Unis Resist Border Controls

After years on the frontline, Unis Resist Border Control (URBC)  have extensive familiarity with the exploitative situations migrant students in the UK find themselves in. As such, we are extremely concerned about The Observer article “Human traffickers ‘using UK universities as cover’” published on 3 July 2022 by Shanti Das, and the conclusions that are drawn upon.

The Conservatives have used human trafficking as a pretext to enforce more draconian border controls, including expanding the hostile environment policy. Likewise, anti-trafficking policies have instead criminalised exploited migrants, rather than going after the real problem- the UK’s inhumane border regime.  

The Home Office and the UK university sector cannot place sole blame on migrant students for a situation which their own actions have so clearly created, especially in treating migrant students like ‘cash cows’, as we have often chronicled.  Indeed it is shocking to see very hostile environment type approaches that have enabled this kind of grim exploitation of migrant students cast as a solution in Shanti Das’ piece when the history of such approaches includes: 

• Over 20 years of No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF), wherein migrant students & all other migrants have no access to state funds and support services.
• Paltry pastoral support within universities for migrant students. 
• High tuition, visa and International Health Surcharge fees, along with soaring living costs, forcing migrant students to take on exploitative gig economy work to survive, leading them into exploitative employment situations.  
• The on-going Covid-19 pandemic, pushing cash-strapped migrant students and their families into further exploitative situations that hinder their ability to complete their university education, much less to actually survive in the UK.

We notice that the article seems to focus on Indian students. URBC has serious concerns about the potential for punitive targeting of Indian students on the basis of this reportage. Greater suspicion of Indian students will not help to solve these severe problems. Indeed, during the mid 2000s, the UK media had a rash of articles, often daily, depicting primarily South Asian migrant students as ‘bogus’ and not really students at all. These stereotypes led the coalition government (Conservatives + Liberal Democrats) from 2010-2015 to justify the hostile environment policy in UK universities, mandating strict and pervasive attendance monitoring of migrant students and staff. It also led the the racist and xenophobic targeting of largely South Asian TOEIC students in 2014 who were forced off their courses and removed from the UK without being able to exercise proper due process within the UK. They were vindicated in 2016 after a British court found that 48,000 students were wrongfully removed from the UK. Despite being vindicated in the courts, TOEIC students continue to have problems, some have been blacklisted from continuing their education, getting visas to return back to the UK to resume their education, regularising their visas in the UK to remain in the country, and in other cases estranged from family because of the shame of being branded by the Home Office and the UK media as “exam cheats”.

Ten years of the hostile environment policy have introduced multiple surveillance points in the UK workplace, housing, accessing the NHS, schools, universities, and services. Migrant students represent a relatively compliant workforce: in our experience they often do not know much about unions, they may not know what the UK minimum wage is, they are unfamiliar with the notion of a living wage, and they don’t know about their rights as workers in the UK. These gaps in knowledge are being exploited already. Some migrant students are being threatened with sacking if they don’t work beyond their  visa-allotted 20 hour limit.  Why not talk to the migrant students who are being horribly exploited by both commodified higher education and draconian borders instead of writing stories that enforce more blanket surveillance of migrant students and all other migrants?

What would sincere help for migrant students in these exploitative conditions look like? Would it be a campaign to make sure migrant students knew their rights and had clear recourse if they were threatened or had their passport taken away? Surely it would not be greater surveillance under the existing hostile environment in UK higher education. Veiled threats that universities could lose their ability to host migrant students on visas will only create worse conditions for migrant students and staff, not for universities already increasing migrant student enrolment. Das’ piece will only push further universities, under the guidance of the Home Office, to install more pernicious surveillance targeting migrant students and staff. This will lead to a more heightened carceral environment, both affecting and interfering in the way migrants teach, learn and research in UK universities. 

Unis Resist Border Controls (URBC) a national campaign comprising migrant students, lecturers, and activists fighting to end the two pronged beasts within UK higher education, that being of course border control via the hostile environment policy and exploitation brought on my neoliberal, marketised education. Unlike the student movement ten years ago which ignored the plight of international students, URBC has been a steadfastly free education campaign, believing that the fight for free education should be extended to migrants, whatever their immigration status.

The global pandemic has shown us more starkly, the structural inequalities that exist for migrants, whether you are a student, university staff, or a cleaner. During the first lockdown, URBC conducted a joint study and found that 56% of international students were either destitute or at risk of destitution because of woefully inadequate support structures in place at their respective universities, in addition to no recourse to public funds (NPRF), meaning that international students on a Tier 4 visa are prevented from accessing benefits, housing support and many other services that are available for British citizens.

For the past year, URBC has been fighting to protect international students who have been forcibly withdrawn off of their courses for simply being unable to pay the next instalment of their tuition fee. A withdrawal from a university means that these students now face visa curtailment and possible deportation. Many of these students have taken out exploitative loans in India that mean, without a degree and the ability to get a good job, they not be able to repay these loans and their families will lose their homes and go into bankruptcy. Meanwhile these students watch on the sidelines as family members and friends die of COVID as India enters a deadly second wave, while they are fighting to remain in the UK and complete their studies.

URBC is delighted to see students standing up and refusing to be further exploited and making links with migrant Black and PoC cleaners and other precarious members of staff, particularly lecturers on zero contract hours, However, URBC also believes that British students need to make further links how marketised higher education is affecting and harming international students. As we have said before, if international students are the ‘cash cows’ then British students are the ‘cash goats’ and universities during this pandemic have been all too eager to exploit all of you while putting university staff, cleaners and other custodial staff in harm’s way during a deadly pandemic. This is why URBC urges you to support our fight for Tuition Fee Amnesty NOW! URBC demands that until the pandemic is over, universities should waive tuition fees completely so as to not jeopardise further the immigration status of international students, particularly from working class backgrounds who are unable to pay tuition fees because of the pandemic. We can use this demand to galvanise a real movement for free education that is particularly needed now that doesn’t leave anyone out.

We cannot be organising in our silos anymore. We must see the neoliberal, marketised higher education as not only corrupt system, but contributing to structural inequalities and oppression from the woeful treatment of cleaners, to threats of staff redundancies, to the manner that universities are supporting Black Lives Matter to mask their institutionally racist policies, in addition to the manner that universities weaponise the immigration statuses of their students and staff. This is why we must work for bigger things, for demands that elevate, for demands that leave no one out, for demands that really push to end the draconian & oppressive structures within UK higher education.

A member of Unis Resist Border Controls (URBC) shared this response they received from Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion. This response follows taking part in our #MichelleMocksStudents action where we asked supporters to send this template letter to their MPs demanding #TuitionFeeAmnesty for international students affected by the multiple UK COVID-19 lockdowns.

Lucas’s thorough message is nothing like what we received from Minister for Universities, Michelle Donelan, whose response to our letter misgendered founder and URBC member, Sanaz Raji, while failing to address the substance of our #TuitionFeeAmnestyNOW letter. By ignoring the shocking evidence presented in the #TuitionFeeAmnestyNOW letter, Donelan, in effect, mocked the hardships faced by precarious international students, many of whom have been withdrawn from their studies, left in penury, and now face visa curtailments and eventual deportation without the prospects of being able to finish their studies.

However, if Donelan’s response was bad, former shadow minister for universities, Emma Hardy, would take it to an absurdly worse level by having to be shamed online by URBC for waiting seven months to write a response to our letter. Hardy’s response was significantly worst than her Tory counterpart, indicating that the opposition equally cares so little about the dire plight of international university students in the UK. URBC meticulously outlined the incompetence of Emma Hardy, who resigned from her position on the 9th March 2021, following consistent call outs by URBC on social media after Hardy failed to properly respond to the merits of our #TuitionFeeAmnestyNOW letter.

Therefore, it was good to read the response by Caroline Lucas who thoughtfully engage with the demands from the #TuitionFeeAmnestyNOW.

Some take-aways from the response by Lucas

Lucas, who is the Vice-Chair of the All Parliamentary Group for Students, indicates the following in her letter:

1. Lucas urges the Government to find a solution so that student rents can be forgiven and universities can reimburse tuition fees.

2. The All-Parliamentary Group for Students is looking into creating a hardship fund for students who faced poverty as a result of the global pandemic. Lucas was “gravely concerned” to find that 56% of international students are either destitute or a risk of destitution”, following the joint study that URBC conducted with MRN on the the effects of COVID-19 on international students.

3. Lucas agrees with URBC that marketised higher education is exploiting international students, stating:

“It is cruel for the Government to simply abandon international students and, as you say, they should not simply be seen as a source of revenue for universities. In fact, one of the arguments I have made over and over to Ministers is the extent to which that pandemic has highlighted once again the flaws in our HE funding model, a model I have repeatedly campaigned against.”

4. Lucas is against no recourse to public funds (NRPF) for migrants, and wants to see an end to the hostile environment policy and to exorbitant university tuition fees.

5. And finally, Lucas states, “I will continue to look for opportunities to press the Government to suspend NRPF restrictions and offer financial compensation, including to protect international students.”

While many of the points that Lucas mentioned in her letter are ones that URBC also agrees with, we disagree when Lucas states that “students have not had anything like the teaching, experiences or supervision for which they have paid.” Lucas risks implying in this comment that teaching has been lackluster during the pandemic. URBC reminds Lucas and others that many lecturers, particularly migrant lecturers, and PhD students, along with those on zero-contract hour lecturing positions, especially those who are cis and trans women, and Black and women of colour, have bent over backwards to provide the best possible teaching in difficult circumstances, also providing unprecedented levels of pastoral support, while at the same time facing job cuts and on-going threats of redundancies by university managers.

Currently staff at Goldsmiths, University of London are engaged in a marking strike to stop 700 jobs from being cut. And we know all too well how universities are using the excuse of the global pandemic and supposed “income loss” to usher in job cuts, such as at the University of Manchester during the start of the pandemic, and most recently the University of Liverpool, University of Brighton, and the University of Leeds are among nine universities in the UK instituting job cuts during the pandemic. URBC expects that Lucas will direct her ire at university managers and Vice Chancellors for putting students and university staff in unsafe conditions with a complete lack of support during this pandemic that continues to endangered our lives.

What you can do

URBC has resent our letter on #TuitionFeeAmnesty to the new shadow minister for universities, Matt Western. We don’t hold out too much hope, given the bad track-record that Western has had in his Warwick and Leamington constituency on university issues, particularly in not giving full support to the Warwick University rent strikers and championing blended-learning rather than moving online, which led to a significant rise in COVID-19 cases across UK university campuses. That said, if we put enough pressure on Western and all other MPs on the All-Parliamentary Group for Students, we can make a dent in getting #TuitionFeeAmnestyNOW.

Therefore, it is import to continue to send this template letter to your MP and al the MPs on the All-Parliamentary Group for Students in demanding #TuitionFeeAmnestyNOW.

Statement from URBC, #KillTheBill

 Unis Resist Border Control (URBC) stands in rage and solidarity with Sisters Uncut and all other prison and border abolition organisations in opposition to the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill. It’s been a long week. we are thankful for all the work Sisters Uncut in London have done for linking the disappearance of Sarah Everard to wider issues about policing, state violence and highlighting the dangers of this bill.

URBC is a national campaign to end the hostile environment policy and border controls within UK higher education. In the past year, we have witnessed in horror as Home Secretary Priti Patel has strengthened the border regime to horrifying levels of brutality and violence. Just this week, it has been revealed that Patel is considering removing people who arrive in the UK to seek asylum overseas for their claims to be processed. In essence, Patel is seeking to bring the brutal Australian immigration regime of Manus Island, to the UK.

Just as Patel and this government seeks to further demonise, marginalise, criminalise and oppress migrants, they are  doing the very same to demonise, marginalise, criminalise, and oppress dissent, the BLM movement, sex workers, homelessness and the Gypsy, Roma and Travellers community. The proposed Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill makes this explicit. Not only do migrant communities, which includes those with documents, under-documented, undocumented, and asylum seekers now have to contend with the renewed violence of the hostile environment policy, but they will also have to contend with draconian policing that will be used to curtail our voices from protesting Priti Patel’s xeno-racist policies. 

If this bill becomes law, protesting as a migrant, particularly as a migrant of colour, could end up with deportation as a criminal sentence for protesting would ultimately prevent one from remaining in the UK. 

URBC is concerned with how this bill will prevent migrants from protesting against workplace exploitation and unsafe work conditions. We have seen migrants make great in-roads in workplace rights. During the University College Union 2018 strike against pension cuts, migrant university staff members were only allowed to strike 14 consecutive days. Thanks to a surge in migrant staff striking, and demanding strike provisions in line with those of their British counterparts, strike laws changed to allow migrant workers to not be discriminated against if taking part in legal strike actions.

However, with the proposed bill, legal strike actions will be in jeopardy. wildcat strikes and protests done by migrant university cleaners as exemplified by SOAS Justice for Workers, and KCL Justice for Cleaners, would be even more difficult to organise.

URBC knows all too well how universities are quick to use the police to quell protests on campus, clearly shown by the heavy handed response to rent strikes at the University of Manchester halls of residence. And if we don’t use all our energy in opposing this bill, we will see more police and state violence everywhere, from protesting & striking on university campuses, to workplaces, to protesting outside of detention centres and prisons, and in settings like this.

So get involved. We need to keep this momentum going. The bill isn’t being rushed through anymore but it’s still there, waiting to be put into law if it passes. Grassroots organisations like Sisters Uncut are doing most of the work and if we want to prevent this Bill or oppose any other harmful legislation brought about by this government, we need to be ready for the fight.

Emma Hardy stepped down from her role as shadow minister for universities on Monday 8th March. Replacing Emma Hardy is Matt Western, MP for Warwick and Leamington. Western, married to Rebecca Earle, Professor in the Department of History at the University of Warwick, is described in his They Work For You profile as having consistently voted against a stricter asylum system, yet there isn’t much information about his votes on higher education policy to ascertain his views on the current untenable situation in UK universities.

It’s not surprising that Hardy stepped down when for the past few weeks URBC along with Liberate the University and Pause or Pay UK have documented her incompetence as shadow minister for universities. And just to be fair, URBC has also documented the deliberate incompetence of Michelle Donelan, Conservative Minister for Universities a number of times and even had a online protest, #MichelleMocksStudents, on the 3rd December 2020.

Yet, it is equally disturbing that the Labour opposition has done no better in holding their Tory counterparts responsible for the shambolic situation in UK higher education affecting university staff and both international students and home students during the global pandemic.

While Emma Hardy has indicated that she has stepped down as shadow minister owing to the COVID situation in her constituency, URBC believes that our consistent call outs regarding her silence concerning international students being left destitute while others are being withdrawn off of their degrees and having visas curtailed for being unable to pay their tuition fees, have contributed to Hardy’s recent resignation.

A Timeline of Incompetence

On Monday 10 August 2020, URBC CCed Emma Hardy in a letter sent via email demanding tuition fee amnesty. This letter was endorsed by over 500 university academics, university staff, students (international and home), in addition to union representatives and student union (SU) officers. You can read the full letter here.

For months URBC tried to engage a response from both Minister for Universities, Michelle Donelan and the Shadow Minister for Universities, Emma Hardy to no avail. It would take Donelan three months to respond to our letter. As URBC has chronicled, while Donelan’s response was horribly inadequate, ignoring the dire situation that international students are facing during the pandemic, it would be over six months and a lot of online shaming for Emma Hardy to respond.

Here is how it all started.

On the 3rd February 2021, members of Liberate the University along with SU officers attended a Zoom meeting with Emma Hardy. During the meeting, Hardy was asked about the situation concerning international students and she said:

“international students have been ignored which is bad because they contribute so much; not just fees but also diversity and cultural richness”

URBC along with Liberate the University regard Hardy’s remarks as wholly unacceptable and utterly deficient. At a time when international students are being made destitute as URBC has written about here and here, as a result of marketised/neoliberal higher education structures and the hostile environment policy, Hardy reduced the international student experience to the contribution they bring to UK higher education. And by contribution, ministers on both sides of parliament really mean money, reducing international students to cash cows instead of students in need of assistance and support.

Therefore, on the 5th February, URBC tweeted to Emma Hardy in an attempt to call out her patronising tone on international students and to alert her that she has failed to answer to the over 500 lectures, students and union representatives that signed our tuition fee amnesty letter. Read the twitter thread here.

To the surprise of URBC, Hardy responded to our tweets and even privately messaged us on Twitter requesting that we resend the letter we had originally sent on the 10 August 2020.

On Monday 8th February, we re-sent our tuition fee amnesty letter to Emma Hardy, CCing her office assistant.

However, after additional week of waiting, URBC failed to receive a response from Hardy’s office. That is when on the Monday 15 February, URBC launched #EmmaHardlyWorking, and gave Hardy a deadline of the end of the day to respond to our letter after waiting over six months for a response.

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On the same day, Hardy’s office emailed URBC an official correspondence at 4:39PM. However, Hardy’s response to our letter was an absolute insult that completely ignored the merits of tuition fee amnesty for international students facing financial problems as a result of the global pandemic. As for the offer of a meeting, it seemed an entirely inadequate response when Hardy was unwilling to acknowledge the many problems that international students are facing that was meticulously unpacked in our letter.

From Bad to Worse

URBC found Hardy’s response truly disappointing given the extremely long wait coupled by the lack of a real tangible response. But things were about to get worse. Hardy’s behaviour on Twitter would show how little she was concerned about the dire plight of international students forced into destitution, accessing food banks and being forced off their degrees for the inability to pay their tuition fees because of the financial precarity that they are experiencing both in the UK and in their respective country of origin.

On the 24 February, Hardy tweeted shock over international students queuing up at a food bank in London, asking what universities they go to. URBC found Hardy’s tweet hypocritical, given that we warned her of the problem of international student destitution in our tuition fee amnesty letter in addition to the many interviews we have conducted both nationally and internationally on the matter. URBC has consistently stated that marketised higher education along with the hostile environment policy are to blame for the situation that international students are facing during the global pandemic. Therefore we responded to her tweet with the following reply, (read here and here).

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Then Hardy blocked URBC on Twitter following our Twitter satire poll mocking her woeful incompetence as shadow minister for universities.

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Therefore, it was unsurprising that Hardy resigned from her shadow minister position earlier this week. Hardy has shown both home and international students how little she cared or was willing to fight for our respective problems in Parliament. If the Labour response under the new shadow minister for universities, Matt Western is more of the same, he can expect a thorough challenging from URBC, along with other student activists involved in rent and tuition fee striker, many of those who are taking part are both international and home students.

What student activists and international students can learn from our dealings with Emma Hardy, or any politician for that matter, is not to compromise your demands for a few crumbs. If a politician wants to meet with your group but has consistently failed to show an understanding to the situation at hand and continues to take the side of the university, your group is wasting time in trying to reason with someone (politician, VC, university manager, yes even SU officers) who is championing a marketised/neoliberal higher education agenda that has gotten us into this mess in the first place. The only way we can truly transform and stop the violence & inequalities emanating from marketised/neoliberal higher education is to participate in rent & tuition fee strikes as so many students are doing all over the UK. Even staff at Goldsmiths, University of London are engaged in a marking strike to stop 700 jobs from being cut. It is important to note that if we are going to be successful in stopping further abuses within marketised/neoliberal higher education, student and staff solidarity will be crucial to the struggle and the work ahead.

Unis Resist Border Controls (URBC)h would like to thank the University of Birmingham branch of UCU for their donation of £250 pounds to URBC. Donations like these help us to sustain our work organizing, campaigning and providing casework support for those facing the hostile environment.

We applaud the Anti-racism Working Group of the UCU branch at Birmingham for thinking to include donations to grassroots groups in their Anti-racist planning.  Like many trade unionists, we believe that the kind of change that all workers and students in Higher Education need to see extend beyond “bread and butter” trade union issues, and public sector workers cannot win without consider the entire context of the public, including those who are excluded from the services that they provide.

With this in mind, and following the example of UCU Birmingham, along with UCU Sussex, UCU Kent, UCU Sheffield Hallam, UCU Edinburgh, & UCU Bath we’d like to provide some further suggestions for how local UCU branches can support their migrant members and build a labour-community united front against the racist and xenophobic profit-seeking systems that impoverish us all:

1. Pass motions or otherwise make branch-level commitments to fight the hostile environment at your university, in your local community, and beyond. Some things this work might involve or things that you might commit your branch to in any motions are the following:

• Arrange for URBC to provide training on how to support migrant staff and students at your institution when they face problems with their migration status
• Actively respond with information to calls from URBC to help gather information about how the hostile environment functions at your institution
• Collaborate with migrant and other student activists to demand that your institution cut ties with industries that create migrant death and precarity. This includes the Home Office, along with many software, private security and military contractors that promote border regimes.

1. If your branch has sufficient funds, make one-off or, even better, regular donations to Unis Resist Border Controls along with other grassroots and abolition campaigns seeking to end the hostile environment, no recourse to public funds, detention centres and prisons that URBC works in conjunction with. A complete list of groups can be found here: https://www.unisresistbordercontrols.org.uk/resources-2/

1. UCU casework officers – book a special training from URBC members on how to support the legal rights of your members. 

URBC is taking part in Migrant Members’ Conference on Thursday 3 December 2020 as part of the UCU Equality Conference. We look forward to reaching out to wider UCU networks about the work that we do.

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On the 26th November 2020, after waiting over three months, Unis Resist Border Control (URBC) finally received a response from Michelle Donelan, Minster of State for Universities to our #TuitionFeeAmnestyNOW letter. URBC along with the Migrants’ Rights Network (MRN) sent a comprehensive letter on the 10th August 2020 that explained in detail why international students demand #TuitionFeeAmnestyNOW.

The URBC/MRN letter, signed by 530 students, university lecturers, UCU, Unison, IWW union representatives, along with anti-racist, and migrant rights organisations, indicated the following:

1. In a study conducted by URBC and MRN, of the international students who responded during the first national COVID-19 lockdown, 56% indicated that they are either destitute or at risk of destitution. In response, URBC offered financial assistance to international students due in part to inadequate support structures at their universities and because of no recourse to public funds (NRPF) which prevents Tier 4 student visa holders access to public funds like universal credit and housing benefits that could be used to prevent destitution.

2. Many international students were withdrawn from their university courses for being unable, during a global pandemic, to pay their tuition fees. URBC and MRN further explained that in many cases affected students cannot pay the remainder of their university tuition fees because their families are also in lockdown in their respective countries and unable to work and send them money. Because their universities are also their visa sponsors, being withdrawn would undoubtedly put Tier 4 students in jeopardy of becoming undocumented and at risk of deportation.

3. The findings of the URBC study on the hostile environment in UK higher education highlighted numerous cases of university lecturers and research staff indicating the particular exploitation that Tier 4 students experience within UK higher education that treat them as essentially “cash cows”. URBC & MRN further state:

” If UK universities continue to treat their Tier 4 students like revenue streams to exploit rather than students with aspirations and dreams, expect to see fewer Tier 4 and EU students enrolling in UK higher education institutions.”

For these reasons, URBC & MRN demanded that there be a #TuitionFeeAmnestyNOW to be imposed to prevent Tier 4 student visa holders from being withdrawn from their courses during the global pandemic and face further violence as a result of the hostile environment policy.

However, Michelle Donelan’s letter, not only misgendered founder and URBC member, Sanaz Raji, it also failed to address the substance of the joint URBC & MRN #TuitionFeeAmnestyNOW letter.

Donelan is, in effect, cruelly mocking the hardships of precarious international students, many of whom have been withdrawn from their studies, are left in penury, and now face visa curtailments and eventual deportation. This is why we must actively work to end marketised higher education and the hostile environment policy within UK universities.

WHAT YOU CAN DO!

1. Send this template letter to your MP demanding that they encourage Michelle Donelan, Minster of State for Universities to reconsider her decision not to grant a #TuitionFeeAmnestyNOW: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U9NlCRWoFFJ0S5-_CULlEFm7Q-GKF-AXBZ7cIfE6Sys/edit

2. Join URBC on Thursday 3rd December for a Twitter storm from 11AM- 7PM @michelledonelan, #MichelleMocksStudents. Details here: https://tinyurl.com/yxcp7duy

by Gwyneth Lonergan (Lancaster University) and Samuel Solomon (University of Sussex)

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Health Surcharge (IHS) has gotten a lot of media attention as the government agreed, after much public pressure, to waive the surcharge for migrant NHS staff and care workers. The surcharge is a levy applied to work, spousal, and student visas, and was introduced following the 2014 Immigration Act, ostensibly to defray the ‘cost’ of migrants on these visas to the NHS.  Initially set at £200/year [£150 for students], it was increased to £400/year in 2018, and will rise to £624 in October.   A person applying for a three- year Tier 2 (General) work visa will therefore pay £1,872 for the health surcharge alone.  Non-EU migrants therefore pay a very literal price to work and study in the UK.  A Tier 2 (General) visa costs a minimum of around £450/year, in addition to the health surcharge, and applying for “Indefinite Leave to Remain” costs a minimum of £2,389.

We at Unis Resist Border controls (URBC) welcome the news that the IHS will be waived for NHS staff and care workers, although we wonder how this will be implemented in practice (at the time of writing, it seems the answer is: unevenly at best).  Will an international student who gets a part-time job in their local hospital canteen get a partial refund on their IHS?  What about a person on a spousal visa who works in a care home? More importantly, though, we strongly believe that the system of visa fees and surcharges is grossly exploitative to migrants, and that the IHS should be eliminated completely. 

Unis Resist Border Controls (URBC) has long sought to understand how the Home Office’s “hostile environment” policies are implemented in higher education and how these policies shape other aspects of university life for migrant staff and students.  As part of this, we conducted an online survey in late 2018 asking staff and students at UK Universities about hostile environment policies at their institution. Our research illuminates how the visa fees system exploits migrants, and why piecemeal gestures by the government or employers to reduce the fees for certain groups of migrants are bound to fail.   

One of our survey questions asked respondents “Does your university compensate international staff members for fees/expenses?” We received answers from home and international (both EU and non-EU) students and staff, including both academic and non-academic staff members.  Strikingly, a significant number of respondents (57 total, or 36%) did not know the answer. That is, they did not know if their university covered international staff costs (visa fees and immigrant health surcharge). Of the 110 who did know, more than half (52%) said that their universities did not offer any help with costs at all, whilst just over a third (34%) said that their employer helped with some but not all costs. These numbers do not necessarily correspond to the percentages of universities that help with costs, but they tell us a lot about what information staff and students have, and they provide us with an insight into what we believe are widespread perceptions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, UK nationals tend to be entirely unaware of the costs that migrants to the UK, including Tier 2 “skilled” workers, face in visa and NHS fees. Moreover, for those who have not had to pay such fees themselves, the question of whether or not employers cover these costs doesn’t seem to occur. A logical consequence of this uneven distribution of the “need to know” is that non-EU staff and students often find themselves met with disbelief, if not disinterest, when they ask for solidarity from UK and EU nationals.

We saw this kind of ignorance and disbelief at work in the media debates around whether NHS workers should be expected to pay the IHS.  Shock was repeatedly expressed that NHS workers had to pay the IHS; but the fact is migrant NHS and care workers have been paying these fees since they were first introduced in 2015. Most people in the UK, including, it would seem, in the UK media, only became aware of these fees because of the global pandemic, and because the government decided to draw attention to the existence of the IHS by announcing the increase.  Furthermore, while we are pleased when any migrant is granted a reprieve from these fees, selecting a ‘special’ group of migrants to exempt suggests a broader lack of understanding of, or indifference to, how extortionate immigration-related fees promote severe inequality.  We know from our own research that visas fees cast a pall over the lives of university staff and students, constraining their opportunities and choices. One of our survey respondents, a lecturer employed at a wealthy Scottish research university, noted: “Some people save for a flat, I save for immigration.” Staff and students who support non-EU dependants are charged additional visa and health fees; many end up in significant debt as a result, or must make heart-wrenching decisions around whether to leave their partners and/or children behind in their countries of origin. No one, regardless of what sector they work in, should be forced into such situations.

The economic hardship created by extortionate visa fees is especially critical during the current global pandemic. It has been widely reported that BAME people have been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 in the UK; Black men are more than 4.6 times more likely to die from Covid than white men. This is due to health inequalities caused by structural racism. Many BAME people in the UK are citizens here, and therefore may not be affected by the visa fee system (unless, of course, they have family and friends who are migrants). But for BAME migrants, high visa fees create an additional level of economic hardship while they are already struggling with the dire health consequences of structural racism. Moreover, the very existence of high visa fees, and the general indifference to their impact, is a product of the well-documented racism of the UK immigration system.

Both in, and outside, of Higher Education, we need non-migrants to see this picture clearly and then to stand alongside their migrant neighbours, colleagues, and students — but not only out of altruism. The IHS can be understood as a government strategy to further monetize migration even as, under austerity, the wealthy are paying less tax, and the state is disinvesting from public services. Given the prevalence of anti-migrant feeling and policies in the UK, migrants are particularly vulnerable to this. However, UK citizens would be well advised to consider whether they might be next. As Jackie Wang describes in her book Carceral Capitalism, “government bodies… have the power to generate revenue not only through taxation, but through the police power and court system as well.” UK and EU nationals may well find that they are increasingly hit with service fees, including to use the NHS, as the government seeks to balance the books without requiring wealthy Tory donors to pay their taxes – after all, the UK remains one of the few countries where companies that evade taxes can still apply for financial assistance to deal with the fall-out from COVID-19.

The overall picture here is of a harmful financial landscape for migrants in the UK, one that can have deleterious effects on their health and general wellbeing.   It is not enough to abolish the IHS for migrants seen as ‘skilled’ or valuable, whether they work in the NHS, or in higher education. As Unis Resist Border Controls, we call on all HE institutions, as well as the UCU and other unions active in HE, to lobby the government to end the hostile environment and the debt, distress, and illness that it causes so many of those who live, work, and study in the UK. It is not enough to ask for special dispensation for university academics: we join our comrades in Docs Not Cops in fighting to end the IHS and all upfront charges for healthcare in the NHS. 

Note: One of the authors’ employers (the University of Sussex) did cover his Tier 2 visa costs, IHS, and the cost of an application for Indefinite Leave to Remain. This somewhat unusual outcome was based on policy at School level, while there is as of yet no policy across the university to guarantee that this is applied equitably for all staff regardless of School or department finance levels.

In July, Unis Resist Border Controls (URBC) with the help of Migrants’ Rights Network (MRN) launched two letters concerning the COVID-19 situation for Tier 4 international students. The two letters called for an end to no recourse to public funds (NRPF) and a tuition fee amnesty for Tier 4 students.

Both letter received over 500 signatures from university students, university lecturers, trade union representatives, and migrant rights organisations.

On Monday 10 August 2020, URBC and MRN sent both these letters to Home Secretary Priti Patel, Michelle Donelan, Minster of the State of Universities, Emma Hardy, Shadow Minister for Further Education and Universities, Universities UK and Vice Chancellors from universities were URBC provided over £6,000 in mutual aid financial grants to Tier 4 international students left destitute during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Also yesterday, URBC and MRN have launched findings from a preliminary study we did on the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on Tier 4 international students. Our results found that 56% of Tier 4 international students indicate that as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown they are either destitute or at risk of being destitute.

For this reason, we are demanding an end to NRPF and a tuition fee amnesty for Tier 4 international students affected because of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Nadia Whittome, MP for Nottingham East has already come out in support with our campaign with MRN to end NRPF for Tier 4 students, stating:

“I want to express my solidarity for the affected Tier 4 students who are being unfairly punished due to their immigration status. At no time should this be happening, but it is particularly cruel during a global pandemic. I hope that the entire policy of No Recourse to Public Funds is reassessed in light of COVID-19”.

URBC and MRN have also received support online from Kate Osamor, MP for Edmonton and Stephen Timms, MP for East Ham to end NRPF for Tier 4 students.

Not only is URBC is demanding an end to NRPF for Tier 4 students and all other migrants, but also we send a second letter that received 530 signatures to Michelle Donelan, Minster of State for Universities, Emma Hardy, Shadow FE & Universities Minister, Universities UK, Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive, Office for Students, along with Vice Chancellors at BPP University, Coventry University, De Montfort University, Edinburgh Napier University, Glasgow Caledonian University, Kingston University, Northumbria University, Queen Mary University of London, University of Bedfordshire, University of Central Lancashire, University of East London, University of Edinburgh, University of Hertfordshire, University of Portsmouth, University of Sussex, and University of Ulster demanding a tuition fee amnesty for Tier 4 students affected by the COVID-19 lockdown.

In this joint letter with the MRN, we explained that Tier 4 students whom URBC are supporting have been told by their respective universities that if they do not pay the remainder of their tuition fees, they could be suspended from their studies. These students cannot pay the remainder of their university tuition fees for the same reason they cannot afford food: because their families have been in lockdown in their respective countries, unable to work and send them money. Since their universities are also their visa sponsors, being suspended would undoubtedly put Tier 4 students in jeopardy of becoming undocumented.

Since the COVID-19 lockdown began, URBC has shared information sent to us by Tier 4 international students who are being told that they will be withdrawn off their courses and face problems with the visa status for being unable to pay the remainder of their tuition fees their university. These screenshots of emails sent to Tier 4 international students who are unable to pay their tuition fees are just two examples of many that we have come across in the past four months.

For this reason, URBC and MRN believe that we need to urge universities and government to institute a tuition fee amnesty at this critical time to ensure that no Tier 4 international student is suddenly forced off their course and into an immigration situation because they are unable to pay their tuition fees because of the current global pandemic.

Watch this space to learn what response URBC receives from these these two letters and what will happen next with the campaign to end NRPF and a tuition fee amnesty for Tier 4 international students.

In the beginning of May, Unis Resist Border Controls (URBC) launched a mutual aid fundraiser to support Tier 4 students impacted as a result of no recourse to public funds (NRPF). We have given up to £60 for grocery support and up to £150 for rent support to Tier 4 students left stranded because of NRPF.

NRPF came into effect under Labour with the passing of the Immigration and Asylum Act of 1999, which prevented international students, along with other migrants access to public funds if they are ‘subject to immigration control’.

Since May, URBC has given over £5,000 of funds to over 100 Tier 4 student affected because of NRPF. We have many more students on a wait-list subject to when funds are available. Some Tier 4 students have been struggling to feed themselves and are surviving on one meal a day, while others are spiralling into depression because of a lack of funds to sustain themselves. Many of these Tier 4 students are postgraduate students who came to the UK in January 2020 to start their courses.

However, not only Tier 4 students scrambling to survive during the UK Covid lockdown, but many are also receiving threatening letters from their universities demanding that if they do not pay the rest of their tuition fees that they will be suspended and forced off their courses.

Tier 4 students are sponsored by their respective universities. Removing Tier 4 students off of their courses because they are unable to pay their tuition fees is a draconian measure that will put them in an immigration situation with the Home Office that could result in making them undocumented.

URBC believe that NRPF and threatening measures imposed by UK higher education institutions during the COVID lockdown have made more precarious the plight of Tier 4 students.

Working with the Migrants’ Rights Network (MRN), URBC believes that structural change is needed to stop the further exploitation of Tier 4 students at this critical moment.

For this reason, we have two letters that we urge supporters to sign before the deadline of Tuesday 14 July 2020.

1. End NRPF for Tier 4 Students:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/12IewhwqO2YBJvy7E-uzLOH-19qZmiKhP8y1zTu49QZs/edit

2. Tuition Fee Amnesty for Tier 4 Students:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1E-wJaUSai9uN8JbWkZo2NPy0owtSE2BsN-Vhs3zUqK4/edit?fbclid=IwAR3gNfJBWprP9tujem7-DWc35w5vBUjyLagtouxS0VjSyZ7D0p8r_nQuQKw

Both letters are addressed to the government and appropriate individuals within organisations and universities. URBC and MRN will be delivering both letters after the Tuesday 28 July 2020. Please share both letters within your student organisations, unions, grassroots groups and other platforms. Let’s ensure that Tier 4 students are not exploited, find themselves destitute or made undocumented as the COVID lockdown continues.