A REGISTER of colleges offering legitimate courses to overseas students is being created to curb immigration fraud involving bogus educational establishments.
Home Office officials will refuse to grant visas to applicants proposing to study at a college not on the register. The Government’s announcement yesterday came as three men arrested for being part of an alleged student visa fraud appeared in court on illegal immigration and money-laundering charges.
Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, said that the register would be for colleges that can “provide evidence of their legitimate business”.
Colleges ranging from established universities to language schools will not have to pay to go on the register and would not be inspected to prove that they are providing courses for foreign students. The Department for Education and Skills was unable to explain how it would assess whether a college was providing tuition. A spokeswoman said: “They will have to provide evidence that they are a genuine college.”
She said the department would look at evidence that the colleges had premises, and would inspect their accounts and their achievements in examinations. Mr Clarke said the register would be as free from bureaucracy as possible.
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Colleges that receive taxpayers’ money or are already officially accredited will go straight on to the register.
“Student mobility is a welcome feature of 21st-century globalisation and we benefit from it,” Mr Clarke said. “But we must make sure the system is not abused. Those coming to study here must be genuine students studying at a genuine and approved college.”
A National Audit Office report published this week found that student visas were being abused by Romanians and Bulgarians. Many who arrived in Britain on student visas applied to become self-employed businessmen after arriving, the report found. This suggested that the original student visa could have been obtained by deception.
The register follows concern that some “colleges” offering a variety of courses are part of an immigration scam. The colleges are, in effect, little more than a door plate providing a route for migrants to enter Britain fraudulently.