Student visas 'must be halved to meet immigration targets'

More than 87,000 student visas must go if those coming to study are to take their share of the cut needed to bring net migration down from 196,000 to the tens of thousands by 2015, said the independent body asked to recommend a level for the Government's proposed immigration cap.

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) said the number of people travelling to the UK for working holidays and those who come to work as domestic servants or on creative and media visas will also need to be slashed.

Committee chairman Prof David Metcalf said the number of migrant workers from outside the EU should be cut by between 13 per cent and 25 per cent next year.

The level of the proposed cap was "more severe, more stringent" than the temporary cap imposed this year, he said.

But it will still not be enough to cut migration by 146,000 – the figure MAC decided was needed to give the Government the best chance of reaching their "tens of thousands" target by the end of the Parliament.

Work-related migration accounts for just 20 per cent of the overall reduction needed, he said, meaning non-EU students must make up 60 per cent of the cut with the final 20 per cent coming from family visas and their dependants.

Two-thirds of the non-EU migrants who enter the UK come on student visas, with more than half of these studying courses below degree level.

Home Secretary Theresa May said she would crack down on non-EU students coming to privately-funded colleges and to study courses that were below degree-level as she seeks to make eligibility criteria for visas more selective.

But in a key speech on immigration last week she added that she will do nothing to prevent those coming to study degree-level courses.

Prof Metcalf added that a new provision could be made for non-EU scientists under tier one of the visa system to address the concerns of universities who fear that the cap could make it harder for the UK to attract the world's best researchers.

He said the number of visas issued to non-EU migrant workers needed to be between 37,400 and 43,700 for 2011-12, a cut of between 6,300 and 12,600 visas compared with 2009.

The limit proposed by MAC includes a cap on intra-company transfers (ICTs), which are used by businesses to bring their own people into the country to do specific jobs and account for 22,000 of the 36,000 tier two visas.

To the relief of businesses, Prime Minister David Cameron told MPs in the Commons that ICTs "shouldn't be included" in the proposed cap, but Prof Metcalf said yesterday that they should take the "lion's share" of the cut to non-EU work visas.

Prof Metcalf said: "If you were to have a salary threshold for intra-company transfers of around 40,000 that would, in a sense, fulfil the same objective as our cap."

Immigration Minister Damian Green said: "Bringing down net migration to sustainable levels will not be easy. We will not be able to achieve it by focusing on just one area of the system.

"By introducing an annual limit we will reduce the number of people who come to the UK to work from outside the EU. But this is just one of the ways we intend to reduce the level of net migration back down to the tens of thousands each year."