University's Non-E.U. Students Face Deportation

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/world/europe/03iht-educside03.html

Version 0 of 1.

LONDON — Thousands of students face deportation after the British government ruled that London Metropolitan University no longer had the right to admit students from outside the European Union.

Malcolm Gillies, the university’s vice chancellor, said the government’s action on Thursday left a hole of £30 million, or $38 million, in the institution’s budget. With classes scheduled to start Sept. 24, the university, whose nearly 30,000 students include some of the poorest in Britain, could be forced to shut down.

The U.K. Border Agency said in a statement that in more than a quarter of the cases it sampled, students at the university did not have the proper visas. The agency also criticized the university for not assuring the quality of the students’ English or their class attendance, which the government says might have allowed them to work illegally.

“It’s natural that a border agency would want to know that people have a valid visa,” Mr. Gillies said in an interview. The university, he said “had been working for over a year trying to come up with the best records. But we’re not in a totalitarian state. It’s not as if we can monitor three to four thousand students for every hour of the day.”

Revocation of the university’s “highly trusted sponsor” status affects approximately 2,700 of the university’s current students. On Thursday, dozens of students and supporters gathered outside the prime minister’s residence on Downing Street to protest the decision. The students taped their mouths shut and carried signs saying “international students not welcome here.”

“People are panicking,” said Ayoola Onifade, president of the university’s student union. “In many cases, their families have saved for years to send them to university, and they don’t know what will happen.”

“Will they get their money back?” Mr. Onifade asked. “Some are on scholarships here. Even if they find places, will their new institutions offer funding? And some have been working on a Ph.D. after completing a master’s degree here — a total of five years. No other institution is going to take such people.”

“It’s morally wrong to punish people who did nothing wrong,” said Mr. Onifade, a Nigerian student studying for a bachelor’s degree in biomedical science.

Although initial reports said the students would have just 60 days to find other places or risk deportation, the Border Agency’s Web site last Friday advised overseas students that they did not need to act immediately and would receive a written notice after Oct. 1. They would then have 60 days to make arrangements.

While most British universities have already filled their classes for the coming year, a number of schools, including the University of East London, Middlesex University and Regents College, have said they would offer places to students from London Metropolitan.

Although several private education providers and language schools have been stripped of their “highly trusted sponsor” status, London Metropolitan is the first British university to lose the right to admit overseas students.

But educators and the government have long been at odds over whether the government’s target of reducing immigration can be achieved without damaging the country’s ability to attract foreign talent.

“These are problems with one university, not the whole sector,” the border agency said in a statement.

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, told the BBC: “No matter how this is dressed up, the damaging message that the U.K. deports foreign students studying at U.K. universities will reach all corners of the globe.”