UK Refusing Visas To Japanese Students

[Mulboyne]

Independent: Visa 'crisis' hits home - Schools and colleges are losing overseas pupils just when finances are being squeezed

With two children at school in Britain already, one Japanese family assumed that the third would join them. To their surprise, they found their youngest son refused for a visa. Their surprise turned to alarm and then to disbelief when the boy was turned down twice more under the new entry rules brought in by the UK Border Agency this year. They went back to the agent in Tokyo who helps families find schools overseas and he assured them they were not alone. Many children were being turned down. He suggested an alternative school in the United States, and the visa came back within a week. In what one school calls "a crisis verging on a national disaster", the UK's boarding schools are losing international pupils just at the time when their finances are being squeezed by the recession at home and the Government's demand through the charity law that they provide more free and subsidised places for poor families. And it's not just boarding schools suffering. Colleges and schools offering language and pre-sessional courses to prepare students for their studies are seeing a steep drop in numbers...Worst hit by the high refusal rate are students from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and also those hoping to get UK visas in Mexico. "Word is going out that the UK is closing its borders," says Matthew Burgess, who, as deputy chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, has been in almost daily contact with the Border Agency to help iron out the problems. "Four out of 10 students are being turned down"...more...

[Bucky]

Maybe the UK is concerned that are too many people there.

Things are booming over in the U.K. Nothing economic, of course. They've been in the same recession we have for the past year or more. We're talking babies here. British births are up. Pair that with rising immigration and Britain's seeing its biggest annual increase in its population in almost 50 years. The way things are going, Britain could eventually overtake Germany as Europe's most heavily-populated country. But depending on who you ask, that is not necessarily a net positive. From London, Marketplace's Stephen Beard reports.

[INDENT]NORMAN MYERS: More people means more pollution, more pressure on the climate system. It means all kinds of adverse pressures.
[/INDENT] Myers believes that a population of 61.4 million -- and rising -- is nothing short of a disaster.
[INDENT]MYERS: I believe that Britain has enough people already. And we might be better off with fewer people. I feel it's deplorable that the population total is steadily growing in Britain. It should be going the other way.
[/INDENT] Retired diplomat Sir Andrew Green is another naysayer when it comes to population growth. He says that with current levels of immigration and fertility, the U.K. will have 70 million people within two decades. The country will be the most populous and densely populated in Europe.
[INDENT]ANDREW GREEN: England is already 12 times as crowded as the United States, four times as crowded as France. And it causes a whole range of problems. Some of them are to do with the shortage of housing, the effect on the environment and the quality of life.
[/INDENT]

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