That’s almost a third of all those studying at Glasgow, Strathclyde, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee universities.
They pay for the privilege and we accept their money and enjoy the vibrancy and new cultures they bring to our cities.
And when they have successfully completed their courses some want to stay on. And why not? They have made lifelong friends here. They have skills and qualifications we desperately need.
But the UK Government doesn’t see it that way. Labour’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper wants to boot them out (“International students to get Government warnings to leave UK once visas end”, heraldscotland, September 2), saying international students are claiming asylum “even when things haven’t changed in their home country”. What does that actually mean?
I know a young woman from Iran who fled her homeland because her beliefs didn’t match those of the Tehran regime. She learned to speak excellent English within months, managed to secure entry to a college course in Glasgow, started making exquisite jewellery despite having no resources, and took myself and my wife to wonderful music gigs we would never otherwise have known about.
This Labour Government under Keir “I was brought up in a semi-detached pebble-dashed house, sharing a bedroom with my brother” Starmer is falling into the trap of populism.
He’s an autocrat…always has been. Even as Director of Public Prosecutions. Read back his history there and you’ll find out. He might as well be a cloned version of Donald Trump. And the longer he stays in power the more dangerous it is, not only for Scotland, but the UK.
* I can hardly believe the lack of joined-up thinking and, dare I say it, sheer ignorance of cause and effect, in the statement from Yvette Cooper today, putting new rules in place about foreign students staying on in the UK.
After all the years that she has been in the UK Parliament, in various positions, it appears that she still has not cottoned on that overseas students have long filled the gaps in government funding for universities and colleges. With other new regulations for foreign students being allowed to come here to study, such as a ban on bringing spouses or children, the numbers coming have already dropped significantly and consequently damaged the finances of these institutions.
Now she has decided to ensure that they leave again when their study visa expires. These are people who have benefited from our centres of further and higher education and have thus earned qualifications in a wide range of skilled and professional areas, in all of which we have vacancies that we struggle to fill. It surely is only common sense that allowing them to stay on after qualifying benefits the UK greatly, both by filling some of these essential posts and by then paying tax here.
If they were also allowed to bring immediate family too, as previously, then there would, in all likelihood, be a partner also filling a vacancy and paying tax. Is it beyond possible for this Government, and the Home Secretary in particular, to see the equation staring her in the face? A foreign student training here means universities’ and colleges’ budgets increase; a student graduating and staying to fill a vacancy means the jobs market benefits and the tax take increases.
Join these dots, Minister, they are staring you in the face. At the moment, your ill-thought-out new conditions merely feed into the Farage/Reform mantra of “migrants bad, throw them out”.
How do you spot the difference between a claimed left-leaning politician and a right-wing politician masquerading as someone who cares about the lives of ordinary people? Like two peas in a pod, you can’t. Both Anas Sarwar and Nigel Farage are adept at conjuring up smoke and mirrors for duping those who do not have the time or inclination to look beyond vacuous sound bites.
When Mr Sarwar was questioned on Monday (September 1) by STV’s Colin Mackay, his solution to improving Scotland’s NHS service (which is performing considerably better overall than the NHS in Labour-run Wales) was to call for a cut in the number of bureaucrats and for making greater use of the private healthcare sector. In other words, he offers the same solution as Nigel Farage which will effectively result in completing the Thatcher-Blair project of privatising the UK’s health service, including Scotland’s NHS.
Of course the core ruse of these charlatans is to misleadingly cast blame for the mire of a dysfunctional Union, in which most (except the already wealthy) are suffering the regressive consequences of failed UK Government policies, on to others. While Mr Sarwar points his disingenuous finger at the SNP for all of the UK’s ills as manifest in Scotland, Mr Farage, as he did before Brexit, seeks to focus everyone’s attention on innocent immigrants.
There’s only a relatively tiny number of what are portrayed as “illegal immigrants” entering the UK and most of those have legitimate reasons to be here. The root cause of the UK’s problems is not the few immigrants whose stays in the UK are not warranted but the massive under-investment, over decades, in public services and infrastructure throughout Britain. This predicament has been heinously exacerbated by the insidious dissolution of Britain’s social fabric by successive Tory UK governments which Labour governments have failed to counter. If all so-called illegal immigrants, including women and children, were to be callously deported tomorrow, that deplorable action would not begin to reverse Britain’s sad decline.
Neither Mr Sarwar nor Mr Farage offer real change or a true way forward for Scotland.
John Swinney has said he is “absolutely horrified” by reports alleging a camera was hidden in a Holyrood lavatory (“MSP quits Holyrood committee over ‘secret camera’ charge”, The Herald, September 2).
It’s a shame he’s not absolutely horrified by the following:
* The worst drug deaths in Europe for the last six years;
* Nearly 15,000 Scottish citizens who have been on NHS waiting lists for two years or more;
* Approximately 220,000 children in relative poverty (2023-24 figures) in Scotland;
* The mounting death and injury toll on the A96, A9 and A82. Eighty-one deaths and over 1,500 casualties in the four years to 2024.
That’s what he should be absolutely horrified by, but what is one of the first debates in Holyrood in this new session of parliament? Gaza.
He clearly does not have his priorities right and should step aside. Scotland’s citizens deserve better.
John Swinney, and what is left of serious SNP contenders for places in the Scottish Parliament following the 2026 Holyrood elections, will most certainly not be in a position to form a government.
My prediction is that following the election there will again be a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition in power, as was the case at the inauguration of the Parliament all these years ago. No doubt Reform will also take a number of SNP constituencies.
The SNP is in serious decline. Gone are the days of conferences and tartanalia in marches and other such events. The key figures have either died or disappeared into obscurity.
This northerly part of the UK most certainly needs a new start. It has been subject to the extremisms of nationalism and has yet to recover.
GR Weir (Letters, September 2) reminds us of the Lib Dems’ “fantasy policy” of federalism which gets a quick dust down before an election, then is put back on the shelf when the election is over and conveniently forgotten about until next time.
As for Alex Cole-Hamilton’s fantasy assertion that Humza Yousaf was “desperate” and wanted him as Deputy First Minister after the end of the Bute House Agreement with the Greens, Mr Yousaf summed up the situation perfectly by retorting: “While it is true the end of the Bute House Agreement was a desperate time, we were not that desperate”.
