World's top graduates get new UK visa option
bbc.com> Home Secretary Priti Patel added: "I am proud to be launching this new and exciting route as part of our points-based immigration system which puts ability and talent first, not where someone comes from."
For this visa route to "put ability and talent first", the policy would have to be designed to look for and accept evidence of those traits in whatever forms are available.
But this visa does not place ability and talent first, as most talented people cannot go to Ivy League and equivalent for other reasons, and the visa criteria don't accept other evidence of exceptional talent and ability. I have nothing against great universities (I went to one and have a poor family background), but access to wealth, historical family wealth, and factors such as race and country of birth play a big role statistically in who attends the top few.
As for "not where someone comes from", as the article notes the visa is entirely closed to people graduating in the countries of South Asia, Latin America or Africa. Regardless of demonstrable talent, those at the top of the league in the wrong countries don't qualify for this "not where someone comes from" visa.
In related news yesterday, an official Home Office report concluded "30 years of racist immigration legislation designed to reduce the UK’s non-white population". https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/29/windrush-sca...
Call me cynical, but I think today's announcement is another point on that trend line.
For me, the most dispiriting thing is that the UK is codifying a broken "meritocratic" system, with the flaws you identify, along with dubious rankings into international law.
What you're pointing out — that individuals should be allowed visas based on whatever merit they can make an argument for — should be the obvious thing. Why it gets buried in these layers of sociopoltically dysfunctional nonsense is beyond me.
I would go even further personally in opening up national borders, but I increasingly feel a political anomaly. A strong state in my opinion should afford opportunities for everyone to demonstrate contribution, and only take that away when someone has become a demonstrated risk.
As an aside, I'm from a so-so third-world country (Nigeria), and the best graduating student from my recent university set got a Gates Cambridge scholarship for a PhD in a science field. She's wicked smart and hardworking, and the UK will most likely make better use of her talent compared to my country.
It's a bit sad (to me) that they limited this opportunity to graduates of the world's top universities and excluded disadvantaged/poorer countries as a result. But, such is life. I can't dictate to foreign countries and voters who or not they should let into their borders.
This policy is 100% voter appeasement and only to score political brownie points. If you graduate from a top Uni you'll have no issue getting a Tier 2 sponsorship (which costs less than £1000 per year plus some £200 per case for a company).
So whom are these visas for?
Here's the list in question: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-potential-in...
According to this list, only six out of the eight Ivy League schools [1] are worth applying to and apparently schools like Waterloo, Lomonosov State, and Les Grandes Ecoles, all of which have turned out some of the most brilliant scientists and mathematicians, aren't even worth considering.
[1] No Brown or Dartmouth in town.
I never cared for green card/visa thing... If I'm going to uproot my family for a few years I need to know that the path for full immigration and citizenship is well set.
This is the only sensible thing to do when uprooting your family and the changing the course of life of multiple people.
> early in their careers
Clicked around for a bit and age does not appear anywhere that I can find. It appears that a 40+ year old person could return to (an eligible) university for a second degree and then make use of this scheme.
Perhaps the cohort size is going to be too small for them to care.
"I am proud to be launching this new and exciting route as part of our points-based immigration system which puts ability and talent first, not where someone comes from."
Subtle dig across the Atlantic?
> To qualify, a person must have attended a university that appeared in the top 50 of at least two of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings, or The Academic Ranking of World Universities in the year they graduated.
> The list of eligible universities from 2021, published online by the government, featured 20 US universities, including Harvard, Yale, and MIT.
> There were a further 17 qualifying institutions, including the University of Hong Kong, University of Melbourne, and the Paris Sciences et Lettres University.
> Some academics have voiced their disappointment that no South Asian, Latin American or African universities have been included on the list.
Heh, horrible Priti Patel[1], implementing in the UK Trump's "No shithole countries" policies.
People who graduated from a top 50 university probably won't have a problem finding a job/visa sponsorship anywhere in the world anyway, it makes me wonder how the UK think this will attract them.
I suspect it's a reference to the EU's Free Movement policy.
With the UK foreign policy wildly oscillating in the past decade, if I were to take this option - I would do this cautiously. No one wants to move lock stock and barrel to a country to be again facing the prospects of being uprooted because of some new populist policy nulling it.
Yeah, but. Foreign graduates from UK universities are chased out immediately. Unless that’s changed? It was a major plank in the 2014 Scottish referendum platform.
The Uk as a whole is oscillating wildly from one extreme to the other politically. Immigration policy doubly so...
It's not really a change. It's for optics and internal consumption only.
The UK's current gov is firmly wedded to a delusional image of itself as a major imperial power of vast wealth and influence. Such is its majesty it is for ever in danger of being infiltrated and undermined by unpleasantly independent Europeans, who for some reason refuse to see the UK as the most important country in Europe. And also by nasty brown and black people from who knows where?
All policy is designed to reassure itself of that view. Not to solve practical problems.
In the real world the number of top graduates who will want to stay on with a two year work visa - and no guaranteed extension - is somewhere very close to zero.
There's no conception that other countries may have a more appealing work culture and a more open and successful academic culture.
As it happens, the university sector in the UK is currently closing many departments and firing and re-hiring many of its professors so it can cut their pay. As a result many are on strike and others have left.
Any student who is reasonably bright and considering the UK is going to know this.
> The UK's current gov is firmly wedded to a delusional image of itself as a major imperial power of vast wealth and influence. Such is its majesty it is for ever in danger of being infiltrated and undermined by unpleasantly independent Europeans, who for some reason refuse to see the UK as the most important country in Europe. And also by nasty brown and black people from who knows where?
This is complete nonsense! Inward immigration has gone UP since Brexit, the cabinet is more brown/black than ever before, and the establishment clearly intend to do nothing whatsoever about the porous border in the south (don't be fooled by the laughable Rwanda holding camps initiative, the main motive of which is likely to funnel even more to the legal system etc.).
OTOH I would agree that the government (regime?) are delusional, but I would extend this to the entirety of the establishment, who seem to have departed from reality a long time ago, and seem to believe that the correct response to the UK's reduced circumstances and the population's temerity in daring to vote against globalism is to hasten its destruction.
> Inward immigration has gone UP since Brexit
While this holds some truth in general it's wrong:
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/eu...
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...
Net immigration from the EU dropped while total net immigration increased slightly in 2019 before cratering in 2020.
> Immigration policy doubly so...
Name me a party with a chance of winning a general election in the UK that explicitly commits to lowering immigration substantially as a key policy. There isn't one!
Because they can't? We all know that the UK has a massive skills shortage, and so we can't close our borders. Policies like this and the points systems are designed to lower immigration, especially from non-white countries, without actually saying that it is the purpose of it.
> We all know that the UK has a massive skills shortage, and so we can't close our borders.
Alternatively we could do something to wean our country off its addiction to cheap imported labour, and invest in the skills and pay of the people that are already here. I don't accept it's as cut and dried as you assert.
> Policies like this and the points systems are designed to lower immigration, especially from non-white countries, without actually saying that it is the purpose of it.
But this government is doing nothing concrete to cut immigration! If only it were so.
Yes, there are solutions. However the current situation is that companies won't pay more so the government can't close our borders.
Tories will do anything they are paid to support. Their current platform is anti-foreigners, to satisfy the racist propaganda they spread hence the immigration rules. However it has to be balanced with the money, that requests cheap foreign labour. What a conundrum!
I remember the Tories committing to this back in 2014
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/25/scrap-immigr...
I completely agree about the WIDE gap between rhetoric and delivery. I'm just saying the whole thing is pretty nuts in the UK. We are really really bad at moderate policy (see also crime and punishment, Benefits)
They've since scrapped it.
It has, from the article.
“The scheme follows changes to allow foreign nationals to stay and work in Britain for up to two years instead of having to leave after finishing a degree.”
This is just a reversal of a decision by Theresa May's Home Office back in 2012.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-changes-to-student-...
They claimed it was to get rid of degree farms where 'schools' can just get students to pay for a degree for a work visa.
What exactly is the purpose of a visa that doesn't require employment and doesn't lead to settlement?
"ability"