GB News host claimed we 'don't know' if overseas students return home post-study - then the expert responded | indy100

GB News journalist immediately contradicted by migration expert over student visas

Politics Live

The humiliations just keep on coming for right-wing political commentators, with the latest being former Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) comms chief turned GB News presenter Emily Carver on Tuesday’s Politics Live.

During a discussion on overseas student visas – prompted by Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s new curbs on them which she says will have a “tangible impact” on net migration – Carver claimed “we actually don’t know” if the “vast majority” of foreign students return home after completing their studies.

“The ONS [Office for National Statistics] doesn’t collect that data and they’ve said that they don’t actually know whether the students are emigrating and returning, or if they’re staying here.

Despite host Jo Coburn interjecting to point out “they do”, Carver continued to claim that the ONS “doesn’t collect that data”.

Enter the expert, Madeleine Sumption of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, who was brought in immediately afterwards and asked by Coburn for “the best data” the UK has on the number of foreign students returning home within a year after their studies.

Sumption replied: “So we do have reasonably good data on this. Typically, if you look over a period of five to eight years, the large majority of people will not extend and go into other visas – so more than 80 per cent will see their visas expire.

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“Then we have separate data that suggests that compliance is pretty high, so people do tend to return home after their visas expire.”

Oh dear.

\u201cEmily Carver - We actually don't know if students return home.\n\nLet's go to someone who knows what they're talking about\n\nMadeleine Sumption(Migration Observatory, Oxford) - People do return home after their visas expire. \n\n#PoliticsLive\u201d
— Haggis_UK \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7 \ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddfa (@Haggis_UK \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7 \ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddfa) 1684847680

Oh, and a quick search online led us to a page on the ONS’s website where they analysed the next steps for non-EU students whose visas expired between September 2018 and August 2019.

They found that out of the 335,000 non-EU students with visas that expired in that period, more than 205,000 (around 61 percent) left the UK compared to 118,000 (around 35 percent) who stayed.

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