80% fall in number of dependents accompanying students to UK

The government also said that in the first quarter of 2024, dependant applications on the Health and Care visa continued to significantly outnumber main applicants.

The number of dependents accompanying students to the UK has plunged almost 80 percent, with over 26,000 fewer student visa applications made from January to March compared to the same period in 2023, the United Kingdom government has said.

The government said the measures to tighten student visas, which came into force in January, have prevented most international students starting courses this year from bringing family members, the government said in a statement on April 30.

Students can also no longer switch their visa before completing their course, preventing people from using the route as a "backdoor to work in the UK, while clamping down on institutions which undermine the UK’s reputation by selling immigration not education", the statement added.

“When I promised to deliver the largest-ever cut in legal migration, I knew we must also work to show the impact of our action as soon as practically possible. This data shows a significant fall in numbers on the first of our measures to take effect whilst underlining why necessary action was taken to cut unsustainable numbers of care worker dependents,” home secretary James Cleverly said.

The government also said in the first quarter of 2024, dependent applications on the health and care visa continued to significantly outnumber main applicants.

Doctors, nurses and other allied health professionals can still bring dependents.

The UK has enforced new family visa regulations to cut “unsustainable and unfair” levels of migration. The final measure in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Cleverly’s package to reduce legal migration raises the minimum income required to sponsor someone coming to the UK on a family visa from £18,600 to £29,000, an uptick of more than 55 percent.

By early 2025, it will rise to £38,700 to meet the new salary threshold for a Skilled Worker visa.

The change comes as the home secretary met his commitment to implement major reforms to the immigration system... "It means approximately 3 lakh people arriving in the UK last year would no longer be able to,” the government said in a statement earlier.