ONS finds no evidence of major overstaying by foreign students in UK
The Office for National Statistics has found that it has been far over-estimating the numbers of foreign students who have overstayed in the country after their visa ran out.
ONS admitted on Thursday that there is "no evidence of a major issue of non-EU students overstaying their entitlement to stay", despite having previously estimated have numbers of overstayers could be close to 90,000 a year.
But an ONS investigation of what happened to 193,100 non-EU students in the UK on study visas and whose visa expired in 2015/16, found that this number was less than 5,000.
A report published on Thursday using other government data including Home Office exit checks, found 77% emigrated long-term after their studies, 15% returned on a short-term visit visa but then departed again within 12 months and 6% returned on a long-term visa for work or other reasons, meaning almost 98% per cent of foreign students did leave the country after finishing their studies.
Iain Bell, the deputy national statistician for population and public policy at the ONS who led the investigation, said a new approach was needed to estimating the movement of students.
The new findings suggest that concerns about the numbers of foreigners using student visas to illegally stay on in the UK were hugely exaggerated.
"The work of the statisticians across government suggests that recent cohorts of non-EU students are to a very large extent compliant with their visas in terms of departing or staying legally via extensions of leave," Bell said.
"This work crucially demonstrates two things: first, that many people do not simply immigrate for study and leave afterwards; their lives are more complex – some people arrive on a work visa and legitimately change to a study visa and vice versa and second, there is no evidence of a major issue of non-EU students overstaying their entitlement to stay."