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UK - Final details of curbs on overseas students to be announced

The monotonous dull thudding noise you can hear is not allied bombing of Tripoli, but the repeated intersection of my head and my desk.
 
The monotonous dull thudding noise you can hear is not allied bombing of Tripoli, but the repeated intersection of my head and my desk.

Dominic - Spare yourself the pain of reading the comments section, it'll only ruin your day and raise your blood pressure.
 
Even the facts in the article are basically wrong, it's not a £40 billion inudstry, it's the whole fucking economy.

Although some of these kids go home, many stay, and since they are on average smarter than both the place they leave and the place they join, and better educated, they are valuable assets. In effect Britain receives a donation from places like India, and a huge chunk of British doctors are either Indian or their kids. Currently the most admired living hero in Britain is Johnson Beharry, awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery under fire whilst wounded so badly that it shocked his doctors that he lived, then again shocked them that he can walk. His scars are in no way trivial and as conspicuous as his bravery.
As the name suggests, he wasn't born in Britain, and even now his English would probably fail the test that they want to set.
But in many ways he's nothing unusual, in that the freedom enjoyed in Britain has always been defended by forces that included people not born within these shores.

In this position, I am to the right of the so-called Conservative party. I believe that the success of a country is largely due to the quality of the people in it, and if high quality people want to come in, we should take what is in effect a gift.

Sure, some are fraudulent, let's imagine an industry that has no fraud, anyone know of one ?
Even when they come up with frauds, look at how small they are and the best they can do is a case where 20% of those involved were dodgy, which leaves 80% even in the bad cases which are legit.
Shops expect to lose an average 0.25% through their staff stealing, do we abolish shops ?
I expect there probably is £100 million of abuse in the education system, live with it.

Even the fraudulent ones want to come to Britain and get a job, ie pay their way, and since they were legal paid their taxes, indeed Britain has one of the lowest tax evasion rates in the world because it's actually really rather hard to illegally avoid paying income tax, and effectively impossible to avoid paying 20% VAT (sales tax) on nearly everything you buy, except fuel and cigarettes whose cost is almost wholly tax.

Even better, they pay to come to Britain. Because we have socialised medicine, and compulsory 'contributions' to pensions, we are in effect ripping them off. 20-somethings rarely get expensively ill, especially the subset who migrate, because sick people stay where they are put. If they leave after education and work, then they do not get a refund on the national insurance they and their employer have paid, so only if they work for decades can they expect to get anything back.
 
In this position, I am to the right of the so-called Conservative party.

I don't know how much to the right the Tories are. But they have an aging and reactionary voter base: all those vicious little old grannies out there in the home counties who don't want any more wogs, period. And they're egged on by Rupert Murdoch's papers. When they say non-EU students, it's euphemism for non-white students. They mean Indian, Chinese, Nigerian -- not Australian, Canadian, or American.
 
Dominic - Unfortunately in the UK there is the perceived problems with immigration - which often bear no realty on the truth - and the actual problems with immigration, which bar one important area are generally very very small.

The one important area I'd suggest is really land cost and space. Your money in the US just goes a hell of a lot further. As a middle class family you get more land and bigger houses for less cost and generally don't have live in dreary holes like Slough.
Urban sprawl is hardly making this situation any better in the UK and is leading to a backlash.

Britain does have an overcrowding problem (although this is in concentrated areas) which ultimately leads to a decrease in quality of life. How that will be solved is anyone's guess, but building on the Greenbelt and turning villages into suburbs is only going force people to dig their heals in harder and cause them to vote for stupid policies such as this with regards to education.

You can't blame immigrants for this of course, poor planning by the governments of the past is a good deal to blame, but a rising population regardless of where it comes from is going to cause problems in a host of areas, from infrastructure to food supplies.
 
These folks they are trying to bar are young and hungry....most of them will probably contribute in a positive way to society and probably pay more taxes since they end up in higher tax brackets...

No point crying over split milk, if the UK doesn't want these folks they'll always find somewhere else to settle.
 
atreides - Exactly! Unfortunately the press plays up the negative stories as if they are the norm.
 
Andy - I believe so, I'm not sure if this has to be voted on Parliament, if so there may be a late session. I believe then the Lords get a say on whether to delay the legislation or not, in which case it may go back to vote again.

Unfortunately we are seeing political point scoring at its worst here.
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/22/number-foreign-students-to-be-cut

The cut backs have been announced, here are some key points:

The final package to come into force from April involves tighter rules on the accreditation of private colleges that can sponsor overseas students; tougher English language requirements; tighter rules on students working part-time; restrictions on which students can bring dependants with them; maximum time limits of between three and five years on the length of courses; and changes to the post-study work route.

and for those of you looking for jobs:


• Post-study work route: a possible option was to abolish or cap the ability of students to seek work for two years on graduation from university. Now graduates who have the offer of a graduate-level skilled job paying at least £20,000 a year will be able to stay on to work. However a cap on these numbers will be kept in reserve if they start to rise sharply. The numbers of "switchers" will not count to the overall limit on net migration.

So MFE students should be OK!
 
Hmmm... there are contradicting news on this. Bloomberg has announced yesterday something else

Britain will also close the so-called “post-study work route,” which allows students two years to seek employment after their course ended. Only those graduates who have an offer of a skilled job from a sponsoring employer, earning more than 20,000 pounds a year, will be able to stay to work.
 
They have already implemented that decision as I know. (for non-EU citizens)
 
The Border Agency page states something similar here.
We will close the Tier 1 (Post-study work) route, which allows students 2 years to seek employment after their course ends. Only graduates who have an offer of a skilled job from a sponsoring employer under Tier 2 of the points-based system will be able to stay to work.
I'd say it is official now. Really bad news for non-EEA quant wannabees and also for the financial math programs all over UK.
 
I really don't know what butterfly effect will this embark! I think one one hand, it is good that only the brightest minds will be allowed but on the other hand, I have serious doubts on any company willing to sponsor you even before you graduate!!(in order to stay and work after finishing the studies the graduates will have to have an offer of a skilled job from a sponsoring employer under Tier 2 PBS scheme) I have gone through this drill in the US and I just don't want to remember what struggle it was for me to procure a job inspite of having a GPA>3.8! And this was when you already have a one year OPT permit in the USA. Nevertheless, employers in US were very wary of hiring international students because they would have to sponsor them eventually (after 1 year). To dwell on the concern, the tuition fee for reputed universities is so high that it is impossible to reduce debt and live comfortably if you return to your home country right away. What a jack!
 
Hmmm... there are contradicting news on this

No it isn't contradictory at all. It states the same thing effectively. Tier 1 is closed and students can stay to work if they are offered a job of 20k+.

Really bad news for non-EEA quant wannabees and also for the financial math programs all over UK.

I'm not so sure on this. For a start some Commonwealth students are eligible for BUNAC visas anyway. All they would need to do upon graduating is go home for a visit, file the BUNAC (which normally takes a couple of months) and come back.

It will probably be student from India, Pakistan and China who will unfortunately find this a bit harder.

If anything though this should encourage the decent Universities to work on placement and internship programs. In order to encourage foreign students, they will need to start publishing figures of how many people they can place into jobs after their MFE/MA/MSc etc.

It's not the best outcome, but not the worst.
 
No it isn't contradictory at all. It states the same thing effectively. Tier 1 is closed and students can stay to work if they are offered a job of 20k+.

So, to conclude, here is what is the news: there used to be a route to getting a work-permit visa that allowed you to stay in UK, to search for a job, to get hired on the same terms as a UK national, to bring your dependents with you. And all of this after you do a UK degree. Now, all of this does not exist anymore. That is the news.

Of course, Tier 2 sponsorship visas still exist (this is what is meant by the 20k+ job), but good luck getting your first quant job if you need one of those!

BUNAC does not sound any better. Can you imagine yourself at an interview saying: hey, I have a student/internship visa that will expire in 6 months minus the time I need before I start the work, after which time you will have to enlist as a sponsoring institution and use some of your annual sponsorship quota on me. Also, the bank will have to claim that your skill set cannot be found in the UK labor market, which is most likely not true. And all of that on an interview where the other 10 candidates have comparable skills and most likely no visa issues.
 
Novak - BUNAC visa lengths depend on your country of origin and you don't have to be a student in most cases, just under 30. I used them when I was younger as did a number of other people I know. We went to Canada, Canadian employers had no problem hiring us with these and sponsored a fair number of people I know to stay on after the year.

Australians for example can work for up to two years in the UK via BUNAC/IEP Australia, before requiring sponsorship. There are options for some nationalities, just not everybody I'm afraid anymore.

It will likely be Non-EEA members - who don't have other routes open to them - and Asian students who will suffer the most from this unfortunately.
 
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