UK visa applications could be restricted for some nationalities in new crackdown
The Home Office is reportedly considering restricting visa applications for people from countries including Pakistan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, amid concerns over visa abuse
The Home Office is reportedly considering making it more difficult for individuals to come to the UK for work or study.
(Image: Getty )
Visa applications from nationalities deemed most likely to overstay and seek asylum in the UK could face restrictions under a new government crackdown.
The Home Office is reportedly considering making it more difficult for individuals from countries such as Pakistan, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka to come to the UK for work or study. Ministers are particularly concerned about those who enter the UK legally on work or study visas and then file an asylum claim, which, if approved, would allow them to stay in the country permanently.
A spokesperson for the Home Office said: "Our upcoming Immigration White Paper will set out a comprehensive plan to restore order to our broken immigration system."
Though it remains unclear which nationalities are most prone to overstaying their visas, as the Home Office has not released exit check statistics since 2020 due to a review of the data's accuracy.
Many departures from the UK can go unrecorded, meaning that those without a departure record are not necessarily still in the country. Professor Jonathan Portes, a senior fellow at the academic think tank UK in a Changing Europe, suggested that the impact of visa restrictions on the number of asylum applications would be "likely to be quite small".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think the impact here is not designed primarily to be about numbers overall, it's designed to be about reducing asylum claims which are perceived to be abusive,".
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"When you have someone who comes here ostensibly as a student and then switches quickly to the asylum route... that is an abuse of the system - the government is trying to reduce that."
The most recent Home Office statistics reveal that over 108,000 individuals sought asylum in the UK last year, marking the highest level since records began in 1979.
In total, Pakistani nationals made up the largest group claiming asylum, with 10,542 applications. This was followed by Sri Lankan nationals (2,862) and Nigerian nationals (2,841).
Data for 2023/24 also indicates that there were 732,285 international students in the UK, with the majority hailing from India (107,480) and China (98,400).
Since taking office last year, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to curb both illegal and legal migration. However, he has previously refrained from setting a net migration target, arguing that an "arbitrary cap" has proven ineffective in the past.
Labour's strategies to lower migration include criminalising actions that put lives at risk at sea, targeting small boat crossings, and reducing the demand for foreign hires by developing training plans for sectors currently dependent on migrant workers.
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Sir Keir has lambasted the former Conservative government, accusing it of failing to achieve lower net migration numbers "by design, not accident".
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