At Anglia Ruskin University we have approximately 1879 international students. This has gone down by around 200 students since last academic year. We truly value being a Students’ Union that represent a diverse student body and feel it is a disgrace that students are being treated like this.
NUS: It is clear that international students are being treated ever more increasingly as a political football – with overly harsh conditions on studying in the UK, and an ever poorer treatment on a day to day basis from the Home Office’s agencies, including UKBA.
We should be proud that many of the brightest and best students from around the world choose to study in the UK, rather than taking it for granted – and government policy and the approach it takes to international students should reflect this.
Anglia Ruskin Students’ Union and Students Unions with NUS across the UK are showing the Home Office the yellow card – and calling on them to improve their treatment of those students from across the world who choose to study here – in particular by calling on them to work with NUS, UUK and UKBA to establish a code of conduct setting out basic standards in working with international students.
Join the campaign today by writing to the Home Secretary to call for a more positive, coherent and consistent approach to international students.
We are concerned that the poor treatment of international students – both in the form of harsh conditions on studying in the UK and the poor service provided by the Home Office’s agencies - reflects the government’s stated aim to reduce net migration from the “hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands”.
We are therefore also calling on the government to remove international students from net migration statistics. Let’s stop treating international students as a political football.
The letter I have sent to Rt Hon Theresa May, Home Secretary and Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge MP), Simon Burns (Chelmsford MP) and Shailesh Vera (Peterborough MP) can be viewed here: LETTER.
You can complete your own quickly here: NUS Yellow Card Campaign
Cheers
Fran