Graduate Visa Route should be abolished immediately, says new report

Study in UK: After much debate across universities, industries and political circles, the UK government decided to retain the Graduate Visa Route, however, now a new study suggests that it should be removed immediately.

The authors of the report argued that the scale and composition of recent migration have failed to deliver the significant economic and fiscal benefits its advocates promised instead it put enormous pressure on public services, housing and infrastructure.

Arguments of the report

The report has the following arguments:

• Large-scale migration of international students has put pressure on rental markets and home ownership.
• Net migration accounts for around 89% of the 1.34 million increase in England’s housing deficit (the number of homes we have underbuilt by) in the last 10 years.
• The high migration rate has not delivered significant growth in GDP per capita and has increased the strain on our capital stock, from roads and GP surgeries to housing
• Earnings, and therefore tax contributions, also vary enormously depending on the country of migrants. Spanish migrants typically earn around 40% more than migrants from Pakistan or Bangladesh but they earn 35% less than migrants from France or America.

Recommendations of report

There are over 30 recommendations in the report, the vast majority of which can be implemented within the remainder of this parliament. The following are a few recommendations:

• Revising the International Education Strategy (IES), ending the arbitrary 600,000-a-year target for the number of international students.
• Abolishing the Graduate route, instead foreign students who want to stay in the UK should find graduate-level jobs that meet the salary threshold within six months of the end of their studies.
• Creating time-limited exceptions to visa limits for NHS workers, until the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan ramps up.
• Indexing salary thresholds for visa routes in line with inflation, to prevent automatic liberalisation.
• Imposing an immediate cap on health & care visas at c.30,000, roughly the level seen in 2021.
• Reaffirming a national commitment to return net migration to the historical norm of the tens of thousands.

Read more:

• Businesses warn scrapping of Graduate Visa Route can undermine university sector
• UK Government Retains Graduate Visa Route; Plans to raise compliance standards for institutions