London Metropolitan University students protest over ban to take on foreign students

Hundreds of students and staff arranged a demonstration against the government’s revocation of LMU’s right to host foreign students, writes the Guardian.

Leading the demonstration were the many students from non-EU countries who have to switch to another university within the next few months or get deported back to their home countries with unfinished studies.

Carrying signs saying ‘student rights are human rights, ‘education for the masses’, and a big banderol saying ‘education not deportation – amnesty for all LMU students’, the protestors marched to Downing Street.

A petition with around 7,000 names on were brought to the Home Office demanding that those who have started their studies at LMU shall be able to finish them.

Malcolm Gilles, vice-chancellor of LMU, told the BBC on Monday that the university would bring the government to court. He said: “My university is going to seek for this revocation to be stayed.

We fundamentally contest the claim that there is systematic failure here.”

The boarder agency (UKBA) withdrew the license from LMU last Wednesday, since a ‘significant proportion’ of students did not speak good enough English and there was no evidence that half of them went to lectures, Immigration minister Damian Green told the BBC.

"What we found here is a serious systemic failure where it appears that the university doesn't have the capacity to be a proper sponsor and to have confidence that the students coming have the right to be here in the first place," he said.

Image via Twitpic.