Sajid Javid, the UK home secretary, is being urged to review the treatment of thousands of foreign students who were ordered to leave the UK after being falsely accused of cheating in English language tests set for visa purposes.
According to one immigration lawyer as many as 4,000 university students may have been falsely accused by the UK Home Office of faking their tests in what has been described as another example of the government’s “hostile environment” immigration policy.
Due to the Home Office move, visas were cancelled, and students were barred from their courses and told to return to their home countries.
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Doubts, first highlighted in a Financial Times report, have now been cast on the quality of some of the evidence upon which these accusations were made.
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The students’ ordeal began in 2014 when a BBC Panorama investigation made allegations of cheating in the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), which students must take to meet visa requirements for spoken language proficiency.
Trinity College at Cambridge University. Photo: Handout
