MIGRATION WATCH UK
As the number of foreign students entering the UK soars to record levels, experts and officials are voicing alarm at unintended consequences. In a Parliamentary committee session this week, Professor Brian Bell – Chair of the Migration Advisory Committee – echoed our warning earlier this year that British universities have grown overly reliant on international student fees, creating perverse incentives to “sell” visas into Britain.
You can watch or read Professor Bell’s full remarks here, but it’s worth summarising just how badly the student visa scheme is being abused.
Student visas have become the single biggest pathway into Britain, now accounting for roughly 45% of all entry visas – the largest of any immigration route. This surge was spurred by a 2019 government target of 600,000 overseas students by 2030 (which was ultimately achieved eight years early in 2022).
Universities, free to recruit internationally and charging up to triple the tuition of home students, have turned the study route into a major migration pipeline. The Home Office projects that about 500,000 recent international graduates have remained in the country even after their visas expired.
There is also evidence that the student route is being misused. As Migration Watch has reported, cases have emerged of applicants inflating bank statements or pooling funds to meet visa requirements.
Some enrol in courses with little intention of studying – nearly half of all asylum claims made by visa holders now come from those who were admitted as students. The post-study “Graduate Route” visa (which allows work for 2–3 years after graduation) has effectively become a backdoor into the UK job market, with certain nationalities exploiting it disproportionately (for example, Indian students are 22% of study visa holders but over 41% of graduate visa holders).
To make things worse, the boom in enrolment has skewed toward lower-ranked higher education institututions. Since 2013, the number of foreign students at non-Russell Group universities has more than doubled; only one one of these universities ranks in the global top 100. Instead of exporting world class education, Britain’s universities have simply become grubby visa mills, selling access to Britain to balance wildly inflated budgets.
We have a full 30 page report on the ongoing scandal of student visas, which you can read here on the Migration Watch website.
This week, we suggest you write to your MP about an interview published in the Daily Telegraph with a former Home Office caseworker, blowing the whistle on extremely poor practices with the asylum system. You can write anything you like, but we have provided a template below for your convenience. Simply copy the text, paste it into an email, delete and replace any red text, and send.
You can verify your local MP here: https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP.
“Dear [DELETE AND TYPE NAME OF MP HERE],
I am one of your constituents, living at [DELETE AND TYPE ADDRESS HERE].
Daily Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson has published an alarming interview with a Home Office caseworker, who revealed some dangerous practices within the asylum system. You can read the article here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/05/migrants-asylum-sex-offence-allegations-whistleblower/
The former caseworker reports:
– The Home Office has lost contact with thousands of failed asylum seekers who cannot be located, and these cases are counted as closed, allowing the government to claim it is clearing the backlog when actually people are being allowed to remain in the UK when they should be refused and removed;
– Claimants from certain countries are not being refused because it would not be possible to return them to their country of origin. They are being permitted to stay despite arrest records for crimes including indecent exposure in children’s play areas;
– Claimants on the legacy backlog from certain countries have been asked to complete questionnaires rather than attend a face-to-face interview, making it only too easy to conceal information from asylum caseworkers.
It is clear that the system is utterly broken and putting the British people at risk. Please could you write to the Home Office minister responsible for asylum claims, Alex Norris MP, and request a formal response to the issues raised by this Home Office whistleblower?
Kind regards,
[DELETE AND TYPE YOUR NAME HERE]
If you receive a response from your MP and are comfortable sharing it, please forward it on to us – we are always interested!
Wind and rain earlier in the week led to an 11-day stretch without a single boat intercepted crossing the Channel. This broke, alongside the weather, on Thursday with 612 migrants making the crossing. Although we don’t have the figures for Friday yet, GB News has reported a further 400 may have made the trip in the morning, bringing the weekly total to over 1000.
Good Morning Britain shared an excerpt from an interview with a centenarian WW2 veteran, Alec Penston, in which he states that the sacrifice he and his generation made were not worth the results.
‘What we fought for was our freedom, even now [the country] is worse than it was when I fought for it,’ says 100-year-old World War II Veteran Alec Penstone. pic.twitter.com/M9HSsS5sIW
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) November 7, 2025
X user The Composite Guy has written an interesting rebuttal of studies claiming non-EU migrants contribute more towards their host countries than native-born citizens, pointing out that this does not take into account aging or second generations.
1/ A new working paper claims that non-EU migrants in Europe have a less negative fiscal position than natives – in other words, that they contribute more relative to what they receive.
Like every single one of these papers, the methodology is deeply misleading.
🧵 https://t.co/2ivrRxq4uY pic.twitter.com/Jdc7O1CB5o
— The Composite Guy (@CompositeGuy_) November 6, 2025
Finally, X user Aylmer refutes claims asylum seekers are a unique economic benefit by sharing employment rates for people granted asylum:
Zoe Gardner types would have you believe that asylum seekers are economic rocket fuel. A recent study by the Home Office shows that nothing could be further from the truth.
80% of asylum seekers whose claim was accepted in 2020 were out of work by the 2021 census (top bar).… pic.twitter.com/i4MIAroywg
— Aylmer (@AylmerTH) November 5, 2025
Chairman, Alp Mehmet, was quoted in this GB News article examining a recent piece of blatant misinformation promoted by Best for Britain and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants:
Alp Mehmet, the chairman of the think tank Migration Watch, concurred with Mr Bates’s analysis and suggested the interpretation of the data by some was “gaslighting the public”.
Mr Mehmet took umbrage with the reaction to the survey issued by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and Best for Britain.“
JCWI and BfB are refighting old Brexit battles with tired arguments and gaslighting the public. Their selective, one-sided analysis is pure spin and won’t wash.”
“Moreover, if uncontrolled, mass immigration is not addressed, the public’s frustration will quickly turn to anger,” he told The People’s Channel.
Migration Watch also pointed to the key data in YouGov’s poll, stressing that it showed over half of Britons saw immigration as one of the important issues facing the country.
And Alp was quoted in the Express, reporting on the huge number of foreign criminals able to enter Britain through our unforced Channel border:
Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: “Most disturbing is that this litany of crime is, it seems, committed mostly by EU nationals and only comes to light after those concerned commit fresh crimes here.
“For me, this points to dangerously lax control at the border, where EU nationals can slip into the country with a quick scan of their passport. Just as worrying is that the criminals identified could be a representative group and possibly the tip of a much bigger iceberg.”
Migration Watch was also mentioned in an opinion piece in the News Letter, a longstanding Belfast-based publication, and in a report by the Hungarian campaign group Szazadveg.
SOURCE: Migration Watch UK newsletter
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