The National Critical Lawyers Group

Campaign against the New Immigration Rules

The Petition

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to withdraw the oppressive new immigration rules on overseas students and staff. The new rules for overseas students and staff threaten university autonomy and breach human rights legislation. These rules would require Universities to report to the Border Agency any absences from lectures and seminars or any failure to submit any assessment on time.In other words the University is being asked to act as an Immigration Officer to the students.These requirements go far beyond the present monitoring of student progress systems in Universities which has as its purpose assisting students to reach their full potential. It is hard to  justify such detailed monitoring of overseas students. Surely the Border Agency just needs to know students have registered and are at the University? This police-like surveillance is not the function of universities and alters the educational relationship between students and their teachers in a very harmful manner. University staff are there to help the students develop intellectually and not to be a means of sanctioning them. Trust between students and staff is essential to the relationship.They represent a breach of Articles 8 and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998.

Sign the petition at No. 10 Downing Street.

We had a letter of support today in Times Higher Education (22 November) from  Pat Brady of the Council for Academic Freedom and  Academic Standards:

"It is to be hoped that there will be wide support for the withdrawal of Home Office rules requiring the surveillance of overseas students ... To transfer the cost of surveillance to the Universities would result in a further reduction in the level of funding per student and would lead to a further drop in standards More importantly, to expect academics to act as police erodes the traditional seperation between the university and the state and represents an attack on academic freedom.For that reason we would expect vice chancellors to oppose the proposals."

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