Why did British Prime Minister Theresa exaggerate the number of stranded international students?

"It's okay to come to study; it's not okay to overstay. Universities should establish such a principle." These words of British Prime Minister Theresa May once caused controversy when she was serving as Home Secretary, and are now being criticized again. The media dug it out.

On August 24, data from the British Office for National Statistics once again linked Teresa with international students. Data shows that in the past year, only 4,600 international students overstayed their visa validity in the UK. According to Teresa, who adopts conservative policies towards international students, this figure is close to 100,000.

A British newspaper stated on August 24 that Teresa Teresa’s decision to continue suppressing overseas students as part of her immigration policy goals has caused her to become isolated. Politicians from the Conservative Party and its opposition parties called on Teresa to stop continuing to "operate" on international students because the government has reacted too much to the situation of international students illegally staying in the UK and ignored its impact on the British economy.

Teresa, who is "obsessed" with the issue of international students

"Let me clarify my attitude towards international students - we welcome international students to study, but the fact is that when the visa expires , too many of them don’t leave the UK. If they find a job after graduation, that’s fine; if not, they should go home... Such rules should be implemented.” This was the then British Home Secretary Theresa May. A statement made at an internal meeting of the Conservative Party.

When she was in charge of the British Home Office, some of Teresa’s remarks and actions regarding international students earned her the title of “International Student Killer.”

In 2012, as the most significant change in the tightening of international student policies, the British Home Office finally canceled the PSW visa, which was extremely attractive to international students (Editor’s Note: According to the British PSW visa, undergraduate, master’s and International students with doctorate and other degrees have two years to stay in the UK to find jobs or carry out business activities after graduation).

For a long time, Teresa has made international students part of the government's immigration control goals and has discussed them with Finance Minister Hammond and Foreign Secretary Boris. Hammond pointed out in 2015 that the policy of suppressing international students was damaging to Britain's reputation. But Teresa believes that if there is an "exception for international students", it will make people question her policy goals-in the Conservative Party manifesto, reducing the number of immigrants to 10,000 people was emphasized three times in 2010, 2015, and 2017, but this One goal has not yet been achieved.

To support the need for strong measures, Teresa repeatedly cited previous estimates from the British Office for National Statistics, saying that every year about 100,000 students overstay their visas in the UK without obtaining job opportunities.

But according to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics, what Teresa said is not true. Less than 5,000 people overstay each year, about 3% of the total number of international students.

Campbell, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and a colleague of Teresa during the coalition government of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democratic Party, once used the word "obsession" to describe Teresa's attitude on this issue. In this incident, Campbell believed that Teresa should apologize for the Home Office's policy of suppressing international students.

“We have spent five years convincing the Home Office that the data they (used to assess international student policy) are false and are still based on outdated monitoring methods.” Campbell said, “I certainly hope They apologized to international students who paid high tuition fees and were even deported in some cases."