The Crackdown on Student Visas: Knee-Jerk Illiberalism

The home secretary Alan Johnson announced a crackdown on student visas aiming to cut the number of people coming to study in the UK by tens of thousands. It's quite hard to know what the intended aim of the policy is as the justification ranges from that student visas are being exploited by people coming to the UK to work to the truly surreal accusation that student visas are allowing terrorist suspects to come to the UK. The real aim, I think, is to project a sense of being in control of immigration and acting tough on border control. But like any of the hundreds of half-baked schemes that New Labour has come up with since it came to power, the result of this move will reinforce the illiberal attitude towards the free movement of people and is likely to damage the economy.