Why Migration Watch is wrong about overseas students

The last month has not been a happy one for the Government’s immigration target. The most recent figures showed net migration still at an all-time-high. New research by IPPR, followed by an open letter to the Prime Minister by scores of university heads, has prompted widespread questions about the wisdom of including international students in the figures – given that most students are not really “long term immigrants” at all, and that a short-term political obsession with cutting their numbers is likely to do long-term damage to our education sector and the UK economy as a whole.

The pressure group Migration Watch bear some responsibility for influencing the Conservatives to choose net migration for their key election pledge, through their success in the media and with their parliamentary wing Balanced Migration. Their narrative relied heavily on the idea of Britain as a crowded island, a clever tactic for reassuring moderates that it isn’t an opposition to immigration – it was simply a question of numbers.

If crowding is the issue, then overall net migration is indeed a logical target. But because it includes the movements of British citizens, EU citizens, and emigration as well as immigration, it is also far harder to control, and so far has given the Conservatives nothing but trouble. So it is not surprising that MigrationWatch have responded to the recent shift in the debate with a strident restatement of their faith in the net migration target, and their view that students must remain included in it.

Migration Watch’s main argument is that excluding students from the net migration figures “would destroy the credibility of the government’s immigration pledge”. In crude political terms, they may be right: if ministers take students out of the target, those whose main concern is scoring points will relish the opportunity to charge them with “fiddling the figures”. But on closer inspection, it is including students which, in the short term, truly represents “fiddling the figures”. When student immigration is rising, there is a “lag effect” on net migration, as student emigration (which is spread over several years) catches up with immigration. This is true to an extent of all immigration categories, but the larger the proportion who eventually emigrate, the bigger this lag effect is. Because of this “lag effect”, including students in the net migration figures will make it look like the government has made much more progress in hitting its target in 2013 and 2014 than in fact they have, as IPPR’s analysis shows.

The crucial point is that including or excluding students makes relatively little difference to long-run net migration – which ministers and Migration Watch say is their real concern – but makes a big difference to how the government’s efforts look in short-run political terms.

Including students, and therefore being incentivised to continue reducing numbers, also makes a big difference to our education sector and the UK economy – a difference which IPPR, UniversitiesUK, and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills all estimate runs into many billions of pounds. Migration Watch’s airy dismissal of this lost economic contribution suggests a regrettable narrow mindedness at a time when returning to growth is clearly a national priority.

Migration Watch also urge that the data on which the net migration figures are based be strengthened, and that more action be taken against bogus students and colleges – both points on which IPPR agrees (and which featured in our report). But the idea that we should persist with a policy based on poor data until that data is improved, despite the risk to our education sector and economy, is quixotic; and cutting down on bogus students and colleges and cutting down on numbers are fundamentally different objectives.

This is why IPPR has consistently argued that ministers should remove international students from the “numbers game” of the net migration target. Migration Watch have offered no new arguments to challenge that view.

Migration Watch did not offer its readers a link to IPPR’s report but IPPR is happy to point readers to both our report and Migration Watch’s report so that they can make up their own minds.

Matt Cavanagh is Visiting Fellow at IPPR

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• Londoner2

  An interesting post on the same topic
  http://www.gherson.com/blog/gifted-students-shouldn-t-shun-the-uk/

• maximusthrax

  A few months ago the IPPR was mocking the Coalition as it would not make its immigration targets.  Now it has changed its tune because it is scared it will.  So it has to hide behind further education – as earlier it tried to hide behind business – as a way to discredit immigration’s controls.
  Basically the IPPR’s and the NIESR’s function (as the thinktank wings of the Labour Party) is to destroy the idea that immigration can be controlled by anyone to pave the way for a return to Labour’s open door policy.
  Of course England is desperately overcrowded and needs to control immigration. 
  And proper students, at genuine places of education, can still come.

• lumpywhales

  The coalition will not reach its immigration targets- even with all the stringent rules they are desperately putting in place. The most they will achieve is saying we decreased immigration by x%.”

  As Matt points out- this is largely because the largest influx comes from international students who should be classed as temporary migrants (because almost all of them go back home). They have virtually no effect on long-term and permanent migration. Remove them from the figures and you’ll see that net migration isn’t as bad as the headlines say. The big debate is why they are included and the reason it’s so critical is because it’s the driving force behind much of this Government’s policy (which is incomparable to the US, Australia, etc.)

  So instead, the Government is putting in place not a policy of checks and balances for genuine students, but one of deterrence in a desperate attempt to cut down numbers- putting an unofficial cap. These are students that would have done their PHD at Oxford or gone to Cambridge, Warwick, Imperial. The so-called “brightest and best” that are being dissuaded from coming to the UK.

  As Matt has said in his title- international students are being used as a “political football” for this Government’s immigration policies. An immigration policy that is built on fear and paper tigers during a time of economic turmoil.

• http://twitter.com/CommonSense4Now Common Sense ✟

  This is getting far far far beyond silly.
  Even if you can claim in stats that the migrationwatch evidence is wrong we can all SEE they are right.

  Just look at the census stats for any high immigration area and you will see for yourselves its complete bull*** .
  The English Language and people have been reduced to minority status in every single city of the UK for **** sake !

  completely different just 15 years ago! We all know the TRUTH!

• raie_te

  It will be good to give some background about Migration Watch as well. One of its founders is Professor David Coleman, a member of the Galton institute, formerly known as the Eugenics Society. 
  Now if you knew about eugenics, then you would know it is not a good title to go by for this society so they named it after Francis Galton, father of eugenics. I wonder if his ideas do not influence Migration Watch