NIGERIAN students who graduate from British universities will be made to return home upon the immediate completion of their studies under hardline plans being considered by the UK's home secretary Theresa May.
A passionate opponent of immigration, Ms May has introduced a raft of new laws designed to keep the British population native since assuming office in 2000. Under radical new plans, she intends to introduce legislation that will force foreign students being sent back to their countries of origin after they complete their courses in British universities.
Nigerian students studying for university degrees across the UK has trebled over the last eight years to a staggering 17,640 according to the latest statistics published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa). In data released last December, Hesa figures showed that there were 17,640 Nigerians enrolled in UK universities during the 2011/12 session, compared with 5,385 during the 2003/04 academic year.
In the past, such students had worked for a year or two before returning to Nigeria but under the proposed new guidelines, they will be sent packing immediately. Ms May's new proposals will mean that non-European Union students would have to return home in order to apply for a work visa if they want to continue to live in the UK after they graduate
Apparently, Ms May wants a future Conservative government to move towards zero net student migration by sending home those who come to Britain on student visas. She has repeatedly clashed with Liberal Democrat business secretary Vince Cable, whose department has responsibility for universities over the issue of foreign students.
One source close to the home secretary, said: "Making sure immigrants leave Britain at the end of their visa is as important a part of running a fair and efficient immigration system as controlling who comes here in the first place. Theresa is pressing for the next Conservative manifesto to contain a policy that will make sure that anybody coming here on a student visa will have to leave the country in order to apply for a new visa of any kind.
"She wants to make the colleges and universities that sponsor foreign students responsible for ensuring their departure. And she wants to be able to fine colleges and universities with low departure rates and deprive the worst of them of their right to sponsor foreign students."
Under current rules most students switch easily to a work visa from within the UK rather than have to leave the country and then come back. Mr Cable has warned about tough rhetoric on immigration putting off students from countries from attending UK institutions, adding that the Liberal Democrats would be highly unlikely to support any further tightening of the rules.
A senior Liberal Democrat source said: "Such a blunt instrument would not get our support. The idea that you have people from abroad studying in this country and they become engineers or scientists of huge practical value to the economy and rather than have them stay here you immediately turf them out makes zero economic sense."
Ms May's plan emerged after Prime Minister David Cameron insisted that only the Tories can offer competence on dealing with immigration. He said his government had addressed some of the problems inherited from a Labour administration that let immigration get out of control.