Number of foreign students seeking asylum in UK increasing

LONDON April 29: Statistics from a secret Home Office database, covering the 12 months to March 2023, show 6,136 asylum cases were lodged by foreign students, more than a four-fold surge on the previous year, Daily Mail reported. The leaked figures come amid widespread concern that higher education is being abused as an immigration route.

More than a third of foreign students who went on to claim asylum in Britain were sponsored to come here by just six educational institutions. Of those, 2,195 were sponsored by five universities and an education agency, said the report.

Study Group UK sponsored visas for 804 foreign students who later claimed asylum. The company’s total was skewed towards two nationalities: 642 asylum claims from Bangladeshis and 156 from Pakistanis.

Study Group’s website describes it as a ‘leading international education specialist and a trusted strategic partner to more than 50 universities around the world’.

The firm – along with individual universities – is licensed to sponsor foreign visa applicants by a Home Office agency, UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI).

The second-highest number of student visa-holders who claimed asylum in the year were sponsored by Portsmouth University, with 395.

Its claims included 252 Bangladeshis, 54 from Afghans, 38 from Cameroonians and 28 from Pakistanis.

Third was De Montfort University with 310, followed by the University of Hertfordshire with 275, Coventry University with 217 and the University for the Creative Arts with 194.

Former home secretary Suella Braverman is among those who have previously criticised the higher education sector’s role in bringing vast numbers of foreign students to Britain.

‘Too many universities are selling immigration, not education,’ she said in January.

In December Home Secretary James Cleverly announced a review of the ‘graduate visa’ which allows students who have completed their courses to work in Britain for up to two years.