Student visa restrictions for four countries

The Home Office has long been concerned about the number people on student visas claiming asylum.,

To be clear, there is nothing illegal or even necessarily suspicious about doing so. It is entirely possible for a change of government or personal circumstances to make it dangerous for someone to return to their home country while studying, and UK asylum rules reflect that. It is also true that, given the absence of legal routes for people to claim asylum from outside the UK, people who feel like they are in danger will want to combine an escape from bad circumstances with a higher education qualification.

Even so, the number of student asylum claims has reduced by 20 per cent over the course of 2025, though these represent 13 per cent of all asylum claims.

There are safeguards in the system, one of which is the ability to apply an “emergency brake” on visas for nationals from a particular country of concern. And that’s the measures the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has taken for four countries:

• Afghanistan (“significant human rights violations continue to occur, particularly against women and girls” according to the Foreign Office)
• Cameroon (the Foreign Office advises that “terrorists are very likely to carry out attacks” and advises UK nationals against “all travel” to various parts of the country)
• Myanmar (“denial of rights, state discrimination and human rights violations against the Rohingya”)
• Sudan (in many areas of the country “a real risk of serious harm solely by being present there”)

Nationals from all four will lose access to study visas, while people from Afghanistan also lose access to skilled worker visas. The rules will come into force on 26 March, with further details available from 5 March.

None of these countries send a notably large number of students to UK providers: there were just 335 students from Afghanistan, 575 from Cameroon, and 280 from Sudan in the country during the 2024-25 academic year.

There were 2,665 students from Myanmar studying at UK providers in that year, concentrated in the University of the West of England (350), the University of Sunderland (175), and Sheffield Hallam University (155).

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