Student visa rejected for not knowing number of trees on campus

The Home Office is refusing growing numbers of student visas for “crazy” reasons – with one applicant allegedly rejected for failing to name the number of trees on a university campus. In another case, a student was denied a UK visa after being accused of giving the wrong founding year for their university – but it later turned out the youngster was right. The Home Office has said it is cracking down on visa abuse after asylum claims from those entering the UK on visas more than tripled under the previous government.

But universities told The i Paper “bizarre” visa denials were crippling their ability to recruit overseas students, whose tuition fees subsidise the cost of educating Britons and keep many institutions afloat. They have called for decisions to be investigated. It comes amid wider pressure on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to water down hardline immigration reforms . The Government said all visa applications are “considered on their individual merits” in line with immigration rules.

They said “cherry-picked extracts” from visa refusals “may not reflect the full rationale”. ‘Crazy’ decisions ‘need looking at’ However, Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, said institutions are sharing cases that are “bizarre” and “just don’t make sense”. “It’s killing us,” she said. “It’s making it very hard to predict which students will be given a visa and which will not. “It’s forcing universities to be incredibly risk-averse about how they recruit international students, and it is a large reason why we’ve seen such a decline this autumn.”

More than 13 per cent of student visas were rejected in the first three months of this year, up from 6.1 per cent during the same period last year. Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, says decisions on Home Office student visa rejections should be ‘looked at’ (Photo: UUK) UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), the Home Office body responsible for processing visas, carries out discretionary “credibility interviews” to check that applicants’ study plans are genuine.

Universities see these interviews as an expanding source of questionable visa rejections. Stern added: “It’s crazy. One of the things that we’ve been asking for in every conversation we’ve had with government is: can you look at the quality of decision-making? We want to play by the rules, but the rules have to be fair.” ‘Rejected for not applying to Canada’ James Millar, vice chancellor of the University of the West of Scotland (UWS), said one applicant was told they were rejected because they were unable to “describe the number of trees” on a university campus.

It was deemed that the university’s marketing had prominently displayed its greenery and that this should have been known to the applicant, according to another source familiar with the case. Millar said many applicants are getting rejected because they had not considered other English-speaking countries. One applicant to UWS was rejected because they had not applied to Canada after saying they had considered it, but chose the UK due to the course’s reputation.

In another case shared by Universities UK, a student said during an interview they had considered studying in Canada but not applied because of the cold weather. The visa was rejected, with a letter explaining that some places in Canada are not that cold. Millar claimed it is becoming clear to universities that rejected applicants typically come from a very small number of countries, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Ghana.

James Millar, vice chancellor of UWS, said students often can’t afford to appeal decisions (Photo: UWS) Student visas were banned outright from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan earlier this year because officials believed these nationals were more likely to apply for asylum once they had arrived in the UK. Universities said they are now withdrawing visas from prospective overseas students over concerns that spurious refusals are putting them in danger of getting sanctioned by the Home Office.

New rules that came into force in June punish universities if more than 5 per cent of their sponsored study visas are rejected – down from 10 per cent before. If institutions exceed this threshold, they could have their ability to recruit international students removed entirely. “Students don’t actually have any opportunity to appeal the decision other than on the basis of a factual inaccuracy, and that costs the student money as well,” Millar said.

“Very often they decide not to pursue it any further because they feel the odds are all stacked against them.” Other overseas students are facing long delays in getting their visas and are unable to get them in time for their course, he added. ‘Not fit for the job’ Steven McGuire, deputy vice chancellor at the University of East Anglia (UEA), said his university has cut back on actively recruiting students from countries such as Pakistan and those in West Africa, and is having to turn away legitimate students “because we can’t risk a visa refusal”.

He said some of the rejection reasons “seem very strange”. One applicant who cited international rankings as a reason for choosing UEA was refused because the rankings were public information and any candidate could say that. In another example, the applicant correctly said UEA was in Norfolk, but the caseworker appeared to confuse Norfolk with Norwich and rejected the application. McGuire said: “Suddenly students, who in previous years would have passed and would have studied, were failing at quite remarkable rates at the compliance interview.

There was clearly a change in the thresholds which wasn’t communicated to universities.” Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute think-tank, added it was “abundantly clear” that officials doing the interviews are “not fit for the job”. “It is the next migration scandal waiting to happen, because the way they’re doing it is so egregious,” he said. A Government spokesperson said all applications “are considered on their individual merits in line with the requirements of the immigration rules”.

They have “robust controls and checks” to protect the immigration system from abuse. They added that universities “have only been provided with cherry-picked extracts [from visa refusals], which may not reflect the full rationale and are insufficient to support an investigation into these specific cases”.