As per the UK's official immigration statistics, for the first time, India has overtaken the Chinese as the largest group of foreign students studying in the UK.
With a massive 273% increase in visas granted over the past few years, for the first time India has overtaken the Chinese as the largest group of foreign students studying in the UK, say's the statistics released by the UK's official immigration department.
The UK Home Office data collated by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveals that Indians also continue to be the top nationality granted visas in the skilled worker category, with 56,042 granted work visas in the past year, as reported by Indian Express.
The overall ONS data shows that net migration to the UK rose from 173,000 in the year June 2021, to 504,000 in the year to June 2022 – an increase of 331,000 post-Brexit.
Indian nationals also represented the highest number of visas at 36% of the total under the tailored Skilled Worker Health and Care visa targeted at medical professionals, reinforcing Indian contribution to the state-funded National Health Service (NHS), added the data.
“There were 127,731 [study visa] grants to main applicant Indian nationals in the year ending September 2022, an increase of 93,470 (273%) compared to 2019 (34,261)," the Home Office said.
“Chinese nationals were the second most common nationality granted sponsored study visas in the year ending September 2022, with 116,476 visas granted to main applicants, 2% fewer than the number seen in 2019 (119,231)," it said.
The special High Potential Individual (HPI) visa, launched in May this year to attract the brightest graduates from the world’s top universities around the world to work in the UK, also saw a 14% grant to Indian nationals despite no Indian university being on the approved set of top global universities.
Moreover, The new Graduate Route visa introduced in July last year to allow international students the chance to stay on and work at the end of their degree was also dominated by Indians – accounting for 41% of visas granted.
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