How to have an honest debate about overseas students and migration
Cutting the surge in legal and illegal migration is one of the Government’s priorities. An urgent report on overseas students from the Migration Advisory Committee is due to be published shortly before the next set of migration statistics. The plan appears to be to announce another toughening up of the overseas student regime to offset another big migration figure.
Real migration is understandably and rightly a highly charged political issue. The way the debate plays out in the media and amongst policy-makers goes back to an interview on Anderw Marr’s programme back in 2010 when David Cameron was pressed on reducing net migration and said he would aim for “tens of thousands”.
I do not believe he intended it to be a target. Nor was there any serious discussion of including overseas students in this total. Indeed, David had already given an interesting speech on the pressures of population growth and this was probably the angle which drove his thinking on migration – and which is closer to why the public worry about real migration.
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