[ 2014-12-21 ]

May: I’ll kick out foreign graduates
FOREIGN students would be kicked out of the
country when their courses ended under tough rules
being drawn up by Theresa May.

The home secretary wants a future Conservative
government to “move towards zero net student
migration” by sending home those who come to
Britain on student visas.

The plan is likely to bolster May’s support from
the Tory right amid a feud between her closest
aides and Conservative high command.

In a move that will be seen as an attempt to
burnish her credentials as a future leader, May is
demanding that the party’s next manifesto
include a pledge to force non-EU students to leave
the UK and apply for a fresh visa from abroad. At
the moment most students switch easily to a work
visa.

Under the plans, colleges and universities would
be fined and stripped of the right to sponsor
foreign students if they failed to ensure that
students left the country.

It comes as May is embroiled in a row with No 10
after David Cameron approved the removal of Nick
Timothy and Stephen Parkinson, May’s special
advisers, from the Conservative candidates list
last week after they refused to campaign in the
recent Rochester by-election.

Senior Tories last night accused the home
secretary’s aides of “declaring war” by
promoting May’s leadership credentials rather
than supporting the party.

The home secretary also provoked a coalition row
last night with the Liberal Democrats, who made
clear “there is not a chance in hell” of her
immigration plans becoming government policy
before the general election and signalling they
would not support them in a future coalition
either.

May decided to act after official figures from the
Office for National Statistics showed that 121,000
non-EU students entered the UK in the year to June
but only 51,000 left, meaning 70,000 stayed behind
in just one year. The business department has
calculated that the number of foreign students
coming to the UK will rise by more than 6% a year
up to 2020.

The home secretary has warned the prime minister
that failure to act on foreign students will make
it impossible for him to hit his target of annual
net migration in the tens of thousands.

A source close to May said: “Making sure
immigrants leave Britain at the end of their visa
is as important a part of running a fair and
efficient immigration system as controlling who
comes here in the first place.

“Theresa is pressing for the next Conservative
manifesto to contain a policy that will make sure
that anybody coming here on a student visa will
have to leave the country in order to apply for a
new visa of any kind.

“She wants to make the colleges and universities
that sponsor foreign students responsible for
ensuring their departure. And she wants to be able
to fine colleges and universities with low
departure rates and deprive the worst of them of
their right to sponsor foreign students.”

The coalition has already insisted all students
speak good English to study in Britain and have
sufficient funds to support themselves. Yesterday
Cameron said: “Major work has been done to clamp
down on the bogus ‘colleges’ that were really
just a front for people to come here, with more
than 800 of them shut down so far.”

But senior Lib Dems warned that May’s plan would
deter skilled immigrants from coming to Britain. A
source close to Vince Cable, the business
secretary, said: “There is absolutely not a
chance in hell that this will happen while we are
in government.”

An aide to Nick Clegg added: “We think it is a
very bad idea to get rid of people who have spent
years training to be physicists and computer
programmers. We’ve invested a lot in these
people and to turf them out for the sake of some
figures doesn’t make any sense.”

May is also likely to face resistance from George
Osborne, the chancellor, who encouraged Cameron to
ditch quotas for immigrants in his recent speech
on EU migration because it would hurt the
economy.

The home secretary’s intervention comes amid
grave tensions at the top of the Tory party. May
personally phoned Grant Shapps, the party
chairman, to lobby for her special advisers after
he decided to suspend them as potential MPs.
Shapps refused to reinstate them.

Last night a senior conservative accused May’s
aides of going to war with Downing Street by
refusing orders to campaign in Rochester, a demand
that Timothy and Parkinson believed breached the
civil service code. “When the prime minister and
the chairman of the Conservative party ask you to
do something, you do it,” a source said.
“It’s like a declaration of war when you
don’t.”

Allies of Shapps warned the advisers their loyalty
should be to Cameron not May and hinted that their
jobs were on the line. “Special advisers are
employed by the prime minister, not by ministers.
Ministers also work for the prime minister,” one
said.

Sources close to Cameron sought to end the row,
stressing that Timothy and Parkinson had only been
“temporarily suspended” from the candidates
list.

But Shapps has told friends there is no prospect
of reinstating them before the election and that
other senior Tories should stand up to “Team
May”. One said Shapps would not “tiptoe around
them”.

“Grant has made it clear to them how they get
back on the list: behave. They are doing exactly
the opposite. May’s people are always spoiling
for a fight. They don’t seem to realise that
honey catches more flies than vinegar.”

An MP ally of May called the spat a “ridiculous
diversion” from Cameron’s economic message.
Boris Johnson, a likely rival of May for the
leadership, has also privately voiced the view
that the suspensions are “pretty vindictive”
move by central office.

In another sign that May is asserting herself, it
has emerged she is attempting a “land-grab” of
the government’s anti-extremism policy. The
Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, based
in the Home Office, is setting up an extremism
analysis unit that Foreign & Commonwealth Office
and education department officials will have to
report to following the so-called Trojan Horse
affair.

But the move is causing a “fair bit of anger and
discontent” among rival officials.

Source - The Times(UK)

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