Wednesday 4 December 2013

Dear Mr Freeman

The proposed Immigration Bill currently in the Commons would be harmful
to British landlords, harmful to British higher education, and
ultimately harmful to British industry.

Landlords would be coerced into becoming, in effect, deputies of the UK
Border Agency, facing the onerous administrative burden of documenting
that they have verified legal residency before agreeing a letting, and
the threat of a 3000-pound fine for any oversights.  Individual
landlords and their families acting in good faith do not need this
heavy-handed regulatory burden.

Prospective students would be deterred from choosing UK universities,
because under the proposed bill a denial of a student's visa request
would require the student to leave the UK, even whilst an appeal were
in process, and thus would force a hiatus in studies.  This contingency
wouldn't pose such a significent problem if there weren't currently so
many erroneous visa denials reversed on appeal: according to figures
conveyed by the Cambridge University Students' Union, this past year
fully 50% of appeals were successful, and fully 70% of denials were
cases of administrative error.

It's important to keep UK universities popular amongst international
students, for three reasons:  (1) International students pay the
greatest tuition fees of any demographic; they help fund our
universities.  (2) The larger the population of international students
vying for entry to British universities, the greater universities'
ability to cherry-pick the best and the brightest whose ideas will
enrich the environment for all scholars.  (3) Many students who
complete their programmes of study wish to remain in Britain, legally,
and this large supply of educated would-be immigrants again allows
British industry to cherry-pick the best and the brightest to innovate
here in the UK, creating jobs and producing wealth and tax revenue.

Britain's declining competitiveness in the market for international
students in general, and South Asian students in particualr, is well
documented: the Home Office report "Immigration Statistics, January to
March 2013" (as updated 23 May 2013,
"https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-january-to-march-2013/immigration-statistics-january-to-march-2013")
reports a 9% year-on-year decline in numbers of student visas issued,
continuing a two-year trend and driven largely by a 62% decline in
Pakistani students and a 38% decline in Indian students.

As a research scholar and a landlord at Cambridge, as a visiting
lecturer in India advising students applying to European postgraduate
courses, and now as a university reader in psychology tasked with
recruiting international students in greater numbers, I have seen
first-hand the ways in which each of the aforementioned effects is
playing or can play out.  Cambridge is a strongly international
community of scholars, one in which many prospective tenants are
international and in which colleagues and ideas from many countries
contributed to my own scholarship.  During my two years in India I
advised many students who were in the market for postgraduate courses,
and ended up sending students to Germany, Italy and Austria but -
significantly - not to the UK, as returning students' stories of
anxiety-laden administrative problems and delays in the visa process
were discouraging them from the UK whilst aggressive marketing of
competitive postgraduate courses - many of them taught in English -
was attracting them to Europe.  Indian students in general voiced
uncertainty and scepticism about the UK, and this newly negative buzz
struck me as a sea change within this most populous and historically
anglophilic Commonwealth country.

Why are we so actively shutting our doors in the faces of skilled
students and potential immigrants who can help drive this country's
economy?  The reputation of our universities gives us the opportunity
to profit from students who are shopping for university courses, and to
cherry-pick the world's best brains to propel British industry -- but
we are squandering this opportunity!  This self-destructive, demagogic
xenophobia makes my job more difficult as I try to convince
international students to spend their time and their tuition fees here
rather than in Europe, but more than that, it impoverishes me as a
British scholar by cutting me off from the international academic
community.  It's time for the Government to recognise that
international scholarship and international students are essential
to a truly and traditionally Conservative, innovation-driven and
business-friendly Britain.

Kind regards
Matthew Belmonte