Damian Green MP
Minister of State
Home Office
2 Marsham Street,
London SW1P 4DF
4th September 2012
Dear Damian,
I am writing to you to add my voice to those calling for international students to be excluded from the net migration calculation. The social and economic benefits to such a statistical separation are considerable.
According to a recent report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), ‘International Students and Net Migration in the UK’ (April 2012), international students are currently worth around £10 billion in export earnings to the UK economy.
A report from BIS in June 2011 estimated that this figure has the potential to grow at more than 4% a year, providing much-needed extra export income. Moreover, it is estimated that overseas students generate £120 million annually for the economy in Brighton and Hove.
Yet the Migration Advisory Committee has estimated that, in order to meet the Government’s policy of reducing net migration from the hundreds to the tens of thousands, the reductions pro rata would mean 90,000 fewer students. This would have an immediate cost to the UK economy of approximately £2 billion in lost foreign earnings.
According to the IPPR report, not only are international students national and local economic benefactors, they actually subsidise some higher education courses and whole departments; to the obvious advantage of our home students and institutions.
Indeed, if we lost half of the students on UK masters’ degree courses most of those courses would become unviable and close.
Such are the benefits to preserving student numbers that our key international competitors in higher education have acted to change the status of international students.
The USA, Canada and Australia all treat overseas students as temporary migrants; enabling them to meet migration targets without curtailing the numbers of foreign students.
Without a similar policy change in the UK, we risk finding Britain’s higher education sector being left behind by its closest rivals.
Given your Government’s commitment to reducing immigration, it would seem the choice at hand is simple: Either we restrict access to a rich social and economic resource or else we exclude students from the net migration calculation and reclassify them as temporary migrants.
I hope that upon examination you will agree that the latter option is the sensible course to take.
Yours sincerely,
Caroline Lucas MP Brighton Pavilion
Read the ministerial response here
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