The Student Visa Abuse: Legtimate Students Are the Losers

Today, the Dawn featured an article concerning the abuse of student visa issued by British Government to Pakistani students. Dawn reports:

“Many Pakistani youngsters in search of greener pastures and who can afford it, use the UK’s student visa facility to purchase permanent passage to Britain.”

The questions arise here are that: what instigates these Pakistani youngsters to look for the “greener pastures” in UK by seeking a permanent passage into Britain, and what makes it possible for these students to be successful in their mission of seeking a permanent residency in UK?

As the response to the former question involves an analysis of many ground realities of the educational and socio-economical scenario in Pakistan, and I will address these issues in detail in my upcoming posts regarding the higher education in Pakistan; therefore, today, I will keep my post limited to answer the latter question.

I strongly believe the perpetrator of this student visa abuse is British Government itself. First, by following a blind visa policy witout any system of student tracking. Second, by letting a long list of bogus educational institutes to function in UK and by letting them invite hundreds of students, not only from Pakistan, but also from many other countries to United Kingdom in return of few thousand Pounds.

In 2003,United States implemented a new system called International Student and Exchange Visitor Program also known as SEVIS to track the students on F1 (Student) visa in United States. The system is excellent and almost foolproof. It is almost impossible for an International student in US to drop out from the university and start working illegally. I am telling this as a result of my personal experience as I, myslef, is an International student in US. On Contrary to that in UK we do not see any such program implemented to track the whereabouts of international student in Britain. This really makes easy for a student to drop out from the school after the first year and start looking for a job as a passage to permanent residency in UK.

In UK we also see hundreds of spurious institutions running whose representatives travel across many developing countries to recruit students. These institutions usually work with some agents in the countries of recruitment. The recruiters and the agents show the students that after getting the student visa, dropping out of school and finding a job is an easy thing to do, and all they have to pay is the first year of tuition. As a result many students from countries like Pakistan go to UK thinking that after the first year they will leave the college and will work to earn a good living.


The running of these institution without any system of check & balance and absence of any tracking system for international students have played a big role in the abuse of student visa system, and the biggest losers are the legitimate students who, very often, are robbed by these bogus institutions and also denied the student visas because somebody else has misused the system.

As the dawn reported:

“Only recently have British colleges been told to register with the UK Border Agency.Last month the Agency turned down 460 of the 2,100 colleges which had applied for licences to admit international students, because they were bogus establishments sponsoring students as part of an immigration
scam.”

More such steps are needed by British Government to stop this abuse of the system so that the legitimate candidates can have the opportunity to study in the educational system of the United Kingdom.