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The UK government is set to conduct a review of the Graduate Route visa allowing overseas students a two-year post-study work option. This visa was announced in September 2019 and enforced by former home secretary Priti Patel in July 2021.
Since then, 42 per cent of the 176,000 students granted a Graduate Route visa were Indian nationals, which means any changes to this category will have a significant impact on Indians.
“I wouldn’t like to get into exactly what they (Home Office) are going to ask us to look at but there are a range of options there,” MAC Chair Professor Brian Bell told reporters in a virtual media briefing.
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“At the moment, essentially, there’s no restriction on what you can do (under the Graduate Route); if you’ve got the money, you can just sit around and do nothing in the UK for two years… You could obviously restrict it to being certain types of job or certain types of activity that you would choose and also limit it in terms of what universities you went to, what courses you did if you wanted to limit it… I’m not saying that would be something that the committee would recommend, but it will be something we will certainly consider in an overall review,” he said.
In its annual report, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) stated that “the government needs to decide what the purpose of the graduate route is. If the objective is to attract talented students who will subsequently work in high-skilled graduate jobs, then we are sceptical that it adds much to the Skilled Worker route which was already available to switch into after graduation, and we expect that at least a significant fraction of the Graduate Route will comprise low-wage workers,” the report stated.
Meanwhile, the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced that the government will now be taking strict actions to reduce the number of immigrants in the country, and a ban on dependent visa for all international students (except research students) will be one of the measures taken for it.
(With inputs from PTI)
