Britain has temporarily suspended student visa applications from northern India, Nepal and Bangladesh after a sharp rise in numbers, the UK Border Agency (UKBA) said on Sunday. It has stopped accepting applications for at least a month while it investigates.[SourceLink]
The move will affect visa applications in tier 4 of the UK points-based system and will inconvenience genuine students. But agents said this was not the peak season for such travellers, who are more likely to be seeking visas between July and October.[SourceLink]
OPiNiON @ONCE
Of course, a sad news, but it should be treated as an alert. A thorough investigation should be made to know the truth. The guilty should be punished. After all, such scamsters not only making hurdles to the students aspiring to study abroad, they're destroying the reputation and image of the country.
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too. thousands of indian students from north india coming here on the basis of studying cookery and then working 50 hrs with out attending a single day at college/ universities.
Sharad C. Misra, Mumbai in TOI : There is nothing so attractive about UK now that students from North India would make a beeline to emigrate to that country for education and knowledge-based carriers. Possibly, alarmed by the racist onslaught against Indian students in Australia, a former British colony, UK too is trying to pay safe. In fact, it should not be the concern of the destination country to bother about which part of the originating country the visa- seekers come from, whether it is from Delhi or Chandigarh or Jalandhar. They are all Indians. Indeed, there may be agents in such places who help useless, unemployed people to gain entry into UK for ulterior purposes having nothing to do with education but such cases have always been there. But how about people from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other fundamentalist Islamic countries ? UK dare not talk about these agents of terrorism and targets a soft country like India, its own former colony. . There could also be a possibility that like America UK too has resorted to adopting the policy of shutting out Indians in its job market hit hard by the ongoing recession in the interest of its own nationals. Ministry of External Affairs would do well to investigate the matter and know the reasons for this ban on visa-seekers from North India.
