Cleverly Bullish as Restrictions on Legal Migrants Bringing in Dependants Take Effect

Home Secretary James Cleverly arrives in Downing Street, London, on Dec. 12, 2023. Yui Mok/PA Wire

Home Secretary James Cleverly has predicted levels of legal migration will begin to fall as new visa rules came into force which—from Jan. 1, 2024—forbid international students from bringing dependants like children or elderly relatives with them.

The ban affects everyone except those enrolling on postgraduate research courses, such as PhDs, and those whose courses are on government-funded scholarships.

In the year ending September 2023, a total of 152,980 visas were issued to dependants of international students, many of whom are children who are entitled to free education while in the UK.

His predecessor Suella Braverman announced the move in May, shortly before figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) showed net legal migration was running at 672,000 per year.

Last month demographer and author Paul Morland spoke to The Epoch Times about the difficulty of stemming immigration while keeping the British economy going.

He said the government needed to, “clamp down on the burgeoning university sector” which was offering “often not very good degrees” to international students which he said did not offer a, “huge amount of value.”

Students Doing ‘Third Rate Degrees’ and Bringing ’Grandparents’

Mr. Morland said, “the student dependant population among the immigrants has grown enormously” and he said people appeared to be saying, “I’m going to do well a third rate degree and a fourth rate university and I'll bring my grandparents.”

Last month Mr. Cleverly went further and announced that in future care workers and those employed in the NHS who come from overseas will not be allowed to bring dependants.

Immigration is set to be a major battleground at the general election later this year and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged that, as well as pushing through legislation in Parliament to force through the Rwanda policy, he will take tough measures to reduce legal migration.

On Monday the Home Office also published provisional figures for the number of illegal immigrants who crossed the English Channel in 2023.

The figure stood at 29,437, down from the record of 45,774 arrivals in 2022.

Mr. Cleverly said: “This government is delivering on its commitment to the British public to cut migration. We have set out a tough plan to rapidly bring numbers down, control our borders and prevent people from manipulating our immigration system, which will come into force throughout this year.”

Cleverly Targets ‘Unreasonable Practice’

“Today, a major part of that plan comes into effect, ending the unreasonable practice of overseas students bringing their family members to the UK. This will see migration falling rapidly by the tens of thousands and contribute to our overall strategy to prevent 300,000 people from coming to the UK,” he said.

In December the ONS revised its net migration figures and said 745,000 more people had entered the UK legally than had left the country, in the year to December 2022.

Reacting to those figures, Mr. Cleverly announced several measures which he said would reduced net migration by 300,000 a year.

One of the measures was to increase the minimum salary needed in order to bring a foreign spouse to the UK.

Estimates of UK's long-term migration by the Office for National Statistics. The Epoch Times

It was originally raised from £18,600 to £38,700 but ministers later said it would go up instead to £29,000 and then be increased in “incremental stages” until spring 2025.

Experts say many universities have become reliant on foreign student fees and could be affected by a downturn in international students.

‘Cutting off our Nose to Spite our Face’

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute think tank, said: “As a country, we risk cutting off our nose to spite our face. International students benefit the UK in all sorts of ways. For example, they are vital to maintaining our world-class university sector as their fees cross-subsidise the teaching of home students and also help to fund UK research.”

Immigration minister Tom Pursglove said: “Our world-leading universities rightly attract some of the brightest students from around the world to the UK. But we have seen a surge in the number of dependants being brought by students, which is contributing to unsustainable levels of migration.”

Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Labour supports these restrictions on dependants for overseas students on shorter courses. However, this is nothing more than a sticking plaster.”

“The Tories’ complete failure to tackle skills and labour market problems is undermining growth as well as increasing migration,” she added.

PA Media contributed to this report.