- Target:
- Home Secretary
- Region:
- United Kingdom
Following significant campaigning and political pressure from students, staff, and supporters, the High Court has allowed London Metropolitan University to proceed to full Judicial Review to challenge the revocation of its Tier-4 HTS licence to recruit international students.
As a result of the High Court decision the Home Office, via the UK Border Agency, has now agreed a limited 'amnesty' for current international students at London Met of up to one academic year.
Unfortunately, as welcome as such an amnesty is, it fails to address the needs of over 500 current London Met international students. This includes students in either the first or second year of a three year degree course, and PhD students with more than one academic year of study remaining. This is an invidious position to place such students in.
In addition to the immediate damage the decision to revoke the university's Tier-4 licence has had on its international students, the long term damage to the university as a whole is considerable.
London Met now finds itself in significant financial trouble with anticipated revenue losses following withdrawal of its Tier-4 licence running into £10M's.
We understand that such losses now jeopardise the university's continuation as a community-based public university, primarily serving two of the poorest boroughs in London and the UK - Tower Hamlets and Islington.
Additional notes:
TUC Congress 2012 unanimously adopted an Emergency Motion from the University and College Union (UCU) that demanded a full amnesty for London Met international students and the removal of international students from net migration stats and targets. Details here
Jeremy Corbyn MP (Islington North) has launched a parliamentary Early Day Motion (EDM 437) calling for the reversing of the revocation of London Met’s Tier-4 HTS licence. Details here
ITN London Tonight - News report on 28/9 demonstration demanding a full amnesty for London Met international students:
We call upon the Home Secretary to:
1) provide an immediate amnesty to all of London Met's current international students so they can fully complete their courses and programmes of study;
2) reverse the decision to revoke London Met's Tier-4 HTS license and thus enable it to immediately restart its recruitment of international students;
3) protect the long term financial viability of London Met as a community-based public university by requiring the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) to appropriately reschedule the university's £15M+ repayments due to it.
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The Full Amnesty Now - Reverse Revocation - Save London Met petition to Home Secretary was written by Mark Campbell and is in the category Education at GoPetition.