UK Borders Bill
1:30 pm
Professor Ross Anderson: We already have problems with the tightened-up visa regime, as it has changed over the last year or two. For example, the student who did the biometric work with me is currently sitting in Beijing and has an assurance that he should get his visa by March. In effect, he will have spent his writing-up period in Beijing and will come back to us for his post-doc. That is a more and more common occurrence. The problem is that as more and more students get negative experiences, of whatever kind, whether it is being questioned for an hour or so by unfriendly immigration officials, having to wait three months for a visa, or having to pay hundreds of pounds more for a visa than used to be the case, it feeds into the general perception—what students are talking about in the common rooms in universities in China and India about the best places to do a PhD. That is a matter of competitive concern to us.