IMMIGRATION MINISTER CLAMPS DOWN ON OVERSEAS STUDENTS WHO STAY AFTER STUDIES
Competition for graduate jobs in the UK could soon be reduced after a Home Office minister announced that overseas students who have been studying at British universities will be sent home after graduation, under tougher controls on student visas.
Immigration Minister Damian Green said that the current system, under which overseas (non EU) graduates are allowed to remain in Britain for two years after finishing their studies was “too generous” and was helping to push up unemployment among domestic students. Green said:
“It’s obviously a worry for any graduate looking for work in a very difficult jobs market and it seems to me that it is wrong to allow unfettered access to the jobs market to anyone from overseas.
“It is putting unnecessary extra strain on our graduates. It is important that we have a proper, fair playing field for British graduates.”
Graduate Fog is not quite sure what to make of all this. On one hand, it all sounds a bit ‘Daily Mail’ — “Let’s blame the foreigners for everything that’s wrong with our country.” On the other hand, with new graduates more than twice as likely as the rest of the population to be unemployed, should we be prioritising getting British graduates into work – in British jobs – by reducing the number of non-British graduates they have to compete with?
Does anyone know any more about the stats on this? I’m afraid I have no idea of the numbers. How many overseas students currently graduate from British universities every year — and how many of them stick around and look for work? Is it a big enough number to have a significant impact on the job market if they were removed after graduation?
My instinct is that overseas (remember, we only mean non-EU) students are a fairly small proportion of the total number of graduates in the UK. And obviously – even if we wanted to – there is nothing we can do to remove EU students once they have graduated, as we’re all free to work wherever we like within the Europe.
In other words, I suspect that the true scale of the ‘graduate problem’ is far too big to be solved by one tiny tweak to immigration policy. The idea that kicking out a few foreigners would make a significant difference to anything removes the spotlight from the real problem, which is that British firms simply aren’t creating enough paid, entry-level jobs for the vast number of graduates currently looking for work in this country.
“the true scale of the ‘graduate problem’ is far too big to be solved by one tiny tweak to immigration policy”
Nail. Head.
In my opinion, this is nothing more than a scapegoat. It’ll take a lot more than blaming foreign students for the UK’s labour problems/excluding them from the labour market to solve this issue. And it’s completely a step in the wrong direction. The education system needs to be rethought and reformed to become more vocational and more support needs to be provided for unemployed graduates. Blaming foreign students is a foolish road to go down; if anything the obscene amount of money they pay to British universities should absolutely entitle them to seek work in the UK after graduation, if they choose to…
This view does seem controversial and whilst I disagree with it, there is an uncomfortable issue here worth highlighting.
A lot of foreign graduates studying in the UK are very talented and deserve for their efforts to get the top jobs. We have race discrimination laws for a reason. The issue is that, and I witnessed it first hand, education and work ethoses vary across nationalities. I spent some time studying in China, and students there never skip lectures, always hand their work in on time, and study for far longer hours than myself and my friends do. I’m not saying this applies to everyone, but it is what I have seen.
Mr Green desires “proper, fair playing field for British graduates”, the leveling of that playing field, is up to us graduates, and what right does he have to say it is unfair? If he admits that then he is certainly hinting that British graduates are as Tanya’s previous article described ‘entitled, lazy and illiterate’.
If foreign graduates are stealing jobs from British graduates, then it is only because they are the better candidates for the jobs, and arguably their work/education ethic may be behind that. If any British graduate is sat there wondering if what Mr Green is saying is true, ask yourself the following question:
Do I value a negligible increase in my own chances at landing a job over the fair chance for all talented young from across the globe to do the same?
I for one do not. But as the graduate market grows worse that view could change in the minds of others.
As one of the “overseas students stealing British jobs” who has chosen to stay on for two years after graduating, let me say the following: the job market is no picnic for us either.
What is left out of the debate (which Christopher has rightly highlighted) is the fact that though we may be a small proportion of the graduates, we pay a significantly higher rate of tuition – in fact, I would hazard a guess that many universities would have to significantly raise the fees for U.K. students were it not for the higher fees brought in by overseas students. Put simply, overseas students help keep universities afloat – without us, fees would have to be higher, thus forcing many British students to choose between higher debt or not attending university at all. While we might be “taking up jobs for British graduates,” we are also allowing more British students TO graduate in the first place. (And yes, I anticipate the response that it’s still cheaper to go to a U.K. university than many overseas ones – but that doesn’t negate the fact that it’s money in the system that would otherwise be absent).
Let me also add that the two years post graduation are not an easy step into subsequent U.K. citizenship – I have a friend who has been in the country for seven years (five undergrad, two on the post-study work visa, and a native English speaker), and her claim to citizenship was flat-out rejected. We’re also ineligible to claim any sort of unemployment benefits (fair enough), so it’s very much sink or swim for us, unlike our British counterparts. (Not that unemployment benefits are a treat for anyone, but still, it’s a safety net that we are not afforded).
We may be here for two years – but trust me, they have absolutely no scruples about turfing us out after that time. Plus, a two-year stay after paying four years of £10,000+ tuition doesn’t seem to me to be a riotously unfair trade-off.
We may take up jobs temporarily, but as we’re not here for longer than 2 years, it seems unlikely that we’re blocking anyone from a career – I think you have to look elsewhere for the true cause of that.
I’d agree this is a bit of posturing by the Minister, to pretend the government is doing something about unemployment and to appease the anti-immigrant Right.
The policy won’t “save” more than a very few graduate jobs AND it may have the knock-on effect of discouraging employers in non-EU countries from employing our nationals.
The national problem we’re faced with is discovering how we can all earn a decent living in the 21st century.
The politicians of both the main parties have repeatedly dodged this central economic and social issue for donkey’s years. Our national press rarely holds them to account for their lack of action – the Guardian (through John Harris’s columns) does more than most.
Don’t be fooled, they do this crap to play us out against ourselves. They know we won’t strike. They know we will go for the unpaid jobs, so rather then to keep us moaning, they want us to fight amongst ourselves and blame the people who supposedly take the jobs from us.
Well, if we do, then shouldn’t we blame the companies who replaced the entry-level jobs with Internships? They are the ones taking the jobs away from us don’t they? But then again I’m not from the UK nor do I want to move to the UK. I just find this excuse the latest conservative scheme to get more votes and to let the “riffraff and plebs” fight amongst themselves. All the while they cut themselves a bigger share of the pie.
In the end it will come down to strikes, it might take one year, it might take ten years, but it will come down to that. They might have become smarter in their ways of keeping the working classes down, with psychology and money schemes, but people eventually will notice. We are just at a new Class Struggle era, Class Struggle 2.0.
PS: Pardon me for my abhorrent use of the Queen’s English; I’m not a native speaker.
PSS: Sorry for the double post the first one somehow cut off my first sentence. Feel free to remove it or not 😉