United Kingdom’s Home Office announced on Monday that new measures banning foreign students from bringing family members to the country have come into effect.
In a post on X, the Home Office said it was committed to seeing a ‘decisive’ cut in migration.
“From today, new overseas students will no longer be able to bring family members to the UK,” the post said.
“Postgraduate research or government-funded scholarships students will be exempt.”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also endorsed the post, saying that his government was ‘delivering’ for the British people.
The measures were originally announced in May by now-ousted Foreign Minister Suella Braverman in response to migration numbers climbing to 745,000 people, a number the Tories said was outrageously high.
Home Secretary James Cleverly said that it was an “unreasonable practice” for foreign students to bring along family members.
“This will see migration falling rapidly by the tens of thousands and contribute to our overall strategy to prevent 300,000 people from coming to the UK,” Cleverly said.
When the measures were originally announced in May, Braverman had wrote that the number of dependants coming to the country with students had gone from 16,000 in 2019 to 136,000 in 2022.
According to statistics published by the Guardian, Nigerian students brought the most dependants to UK, followed by India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
The UK has already jacked up salary thresholds to prevent migration of workers to the country, and the limit is expected to move up in coming months.
