing family members to the UK as part of a push to reduce net migration.
The home secretary said all foreign students – apart from those on postgraduate research programmes – will be banned from bringing dependents from January 2024.
Ms Braverman said there had been an “unexpected” spike in the number of relatives coming with students – saying the trend could “not be at the expense” of the Tory promise to cut immigration.
Rishi Sunak’s government is also stopping international students from switching from the student via route into work routes before their studies have been completed.
Maintenance requirements for students and their dependants will also be pulled, and Ms Braverman has vowed to clamp down on “unscrupulous education agents who may be supporting inappropriate applications to sell immigration not education”.
Around 136,000 visas were granted to dependants of sponsored students in the year ending December 2022, the government said – an eight-fold increase from 16,000 in 2019.
Despite the crackdown, Ms Braverman insisted that the government was still “committed to attracting the brightest and the best to the UK”.
She added: “Therefore, our intention is to work with universities over the course of the next year to design an alternative approach that ensures that the best and the brightest students can bring dependants to our world leading universities, while continuing to reduce net migration.”
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