The Home Office has its eyes on post-study work numbers

The run-up to a white paper – in this case, the Home Office’s legal migration proposals – traditionally sees different departments floating ideas to the press as part of intra-government negotiations.

So over the last couple of months we have heard that Rachel Reeves wants to review visa policy for scientists and researchers in growth areas to make the UK more attractive – and that the Home Office is against any change in fees to achieve this. It’s also been briefed to the press that the government will reject plans for fixed immigration targets for specific visa routes.

What we have today in The Times, then, is perhaps no more than confirmation that the Home Office has post-study work in its sights as one of the areas that could contribute to its wider goal of simply bringing net migration figures down. Whether what’s suggested comes to fruition, or is just part of the Whitehall bargaining process, remains to be seen.

So we hear that:

Overseas students can stay in the UK for up to two years after university even if they do not have a job, and can also remain if they find a lower-skilled job and switch to a work visa. However, the government is considering setting a higher bar in a white paper on immigration that is set to be published soon.

It’s not immediately clear how this “higher bar” would be achieved, but on reflection it’s most likely that it refers to changes to skilled worker visa salary thresholds – any such tinkering with the Graduate route itself would be extremely unwieldy, given there are no sponsorship requirements.

So we’re probably talking about what happens after the Graduate route – some stretching of the salary requirements for skilled work, which of course have already increased markedly in the last 12 months (the article neglects to mention this, focusing on Conservative changes made in early 2022 which incentivised switching into care work).

Salary thresholds – and accompanying discount rates by age, employment sector, and qualifications – have become the preferred lever for constant fiddling with the immigration system in recent years.

One thing that’s clear is that any further increase (or tightening of discount rates and permitted sectors, more probably) would have to reckon with the fact that labour markets across the UK are very different in terms of the salary on offer – we’ve recently seen the Scottish government making this exact argument as a rationale for an improved Scottish post-work offer. If it’s done in blunt terms, it would further disadvantage universities in areas with lower graduate incomes – or at least, encourage all their graduates to move to London after they finish their studies.