Thread by @UnisNotBorders

Why focus *only* on Nigerians? Would Nick be outraged if 50,000 white Canadians brought their dependents to the UK?

Right-wing pundit, Nick Timothy, is using the 'bogus student' line to promote disastrous Tory policies that will harm working class migrant students.

Brief 🧵

Bringing dependants as a migrant student is both not easy & very expensive. One has to pay visa fees which amount to £1,538 if the dependent is applying outside of the UK. Additionally, dependents have to pay the international health surcharge fee to access the NHS.

In total, if you are family of four, one migrant PGR student, three dependents applying from out of the UK, you are looking at spending £4,977 in visa fees and an additional £10,940 for the international health surcharge fee. And these fees are increasing each year.

And we all know that the Home Office is turning out a profit from high visa fees: ein.org.uk/news/times-hom…

Meanwhile, if you are migrant student and/or their dependent, you have ZERO access to state funds due to #NRPF (no recourse to public funds).

Therefore, if you are a migrant student on a visa & find yourself homeless because of high rents to private housing like what @aimeemle experienced that forced her into sleeping rough, you cannot get a council house, or any emergency support provided by the state.

Migrant students are allowed to work 20 hours per week in the UK, & many of us work in the university as GTAs while paying national insurance & taxes. Yet, we are precluded from state support because of our immigration status.

We bring this point up not to make the argument that only migrants who contribute to the UK economy should have access to access to services. That is obviously what the @Conservatives believe & want to transform immigration policy into.

Rather, these points are to underscore that since the mid-2000s, there has been unrelenting attacks on migrant students, from both @UKLabour & @Conservatives that have used the 'bogus student' title to create policies & legislation that limits all migrants from coming to the UK.

Part of the 'bogus student' title is to either claim either that students are taking part in illegal work despite the fact that we are allowed to work up to 20 hours per week, or that we are abusing UK immigration rules by bringing over too many
dependents.

Yet this racist & classist designation doesn't factor the abuse that migrant students experience from the Home Office *and* their universities. It doesn't factor the economic exploitation we experience or the workplace abuse that forces us to go on strike action. #UCUstrike

This is why talking about the #HostileEnvironment in relation to marketisation in UK higher education is so important. We hope that more @ucu branches reach out to us on these points.