Student visa, USA News (London): The Home Office is refusing a growing number of student visas for unusual reasons, with one applicant allegedly rejected for failing to name the number of trees on a university campus. In another case, a student was denied a UK visa after being accused of giving the wrong founding year for their university, though it later turned out the applicant was right.
The Home Office has stated it is cracking down on visa abuse following an increase in asylum claims from individuals entering the country on visas under the previous government. However, universities told The i Paper that bizarre visa denials are crippling their ability to recruit overseas students, whose tuition fees subsidise the cost of educating domestic students and keep many institutions afloat. Higher education leaders have called for these decisions to be investigated amid wider pressure on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood regarding immigration reforms. The Government maintains that all visa applications are considered on their individual merits in line with immigration rules, noting that cherry-picked extracts from refusals may not reflect the full rationale.
Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, stated that institutions are sharing cases that make no sense and are making recruitment highly unpredictable. Over 13 percent of student visas were rejected in the first three months of the year, up from 6.1 percent during the same period last year. UK Visas and Immigration carries out discretionary credibility interviews to verify study plans, which universities view as an expanding source of questionable rejections.
James Millar, vice chancellor of the University of the West of Scotland, shared that an applicant was rejected for not being able to describe the number of trees on a campus due to marketing materials prominently displaying greenery. Other applicants were rejected for not applying to Canada after mentioning they considered it, or for citing cold weather as a deterrent after a caseworker argued some places in Canada are not that cold. Millar noted that rejections predominantly affect applicants from specific countries, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Ghana. Furthermore, student visas were banned outright from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar, and Sudan earlier in the year.
New rules introduced in June penalize universities if more than 5 percent of their sponsored study visas are rejected, down from 10 percent previously. Exceeding this threshold risks institutions losing their ability to recruit international students entirely. Steven McGuire, deputy vice chancellor at the University of East Anglia, noted that his university has curtailed active recruitment in certain countries to avoid risking visa refusals, citing examples such as a refusal over public international rankings or a caseworker confusing Norfolk with Norwich.
