Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of dependents brought to the UK by foreign students in (1) 2018, (2) 2019, (3) 2020, (4) 2021, and (5) 2022; and what estimate they have made of the number of these (a) foreign students, and (b) their dependents, who have since returned home.

The Home Office publishes data on Entry clearance visas in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on the number of student dependant visas granted are published in table Vis_D02 of the Entry clearance detailed dataset. Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data relate to 2023 Q3.

The Home Office publishes data on how people move through the immigration system in the Migrant Journey report. The report contains information on the number of people starting a journey each year broken down by immigration route (e.g. study) and applicant type (e.g. dependant), and how long they continued to hold leave to remain in the UK. The latest report covers up to the end of 2022. The report looks at periods when people held valid leave which does not necessarily mean they were in the UK.