← Today in Focus
Today in Focus
The brilliant students the UK doesn’t want
00:25:41
Why has the UK introduced a ban on student visas for four countries? Today in Focus talks to affected students in Sudan and Afghanistan
Loading summary
Transcript75 lines
- [00:00]
Shaheera Sadat
This is the Guardian.
- [00:08]
Helen Pitt
Today, the students banned from studying in Britain.
- [00:19]
Shaheera Sadat
I am Shahida Sadat, a software engineer from Afghanistan. I am 26 years old and I am from Tahor Province.
- [00:29]
Helen Pitt
Ever since she was a teenager, Shaheera was obsessed with tech.
- [00:33]
Shaheera Sadat
Technologies are barrier breaking, so that's why I choose to get my degree in software engineering and computer science.
- [00:43]
Helen Pitt
She was in her final year of a degree in software engineering at Kabul University when the Taliban took over. That was in the summer of 2021.
- [00:53]
Shaheera Sadat
It was my last year at university and the day that Taliban took control of Afghanistan. I was at university's hostel and it was really a moment that I can't forget. The moment that I felt that we lost everything, that we won't be able to continue education or to finish and complete our degree. At that moment I was crying, seeing each of my roommates and I knew that I won't be able to see them again. So the moment I left the university I was really hopeless.
- [01:30]
Helen Pitt
Against the odds, Shaheera managed to complete her undergraduate degree and hoped to begin a Master's. But with the Taliban in charge, there was no chance.
- [01:39]
Shaheera Sadat
So it's very difficult in Afghanistan for Afghan women to study. They cannot continue their education after the sixth grade of school and universities are closed towards us. So it's very challenging, it's very difficult to keep ourselves motivated and to continue education.
- [02:04]
Helen Pitt
For the last five years she has refused to give up her dream. And last month, after applying to study AI at University College London, she got an interview for Achievening Scholarship, a prestigious UK government program which offers fully funded masters to the world's future leaders.
- [02:21]
Shaheera Sadat
So I applied to the Chevening Scholarship and my first choice was University College London, Masters of Machine Learning. And I choose this because Afghanistan really needs advanced knowledge and technology, especially in artificial intelligence, because currently we need it most so we can remove these barriers that we have on women and youth.
- [02:44]
Helen Pitt
On Afghanistan, she was thrilled to get a shot at the scholarship.
- [02:49]
Shaheera Sadat
My interview was scheduled on 9th of March, but on 4th of March I got the email that they have canceled the chevening for Afghan nationals.
- [03:02]
Helen Pitt
Shaheera became the latest casualty in the UK's immigration clampdown after the government announced an emergency break on study visas from Afghanistan and three other countries, Sudan, Myanmar and Cameroon. In the end, UCL offered Shaheera a place, but with no visa, she can't take it. But why has the government singled out these four countries and what does it hope to achieve by barring some of the brightest students from some of the toughest Backgrounds from the Guardian. I'm Helen Peard. Today in focus, the curious logic of the Home Office's student visa ban.
- [03:44]
Afra Elmadi
My name is Afra Al Mahdi and I'm 29 years old.
- [03:49]
Helen Pitt
Another student affected by the visa ban is Afra, who grew up in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. Even as a toddler, she was a bit of a prodigy. Starting primary school early, one of our
- [04:00]
Afra Elmadi
neighbors, she was a teacher, visited us and she suggested to my mom that I could start going to our school just as a listener, like informally. So then exams came and I topped my class. It was a surprise to the whole school.
- [04:19]
Helen Pitt
Afra ended up in the best secondary school in her district and she aced her exams.
- [04:24]
Afra Elmadi
I excelled in the national unified exams as well, and that just paved my way. And I was able to earn my seat at the best dental college in Sudan, at the University of Khartoum.
- [04:37]
Helen Pitt
Sounds like you were a child genius. And how old were you when you got into this prestigious dental school?
- [04:42]
Afra Elmadi
I think it was 15, maybe. Really.
- [04:54]
Helen Pitt
Afraid's university years were not plain sailing. It was a time in Sudan of great unrest and protests.
- [05:00]
Afra Elmadi
And because of the political activism at the university, our academic years were interrupted, like several times. However, I completed my undergraduate degree and my research project was ranked among the top five of my cohort. Five months later, I passed the first part of the Royal College of Surgeons membership.
- [05:22]
Helen Pitt
And why? Tell me, why were you interested in dentistry specifically?
- [05:26]
Afra Elmadi
I was just interested in the head and neck area generally and to be oral and exofacial surgeon, because that was my passion. This is where I want to serve my people and humanity as all. And you have to get a double qualification. You have to do a degree in medicine and the bachelor degree in dental surgery. But I wanted to to extend my academic background in cancer specifically.
- [05:55]
Helen Pitt
Afra tells me she became interested in oncology when she did her placement year. And she saw the cost to patients of late cancer diagnoses, which she says happened far too frequently in Sudan. And so she decided to study abroad to learn new skills to one day take back home. And then in 2023, civil war broke out. Afra had to flee Khartoum, one of 14 million Sudanese people displaced by the war, a conflict that has killed at least 150,000 people. After 10 difficult months, she managed to move to the UAE, leaving behind some of her family, including her brother. And it was then that she decided to apply for a master's at Oxford in applied cancer science.
- [06:40]
Afra Elmadi
I think Oxford was always a childhood dream. It's Oxford. So it wasn't something that just I decided later or. No, I. Oxford was always a childhood dream. When I received the interview email or the shortlisting email, I couldn't believe it. And I prepared for that interview as if it was the most important event of my life. And truly it was. I also read papers from the African context and I caught up the latest early detection clinical trials happening in Oxford. I wanted to be ready and I was over prepared for the interview. Regarding the interview itself, I genuinely enjoyed every second of it. I made sure to reflect everything I had studied and everything I had witnessed in my clinical work. I felt like I was the voice of those vulnerable patients and I took the responsibility very seriously. And when the group director or any of the panelists comment with comments like, I think this is a very good answer, or this is a great answer, couldn't. I couldn't believe it. I felt like he was being offered the moon. If you could. I still feel very grateful, deeply grateful for that, for leaving those moments.
- [08:14]
Helen Pitt
So the interview went well. And then was it in February that you were offered a place?
- [08:18]
Afra Elmadi
Yeah. And I remember when I saw the offer email, when it popped into my inbox, I couldn't believe it. And I still remember when I told my father, he congratulated me and then lifted me up from the earth. It was a moment that took me right back to my school days. I could. I could see the pride in his eyes very clearly.
- [08:44]
Helen Pitt
She won a place. Of course she did. And then she applied for a scholarship for exceptional African students. And she was waiting to hear if she'd been successful when the visa break was announced.
- [08:56]
Afra Elmadi
It's. It's really hard to talk about this. I felt like I. I felt like waking up to April 15, 2023. The. The first day of the war. The same unpreparedness, the same level of uncertainty, the same feeling that the ground had been from my under, from my feet, and there was like nothing you could do to stop it. I first saw the announcement when it popped up on my screen on Instagram and I started the screen in this ple. After that, I immediately shared it in the WhatsApp group with the other Sudanese offer holders at Oxford. As you know, the first stage of grief is denial. So some of them just kept saying, there will be an exception for this year. Let's just wait for the official statement tomorrow. And when the official statement came, it was just clear, a generalized plant and just policy with no exceptions.
- [10:16]
Rajeev Sayal
I think it's important if somebody has come to study, they come to study and once their study period is finished, they leave. The study route into this country is not the same as an asylum route into this country. If you. And I think that when you have.
- [10:28]
Helen Pitt
So, Rajeev Sial, you are the Home affairs editor of the Guardian and you've been following this so called visa break that the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood has implemented as of last week. And she's targeting particularly students from four countries, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan. And can you just explain what, what is this break?
- [10:47]
Rajeev Sayal
What has happened is the government has announced very short notice a few weeks ago that they were going to suspend for 18 months vis going to four specific countries. And they say that the reason they're doing this is that there's been a big increase in the numbers and the percentages of the people who apply for student visas from those countries who then go on to apply for asylum and refugee status and to remain in the
- [11:20]
UK when you have abuse of legal routes into this country that then convert into asylum claims, you're essentially running a legal migration system that is essentially an asylum system system. And I do think that it's important that we follow the rules properly and we have separation between those two things.
- [11:34]
The Home Office has put out these statements saying there's been a 330% overall increase since 2011 in two countries and more than 400% increase across the four countries over a six year period. Those figures have been questioned by opposition
- [11:54]
Helen Pitt
groups and there's no exceptions at all. Even for the most brilliant scholars.
- [11:59]
Rajeev Sayal
There is no exception. No. And this is very much in the mode that Shabana Mahmood, Home Secretary, has tried to put across, that the government is going to be tough, there will be no exceptions and that when they bring in rules, they mean them. This is there to play to a certain section of the electorate who are particularly worried about immigration. And if when you talk to government advisers about this, what they say is that the only polling that's been done on this issue shows that even Green and Labour voters are very, very supportive of the hardline policies that Labour put forward in November, which included a clampdown on abuse of the student visa system as they see it.
- [12:52]
Helen Pitt
Right, okay. And does it make sense to you, if you look at the statistics, why she has singled out these four countries?
- [13:00]
Rajeev Sayal
Opponents say the government's claim of visa exploitation are a distortion given that out of a total of around 110,000 asylum claims, just 120 Sudanese students applied for asylum in the year up to September, 550 Afghan nationals 180 people from Cameroon and 330 from Myanmar. So while the percentage of increase might look huge, 330% or 400% increases as it's being pushed by the government, the actual numbers are relatively tiny. And should we really be surprised that in places such as Sudan and Afghanistan that actually those countries will see changes in the rate of people applying for asylum, given the incredibly difficult position for people, particularly people who are educated, who come from those countries, who have been at times targeted by militias and by the government as it is now in Afghanistan?
- [14:09]
Afra Elmadi
Yeah.
- [14:10]
Helen Pitt
And these might be people who came here perfectly legitimately. The situation back home changes and because of their background or their gender, perhaps in the case of Afghanistan, they simply feel that it's not safe.
- [14:20]
Rajeev Sayal
Exactly right.
- [14:21]
Helen Pitt
And let's talk about some numbers, because while the government has been clamping down on scholars from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Cameroon and Sudan, those four countries are actually not at the top of the list, are they, for students who go on to claim asylum? When I was preparing for this interview, I was looking up the Home Office's latest statistics, and top of the list is Pakistan, followed by Bangladesh, India and Nigeria. So the four countries the Home Office is targeting are. Are nowhere near the top of the list.
- [14:52]
Rajeev Sayal
They're not on the list. That's been a point that's been made by some of the claimants who have been told they can't come here, have launched a case and they are planning on taking the UK government to court over this, pointing out the fact that Pakistan, for example, has so many thousands more people who come to the UK apparently, to study, but then do apply for asylum.
- [15:15]
Helen Pitt
Yeah. So I'm interested to hear, what is your theory about why the Home Office has chosen these four countries in particular?
- [15:22]
Rajeev Sayal
There's a concern, particularly over Afghanistan and Sudan, that there has been a rise in claims in general from those countries.
- [15:37]
Helen Pitt
Yeah. Unsurprising, given the Taliban takeover in this sort of bloody civil war, that is.
- [15:42]
Rajeev Sayal
But the government has pledged to clamp down on the number of claims that they allow through. They are very conscious of the fact they want to control the numbers of people coming from countries which are associated with illegal or unauthorized migration in small boats. Two of the countries that do provide large numbers of unauthorized migrants on small boats are Sudan and Afghanistan.
- [16:14]
Helen Pitt
Right, well, but then why target the students, the tiny number of exceptional scholars who have received places at UK universities, The anger that you talked about, about at the start of our conversation, from the public, from Labour voters and even Green voters, feeling that the immigration system doesn't work that it's unfair that people are cheating the system. Does that really apply to these potential master's students?
- [16:37]
Rajeev Sayal
No. But politicians end up playing a kind of numbers game where it's just about the general figures. Really what this government wants to do is come a general election, be able to say we have driven the numbers of people coming to the UK down and they want to be able to do that in every means possible.
- [17:07]
Afra Elmadi
We have learned, I mean, through the years of the war, that even when we are victims, we cannot afford victimizing ourselves. So that's why us started challenging this policy.
- [17:21]
Helen Pitt
As Rajeev mentioned, some students are taking the Home Office to court, including Shaheera, the Afghan software engineer we heard from at the start, and Afra, the Sudanese dentist and aspiring surgeon. While she's lobbying anyone who she thinks
- [17:35]
Afra Elmadi
could help, I called for a meeting with the other affected students with the Sudanese offer holders at Oxford. And there was another group of Sudanese diaspora that they are residents in the UK and they offered to write a petition to the UK Parliament. And they did start reaching out to UK Press. We did a couple of interviews with some journals and media journals, and I wrote a draft to send it to some of the Eucaric mbs.
- [18:08]
Helen Pitt
Oh, really? Who did? Did you. Did you write to Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary? This is her policy.
- [18:15]
Afra Elmadi
Actually, the Oxford University Sudanese Society did that. They submitted a legal letter to the Home Office. But we contacted the MB analyst, Dots. She is the MB for Oxford East. And I received an email from her office and it was a positive one.
- [18:37]
Helen Pitt
Okay. And do you. And do you feel optimistic that the decision might be reversed?
- [18:42]
Afra Elmadi
Actually, I don't know how to say it, but I always prefer to hope for the best while getting prepared for the worst. It's a very hard life lesson, but I have learned it.
- [19:09]
Helen Pitt
And, you know, the government is justifying this visa break by saying, you know, listen, there has been a real spike in study visa applications from these four countries, including Sudan. And they're suggesting that there has been abuse of those visas because they say a disproportionate number of students from those countries come to the UK to study and then they claim asylum. But Rajeev Sayal, our Home affairs editor, has pointed out that the actual numbers of these students are incredibly small. So why do you think that they are picking on you guys?
- [19:38]
Afra Elmadi
I'm not quite sure about reason, but I think maybe because the increase in the overall or the Sudanese students that claim is increased recently, but that's the direct consequence of Sudan's war. And it's worth mentioning that now this war is described by United nations as the world's largest displacement Crisis with over 13 million people forced to flee their homes.
- [20:08]
Helen Pitt
Yeah, it's shocking statistics, isn't it? So in some ways it's not surprising that a small number of the students would think, do you know what? I can't go back home. Maybe they don't have a home anymore or it's simply unsafe and that's why people are putting in asylum applications. It's not, maybe not something that they planned in advance, but the situation's changed perhaps since they started study in the uk.
- [20:30]
Afra Elmadi
Exactly, exactly. And I think there was no shame in claiming asylum while surviving or after surviving a war. And this is just basic human rights and recognized by all international humanitarian law. Those people are not system abusers, they are just war survivors and they are seeking safer options.
- [20:56]
Helen Pitt
Coming up, why blocking students won't stop the boats.
- [21:11]
Podcast Narrator
Chicago 2011. A cop is murdered. Police and prosecutors swear they have the trigger man. He swears he didn't do it. How far will each side go to prove they're right?
- [21:24]
Afra Elmadi
Like it's just one bombshell after another.
- [21:27]
Rajeev Sayal
You know, you're like, what, what?
- [21:29]
Podcast Narrator
The story of a PlayStation, a brain eating amoeba and the relentless pursuit of justice off duty. Out now. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:42]
Helen Pitt
What do you think the UK will lose by not having students like you study in the uk?
- [21:48]
Afra Elmadi
To answer this question, I would prefer to start with the fact that in the official statement the government points to the cost of asylum accommodation. But this argument conflates asylum seekers already in the system with prospective students who have not yet arrived. The international students are paying 40,000 sterling pound tuition fees, contributing to 37.4 billion net gain that international students bring to the UK economy. So they are not a cost, they are actually an investment. Another thing that was worth mentioning is the fact that someone with the potential and ambition that actually led them to secure an offer or to have a place in the UK leading universities would not be okay with relying on government subsidies. Those people, they would definitely be well positioned to convert to a skilled worker visa or global talent visa, becoming taxpayers themselves. I have to mention something specifically related to the Sudanese people because when we look at the Sudanese context specifically, this policy does not simply block students, it actively blocks Sudanese leaders in their fields. Because the majority of Sudanese students are not self funding. They secure funding after meeting the criteria of highly competitive scholarships, often with a contract that clearly sets a condition to return to their home countries and contribute its rebuilding. I think it's also worth mentioning that when it comes to the statistics of the Home Office itself, It shows that 87% of Sudanese asylum claimants arrived with small boats, not student visa. Blocking the students route will not stop the boats. It will only ensure the Sudanese professionals best place to rebuild their country and address the conditions that drive 87% of Sudanese asylum seekers to take those dangerous journeys are kept out of the United Kingdom, leaving the root causes of the illegal immigration untouched and completely under arrest.
- [23:59]
Helen Pitt
It's sort of insulting, isn't it, treating you all as if your only goal is to kind of hoodwink the Home Office to come on a false pretense of wanting to study just so that you can then claim asylum.
- [24:09]
Afra Elmadi
To be clear, there is absolutely no shame in claiming asylum after surviving a war. That's just a basic human right. But we are clinicians, we are researchers and we do have our own contributions to science and to education. We have maintained our will to develop and to learn, develop personally and professionally and to serve throughout the worst humanitarian crisis of our time. And in fact, we carry our Sudanese and African identities with pride, with honor and deep commitment.
- [24:42]
Helen Pitt
Afra, it's been such a privilege to talk to you. I wish you all the very best. We'll be crossing our fingers for you.
- [24:47]
Afra Elmadi
Actually, I'm the honored one. Really thankful.
- [24:51]
Helen Pitt
That was Afra Elmadi. My thanks to her and also to Shaheera Sadat. Both of them were originally interviewed by my colleague Diane Taylor, who took does fantastic work on the UK's asylum and refugee system. Thanks too to Rajeev Sayyal, our home affairs editor. And that is all for today. This episode was produced by Sundar Sabdi, Eleanor Biggs and Hannah Aden, and presented by me, Helen Pitt. Sound design was by Brian McNamara and the executive producer was Sammy Kent. We'll be back in your feeds later today with the latest.
- [25:34]
Shaheera Sadat
This is the Guardian.