In May 2025, Keir Starmer held a press conference to launch an Immigration White Paper, stating that without stricter immigration rules, the UK risks becoming an ‘island of strangers’. This White Paper – aspects of which are already being implemented – proposes, among other things, increased restrictions for international students and international education, a higher levy on international student fee incomes and a reduction in the Graduate Route visa from two years to 18 months.
This much-criticised rhetoric is damaging, implying as it does that immigrants, including international students, are ‘others’ and ‘strangers’ that are a burden to UK society with nothing to contribute. But at IDS – where international students and staff are central to our work and to our community – we know that this couldn’t be further from the truth.
International students’ financial contributions to the UK
Plainly stated, international students bring great economic benefit to the UK. Between 2018/19 and 2021/22, the economic contribution of international students to the UK economy rose from £31.3 billion to £41.9 billion according to the joint report from HEPI / Kaplan International Pathways / Universities UK International / London Economics. The report also showed that international students generated £119.9 million for the IDS’ local constituency of Brighton, Pavilion.
According to the Economic Impact Report, published in May 2023 by the University of Sussex, where IDS is based, states that ‘in 2020/21, the University’s 3,500 additional international student body spent an estimated £40 million off campus. This spending has stimulated economic activity across a range of industries throughout the UK. In total, international students’ subsistence spending supported a £51 million gross value-added contribution to UK GDP, some 820 jobs, and £12 million in tax receipts.’
In addition to their contribution to the local economy through spending, international students also attract family members as visitors and tourists while they are here and, for years after completing their degrees, encourage others to visit through their enthusiastic recommendations.
More than a £ sign
But these are just the crude numbers. International students are so much more than these documented economic contributions to the UK’s central and local economies.
First and foremost, we cannot overstate the intellectual contributions that our students, who come from all over the globe, bring to the classroom. Many of our students have experience in international development before coming to IDS, and their unique and context-specific experiences bring a complexity and richness of classroom discussion and debate that both students and staff greatly benefit from. At IDS, our students not only learn from our staff, but from each other.
IDS’ international students and students studying at other institutions across the country also make positive contributions to society and culture in the local area, through their studies and through activities as varied as local volunteering, organising events, and joining sporting clubs. For example, recent MA Food and Development students visited and volunteered with Fork and Dig It, a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project and farmers’ incubator located in Stanmer Park.
International students also encourage us to learn more about each other, promoting inter-cultural exchange and enhanced understandings within the UK. For example, a group of IDS students, in collaboration with the IDS Bar & Kitchen, recently organised a Japan and Korea night, with Japanese and Korean food, calligraphy, games (Dakkgi and Manko), and an open mic and dancing. A joyful evening with students and staff from many different countries coming together to learn more about each other.
From Burns night to Día de Muertos to Diwali – we celebrate our diversity and share our cultures, and this is to the betterment of us all.
And when our students finish studying at IDS, whether they apply for the Graduate Visa and get a job in the UK or go elsewhere in the world to work, they take with them UK-inspired knowledge, skills and understandings as well as their experiences in Brighton, acting as intellectual ambassadors, promoting positive perceptions of the UK and fostering international collaboration.
The UK Government, on the one hand, has publicly stated that ‘international students are welcome in the UK’ and that it ‘values their contribution – to our universities, to our communities, to our country’. It recognises the soft power and diplomatic benefits that welcoming international students to the UK brings, for example through the granting of Commonwealth Scholarships to ‘talented individuals with the potential to make a positive impact on the global stage’ and Chevening Scholarships ‘to individuals from around the world with outstanding leadership and influencing skills’ to ‘support UK foreign policy priorities by creating lasting positive relationships with future leaders, influencers, and decision-makers’.
Furthermore, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) Soft-Power Index 2024 shows that approximately 30% of the world’s current leaders were educated in the UK (excluding UK leaders who studied in the UK), but that this percentage has been declining since 2018.
Indeed, we have many examples of the impactful work that our students have gone on to do after studying with us – for example, Carlos Alvarado Quesada (MA Development Studies 2015) went on the become President of Costa Rica from 2018 – 2022 and Isatou Touray (PhD Development Studies 2004) was Vice President of The Gambia from 2019 – 2022. Other alumni, working in research institutes and NGOs, are important partners and collaborators, helping to affirm the UK’s current research excellence and contributing towards its desire to become a globally-recognised ‘science superpower’.
This kind of influence is critically important – not only for the countries where former UK students are leaders – but also for us in the UK. The British Council recognises that soft power offers a wealth of positive knock-on effects, including enhancing tourism, trade and foreign direct investment, facilitating student exchange, promoting democracy and increasing the UK’s influence in international fora.
And yet, on the other hand, the UK Government is now proposing putting in place further restrictions to immigration that would alienate and deter promising international students from studying here. These proposed changes to UK immigration policy, if implemented, have the have the potential to not only damage the UK economy and education sector but also weaken the UK’s already-declining global influence. The UK would be all the poorer for this loss of intellectual richness and decreased soft power, and risks being left behind, no longer able to demonstrate quite as much influence in relation to rapidly changing world affairs.
Call to reconsider proposed changes
All of our experience over IDS’ nearly 60 years of existence has demonstrated the multitude of ways that international students have contributed to the UK and Brighton. Far from being an ‘island of strangers’, our engagement with international students makes us all the richer – not just economically, but also culturally, intellectually and diplomatically.
The graduate visa route is an amazing resource, bringing talent and diversity to all areas of the UK society and economy. But it could deliver so much more without these proposed changes and new limitations imposed on international students.
Keir Starmer has already apologised for the use of the phrase ‘island of strangers’, but we call on the UK Government to go one step further and to reconsider the proposed changes in the Immigration White Paper – not only for the benefit of promising international students, but for the good of our country, our future and our UK students who will benefit profoundly from international connections built in their student years.
