THE COALITION government will have to consider restricting visas for foreign students and curbing settlement rights if it wants to achieve promised cuts in immigration, a parliamentary committee said today.
The government has already imposed an interim cap on work visas for skilled workers, which has drawn howls of complaint from companies facing limits on hiring overseas employees.
Businesses say the migrant ceiling is based on artificially low staffing needs last year when the economy was mired in recession.
Academics have also warned the cap is affecting Britain’s ability to attract leading scientists from around the world.
But parliament’s Home Affairs Committee said the work visa cap by itself would have little effect in reducing net immigration from the current annual level of around 200,000 to the “tens of thousands” a year sought by the government.
Britain can only enforce immigration controls on citizens from outside the 30-nation European Economic Area (EEA).
They account for just over half of the annual immigration total, but only about a quarter of them come to Britain for work.
By contrast, some 45 per cent – or 125,000 – of non-EEA migrants a year come to Britain to study, and at present face no overall limits on entry.
“To achieve anything approaching the reduction in overall immigration sought by the government, other immigration routes – such as international students and those joining family members in the UK – will also have to be examined,” the committee said.
“And it is possible that in the long term the right to settle in this country may have to be removed from some immigrants,” it added.
But the committee said the coalition should first crack down on abuses such as bogus colleges and those overstaying their visas, before penalising legitimate international students, who brought cultural and financial benefits to Britain.
The government plans to make the migration cap permanent in April next year, but has yet to decide its level. It was introduced as an interim measure in July to prevent a rush of visa applications.
The cap was a key Conservative election pledge, to which the Liberal Democrats reluctantly agreed in a coalition deal in May.
Many people welcomed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of cheap workers, mostly from Poland and Hungary, after the expansion of the European Union in 2004 gave them the right to find jobs in Britain.
But the consequent strains on local housing, education and health services have turned immigration into a sensitive political issue in many areas.