Educators back boycott of UK student visa rules

June 01 2009 by Bryan Palmer

The University and College Union (UCU) has agreed to boycott new rules for UK student visas, which require educators to report absent foreign students to the UK border authorities.

The Union members met at a conference in Bournemouth last Friday and decided to support a boycott of the rules, which they claim will make them ‘immigration snoopers’.

The Union’s general secretary, Sally Hunt, said “UCU members are educators, not border guards". She added that the Home Office requirements place unfair monitoring responsibilities on the union members, who do not want to become an extension of the UK immigration authorities. She also said that members have concerns that the rules place strain on the relationships between teachers and people who have come to study in the UK from abroad.

According to Ms Hunt, many of the UCU members consider the new rules to run contrary to their moral principles as professional educators.

One of the union’s resolutions tabled for discussion stated that the new rules were, ‘pandering to anti-immigration racism’. It also committed union members to ‘non-compliance with all such policing and surveillance duties’.

The Home Office defended the requirements, claiming that they only ask that the educational institutions keep the kinds of information on record that they would keep for their own purposes anyway, such as records for attendance.

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