Why We Refuse Students Visa
Funding and fraud are two principle reasons why students are refused visa to study in the United Kingdom, Richard Grozney, British high commissioner to Nigeria has said.
Speaking to BusinessDay in Lagos, Grozney said 27, 000 Nigerian students applied for student visa last year but 75 percent were refused.
“That refusal rate is far too high that is what we want to get down. We are not too comfortable that we have to say no,” he said.
He explained that funding is the amount of money that a student must show that he or she has to keep them in Britain, stressing that Britain is an expensive country.
“The level of funding that people need to show is quite considerable. We will give visas to all bonafide students who can show that they are serious about going to study in Britain and showing us that that the money is available is quite a tricky business. But if you suddenly put huge a huge sum of money into a bank account that never had large sums of money and say that is the money from my uncle, it may be true or it may be just moving some money into that account to show, send us a copy of the bank statement and then move the money out again.”
On fraud, Grozney said it is not 419 in the conventional sense but fraud in the sense of documents that are not genuine, noting that one in every four student application has a fraudulent document.
He urged student applicants who want to study in Britain not to exaggerate but to tell the proper full story. “If you are a bonafide student and if you got the qualification, a university or college in Britain and your relatives in Britain are helping you to fund that; we will be convinced on that. Don’t exaggerate by getting false document, that’s our message for student applicants,” he added.
He explained that visa officers have only one judgment to make when it comes to student visas and that is “to each applicant, a visa officer has to judge does this person really mean what they say and it’s that simple but it’s difficult to answer because we have 80 visa officers from Britain in Nigeria just trying to answer that question every day. And two of the ways to help us give a positive answer to that question is when they show they have steady credible supply of funds for the duration of their stay in Britain and when they avoid the temptation of giving us fraudulent bank statements.”
Grozney said the High Commission is taking various steps to check the problems students encounter at the visa section. These steps, he said, include the introduction of finger printing of visa applicants.
“It takes us much longer to refuse a visa than to grant it. So it’s no advantage to us at all in refusing a visa. The electronic finger printing is going to help us to eliminate those who are trying to get in under false pretenses.
The second thing, he said the high commission is doing to help bonafide Nigerian students is tougher measures in checking up doggy colleges which advertise their courses in Nigeria and sometimes convince people to apply and send sums of money for the purpose when they are in fact, not legitimate or good colleges at all.
“We are spending more time in the visa section weeding out those colleges seeing if they appear on our list of accredited reputable colleges and in about a year and half time, we will have a system whereby we actually award points to individuals depending on the colleges they put in for. So people who put in for the doggy colleges will earn very few points on scorecard for visa, he said.
-Chidi Nduka Aja
