Lecturers boycott new visa rules

A group of academics have pledged to boycott their role in the government’s new immigration scheme. In a letter to the Guardian newspaper on 14 April, they said that the new scheme is “discriminatory” and “distort[s] academic freedoms.”

As previously reported in the Boar, the new points-based immigration plan includes a provision for universities to monitor international students and report inconsistencies or absences to the Border Agency. This role of supervising students will fall to lecturers and tutors. At Warwick, all students, not just those from outside the EU, will be subject to the new monitoring regime.

The 35 academics who wrote to the Guardian are primarily involved in researching “the uses and abuses of state power,” according to their letter. The signatories include professors of criminology and sociology at various universities across the country.

“The implementation of UK immigration policies is not part of our contractual duties and we will play no part in practices which discriminate against students and staff in this way. …Thus we pledge to refuse to co-operate with university requests for us to provide details on our students or participate in investigations of those students,” the group said in the letter. The letter also spoke out against new rules that require academics to check the immigration status of guest lecturers and other colleagues.

Their boycott follows the announcement of one at Goldsmiths College, University of London on 26 March. Times Higher Education reported that the Goldsmiths branch of the University and College Union had passed a motion instructing its members not to participate in the government’s monitoring scheme. According to the Times Higher Education article, the motion stated that the new rules treat foreign students as “potential suspects who have come to the UK with the specific goal of abusing the immigration system.”

Dr Ken Flint, of Warwick’s Department of Biological Sciences and head of the Warwick branch of the University and College Union, gave the Boar his personal opinion on the immigration rules. “I am familiar with the boycott and it has my full support,” he said. Discussing the necessity for staff to prove their immigration status to colleagues, he gave the following example: “If I went to Manchester for instance to give a lecture I now have to take my passport with me to prove that I am entitled to work here even though I am employed full time at Warwick.”

Flint said that he was not aware of any Warwick lecturers planning to participate in a boycott, though he “can’t speak for all academics.”

The immigration rules are being imposed because of abuse of the student visa programme. According to the Border Agency, people will sometimes gain illegal entry to the UK either by claiming to attend a fictional college or by gaining acceptance to a legitimate institute of higher education and subsequently vanishing. Flint said, “I know of students from overseas who have arrived at Warwick and disappeared within a week of their arrival never to be seen again. There is a problem with visas for students and I am sorry to say that the illegal activity of a minority imposes tighter rules on the majority of law abiding, genuine students.”

The Warwick branch of the University and College Union has not yet discussed the new rules, according to Flint, but may do so at its next meeting. It is also possible that the Union’s national office will issue a formal policy after its main assembly meeting in May.

Flint added, “We are contractually obliged to follow any rules laid down from on high as long as they are legal. Anyone objecting to following the rules could be liable for disciplinary action – in which case they would have full union support for boycotting this absurd rule.”