On 26 March the Home Office enforced a ban on study visas for nationals of Myanmar, Cameroon, Afghanistan and Sudan. An official Home Office press release claimed that ‘widespread visa abuse’ was allowing nationals of certain countries to “exploit [British] generosity.”
The statistical justification for this policy change given in a press release on 6 March has been called into question. Russell Group have pointed out that students from these four countries represent less than 0.6% of all international students in the UK.
Russell Group have also called the Home Office’s statement “misleading”, saying key data evidencing “widespread abuse” of student visas was left unclear, while data that was shared was “presented in ways that invite misunderstanding.”
The Russell group response further questioned whether the recent increase in asylum claims constituted “visa abuse”, saying:
“It is important to acknowledge that students may have legitimate reasons to claim asylum including where circumstances in their home country change during the course of their studies.”
The Home Office’s justification of the student visa ban has been challenged on two fronts: the failure to concretely define and evidence visa abuse; and data sharing that is “misleading” and lacks transparency.
So what are claims the Home Office is using to justify the student visa ban? Where do the Home Office’s justifications lack evidence? And what can a more detailed look at the data reveal?
What is the Home Office’s claim?
What the Home Office described as ‘visa abuse’ is an increase in asylum claims being made by students who arrived in the UK on study visas. However, in the press release where these claims were made, the Home Office did not justify how this observation is evidence of visa abuse.
In fact, in a 2024 review of graduate visa routes, commissioned by the Home Office themselves, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) asserted that “coming to the UK legally on a work or study visa and proceeding to make a legitimate, admissible asylum application does not constitute abuse.”
In the press release the Home Office attempts to evidence its claim using the following figures:
“By the year ending September 2025, asylum applications by students from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan had risen to over 470% of their 2021 level.”
“Between 2021 and the year ending September 2025, the proportion of Afghan asylum claims to study visas issued was 95%, while applications by students from Myanmar soared sixteen-fold over the same period.
“Claims in the year ending September 2025 by students from Cameroon and Sudan rose to more than 330% of the number in 2021, posing an unsustainable threat to the UK’s asylum system.”
Statistical breakdown
The Home Office has not explicitly published the data they used to calculate these figures. The press release suggests that the increase in students claiming asylum is specific enough to Sudan, Cameroon, Afghanistan and Myanmar to justify a blanket study visa ban on these four countries.
However, the most recent immigration system statistics published by the Home Office tell a different story. Asylum claims made by migrants who entered the UK on study visas increased across the board from 2021-2025.
The Home Office’s own data shows a 460% increase in asylum claims made by students in general from 2021-2025. Comparing this to the equivalent 470% increase quoted in the press release, it seems that the increase in students from the 4 visa-brake countries claiming asylum is comparable to the general increase in asylum claims by students.
The 330% increase in claims by Cameroonian and Sudanese students quoted by the Home Office falls significantly below the general increase.
According to Home Office data, if every single student who entered the UK on a study visa from the 4 visa brake countries in 2025 went on to claim asylum, this would still make up only 20.4% of the total number of students who claimed asylum that year.
Firstly, this assumption is clearly ridiculous. In 2025, 1,709 Myanmar nationals were granted a study visa. Meanwhile the total number of asylum claims from Myanmar nationals was 879. Therefore, even if every single asylum claimant from Myanmar were a student, this would meant that only about half of students from Myanmar claimed asylum.
Excluding Myanmar nationals from the previous calculation due the high number of study visas grants and low number of asylum claimants, the number of students from Sudan, Cameroon and Afghanistan in 2025 was 887. If 50% of these students had gone on to claim asylum – which is likely an overestimate – then they would make up only about 3.5% of asylum claims made by students in 2025.
Myanmar
The Home Office also states that the number of asylum claims by students from Myanmar “soared sixteen-fold” between 2021 and 2025. However the Home Office’s data shows that total asylum claims by Myanmar nationals has increased almost seventeen-fold from a total of 52 claims in 2021 to 879 in 2025.
If a widespread ‘abuse’ of visas by Myanmar nationals had taken place since 2021, one would expect the increase in student claimants from Myanmar to be disproportionately high when compared to the increase in total asylum claims from nationals of the country.
This is not the case. Therefore, there is basis to assume that the increase in asylum claims is due to worsening conditions in the country rather than a widespread ‘visa abuse’.
Furthermore, the total number of students entering the UK from Myanmar on study visas has significantly increased; from 471 in 2021 to 1,907 in 2024 and 1,709 in 2025. Therefore it is likely that the “sixteen-fold” increase quoted by the Home Office is attributable to; 1) a general increase in students from Myanmar and; 2) worsening of conditions in the country leading to a general increase in asylum claims that is not specific to students.
Sudan
According to the United Nations, Sudan is currently facing the world’s largest displacement crisis. Since the conflict began in April 2023, an estimated 14 million people have been forced from their homes. Unsurprisingly, the UK Home Office has recorded an increase in asylum claims from Sudanese nationals in this period, and a 255% increase from 2021 to 2025.
The total number Sudanese granted study visas is consistently around 300 per year. Based on figures published by The Financial Times (FT), of the 1,480 Sudanese nationals who have been granted student visas since 2021, only 380 claimed asylum.
Assuming this is the proportion of Sudanese students who claim asylum, an average of less than 80 asylum claims would be made by Sudanese students per year.
Based on the FT’s figures, for the Home Office’s 330% increase figure to be correct, there must have been an absolute maximum of 90 asylum claims made by Sudanese students in 2021, and that is assuming all of the remaining 290 claims in the 2021-2025 period were made solely in 2025.
Considering that the 330% increase statistic was calculated using a relatively small-number figure (<90) in 2021, it is reasonable to assume that the increase in student asylum claims is likely in line with an overall increase in Sudanese asylum claims of 255%.
These statistics do not necessitate ‘widespread visa-abuse’ as an explanation, rather they support the conclusion that students are claiming asylum in greater numbers due to deteriorating and increasingly dangerous situations in their home country.
Cameroon
The data for Cameroon tells a similar story. The number of asylum claims made by Cameroonian nationals per year has increased by 570% from 134 in 2021 to 765 in 2025. Meanwhile, the Home Office reports that that the number of asylum claims made by Cameroonian students increased by 330% between 2021 and 2025.
Rather than providing evidence of study visas being abused with the intention of claiming asylum, these figures show that the proportion of Cameroonian students claiming asylum relative to the total asylum claims by Cameroonian nationals is actually decreasing.
Not only are the conclusions drawn by the Home Office a misinterpretation, they are far out of proportion. Only 380 Sudanese students claimed asylum between 2021 and 2025. The Home Office recorded 100,000 asylum claims last year alone, yet it claims that students from Sudan and Cameroon are “posing an unsustainable threat to the UK’s asylum system.”
Afghanistan
In their response to the ‘visa brake’ policy, Russell Group highlighted that the 95% statistic used by the Home Office cannot be interpreted as meaning that 95% of Afghan students who arrived since 2021 subsequently claimed asylum.
This is because, according to Russell Group, the figure was likely obtained in the following way.
Out of a pool of all Afghan nationals who had been granted a study visa in the past, 3,630 claimed asylum between 2021 and 2025.
This number was divided by the number of Afghan nationals granted study visas only between 2021 and 2025 (3,840).
This means it is untrue that 95% of Afghan nationals who are granted study visas go on to claim asylum. It is unclear what the Home Office was trying to convey with this statistic.
So how many Afghan students are entering the UK on study visas? Home Office data shows that in 2025 in total only 217 Afghan students were granted study visas.
The data does show a rise in the number of Afghan students granted study visas in 2022 and 2023, before a decrease in 2024 and 2025 to levels more similar to previous years. The increasing trends identified by the Home Office are do not require an explanation involving ‘visa abuse.’ The UN educational, scientific and cultural agency (UNESCO) reported that in the three years after the Taliban came to power in 2021, “at least 1.4 million girls have been deliberately denied access to secondary education,” and the number of university students halved since women were banned from higher education in 2022.
Widespread data abuse
In their justification of the ’emergency visa brake’ the Home Office has failed to produce any conclusive evidence of study visas being abused. The claim of ‘widespread visa abuse’ stands in direct contradiction to the MAC review commissioned by the Home Office themselves in 2024 and the press release published on the 6 March severely fails to represent the Home Office’s own data transparently.
The press release provides far more evidence of the Home Office abusing their own data than it does of students from Sudan, Myanmar, Cameroon or Afghanistan abusing study visas.
A closer look at the data raises serious questions about how the Home Office came to the decision to enforce the visa brake and why Sudan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Afghanistan were specifically targeted.
The home office was contacted for comment; however, no response has been provided to date.
