Towards the end of 2019, the UK’s Conservative Party declared an extension in the work-visa for international students in British universities – they will now be eligible for a two-year work-visa extension after graduation. 

This change revives pre-2012 immigration policy because, in 2012, Theresa May reduced this extension to a four-month period. Since then, there have been contentious discussions about increasing the duration of this extension. Now, there is no restriction on the number or “preferred subjects” of international students for two years after graduation.

This is a major step towards the UK’s goal of having 600,000 international students across its 130 national institutions in the next decade. In light of the current political climate, a month post-Brexit, this article discusses the socioeconomic consequences of this immigration policy for different stakeholders, within and beyond the UK.

Within the UK:

International immigration is beneficial to the UK for economic and cultural reasons. Economically, it brings high-skilled labor from around the world. It is efficient to replace the loss of human capital from European immigration with a comparably strong source of human capital from international immigration. This can compensate for the impact of Brexit on migration.

Improving the quality of human capital will enhance productivity and encourage innovation. It will also attract better human and financial capital in the future. This can have a positive, cyclical effect and make the UK a more powerful economy. Culturally, international immigration brings diversity in many ways. It makes the UK a meeting point for talented people with different backgrounds. The UK’s strength is its multiculturalism, and this policy will augment that further.

On one hand, the UK is enforcing such policies to encourage international immigration, but on the other hand, it is implementing Brexit to tighten European immigration. This is essentially “venue-shopping” because the UK is choosing what kind of immigrants it wants, based on what will benefit them most.

It raises the question of how isolationist the UK is after Brexit, if immigration is opened in one way and closed in another way. Restricting European immigration especially is against the idea of European citizenship because the essence of the EU is the four freedoms of movement of: goods, services, capital, and people. Evidently, the UK is destroying its “citizenship across borders.”

With the transition period after Brexit, Europeans already experience a subliminal sense of discrimination in the UK. For example, there is resistance from British employers to hire young Europeans because they now require a special status to stay in the UK. Europeans can work in other European countries without this disruption, so there could be more incentive to explore options outside the UK. This would strain the UK’s alliances with other European countries further. Nevertheless, the UK is proving that it can be successful without the EU’s citizenship because it has other “superior” avenues.

Beyond the UK:

For international students, extending the work-visa after graduation makes the UK a very attractive destination. They now have a substantially longer period to find a job after studying, so their chances of staying in the UK and eventually becoming a citizen of the UK are higher; it is easier for international students to now attain “citizenship across borders.”

Having said that, this immigration policy only applies to students graduating from 2021, so current students still face the challenge of finding a job. As international students currently make up approximately 20% of the UK’s total student population, there have been petitions to enforce this policy immediately.

The Guardian examines a few relevant case studies of international students who wish they had entered the UK after this policy was implemented. This demonstrates how drastically influential such an immigration policy is for international students. When choosing where to study as well, this immigration policy offers a competitive advantage for the UK over many countries. For example, the UK is now more competitive with the U.S., which allows students to have a post-study work-visa extension for one or three years depending on the student’s major and currently has more than double the number of international students as the UK. Therefore, this policy is mutually beneficial for most international students’ desires to study and work in the UK, and the UK’s goals to improve economic efficiency and cultural diversity.

In contrast, this creates a “brain drain” from other countries to the UK because high-skilled labor is utilized in the UK, instead of in the home countries. In particular, the youth is important for the economic growth and development of their home countries.

The human capital gap will now be exacerbated across countries, so there will be more pressure to replace human capital in the home countries. Additionally, the home country’s prior investment in these students’ education will almost be a sunk cost because the home country will not be able to get positive returns from their investment.

These consequences will particularly affect the countries that send the most international students to the UK: China, India and Hong Kong. The labor market of such countries will deteriorate with lower quality workers, while the labor market of the UK elevates with increased international immigration. As a result, the socioeconomic inequality between the UK and other countries will widen. This will trigger effects on the industrialization and GDP per capita of such developed and developing countries.

Increased international immigration is advantageous for the UK and international students, but it is disadvantageous for other countries. Thus, through this immigration policy, in addition to Brexit, the UK is redefining its “citizenship across borders” on a global level.