30th November 2009 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The BBC has reported that there has been a large increase in the number of people arriving in the UK from the India and Bangladesh on student visas. A new points system was introduced last year by the government, and this was supposed to ‘raise the bar’ for students applying to the UK, but applications from Mumbai, New Delhi and Dhaka have tripled in the last year, and now stand at 19,950.
The UK Border agency had claimed that they thought the number of people arriving in the UK in 2009 was similar to 2008, but earlier this year immigration officers told the BBC that they feared there was a dramatic increase due to the vast increase in paperwork. They also stated that a large number of applicants had previously been denied entry to the UK, and it was suspected that they were here to work, and not study. An insider at Heathrow claimed many applications were bogus because many of the applicants couldn’t speak English, and had no idea which course they intended to study.
The Home Office maintain that the new points system is working, and that the Indian sub-continent accounts for only 3 of the 74 offices around the world that can issue student visas, so should not be seen has a global representation. However, with such a sharp increase in visas from India and Bangladesh, this only suggests that the new system may have made the process easier for some people, and more difficult for others, rather than raising the bar for all.