Hi, I’m Helen, and I’m from South Korea. I’m a first year student at UCL studying Law.

To start off with, I am an international student by UK immigration standards. I’ve had to obtain a 3 year student visa in order to study at UCL. I also pay international fees, which are triple what the EU and Home students of the 2011 cohort pays.

However, what is a little different about me, compared to most of you here is this: I have been living here for 9 years. That’s right, I came to the UK in January 2003, and studied in primary and secondary schools up until now. And they still consider me an international student. As a result, I have had to renew my student visa every couple of years, paying the expensive independent fee-paying school fees (because if you come to study before 16 years of age, you have to go to a fee paying school) and the visa renewal fees (which did continuously go up every few years!).

I know that the recent changes in Tier 4 and PSW schemes don’t directly affect me, but I just wanted to rant about the overall immigration law considering non-EU nationals, and highlighting the unfair price we all have to pay.

The truth is, there is a huge number of immigrants in the UK. If you live in London, you will notice it straight away. If you live in the provinces like Kent (where I used to live), there are not many immigrants. In fact, it is quite hard to see a non-British face, although that is changing as well. The British are alarmed at the pace their home and surroundings is changing, and I daresay they have the right to feel that way. It’s not xenophobia- it is simply one of the consequences borne out of globalisation, and it does take some time for people to get used to.

But I have a qualm with the British government trying to squeeze every last penny out of non-EU nationals before telling us to depart the country.

The core of the immigration problem lies not with a couple of bad non-EU students who use it as a means to illegally enter the country (and they are often caught out or not allowed in the country in the first place), but with EU and Commonwealth nationals. They have a much relaxed immigration rules applying to them, and from my experience, people from the Commonwealth countries are the ones much more likely to settle here permanently than non-EU students. Every single one of my friends from Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Japan and many other countries tell me that they want to go back home after a few years worth of training/internship. For law, it is a necessary for us to obtain a training contract, otherwise we will not get any opportunities for a job.

I despise the fact that I am still treated as a foreigner despite having lived here for 9 years, and I am now worried that I won’t be able to get a job because I need a work permit to do so. I am aiming to apply for a permanent residence permit next year, but there are rumours that the 10 years continuous residence requirement will change, and I am praying that it doesn’t change. It used to be the case that you could stay for 5 years straight before applying for one. This is one of the things in Britain that more than irks me. It is frustrating and painful. The government has absolutely no right to tell me that I don’t belong here, or I haven’t integrated here fully- I have more friends in the UK than I do back home, and although I’ve lived here with my mum for the duration of my education in schools, I speak fluent English (and I’ve been told that I have a very British accent on the phones, and they are surprised I am not British!). And although there are not many like me, I know they all feel the same way, one way or another.

Now, I don’t understand why they are not embracing international students. In America, in Holland, in Singapore and many other countries welcome international students. They have grants and scholarships available for international students, and the immigration laws are not as tight and not so fast-changing like here. They seem to recognise that in order to study and work here, we have to spend money as well. We pay the rent, the fees, food, drinks, clubbing etc. which in the end comes back to the British from direct income and VAT. The VAT rate is very high, a lot higher than back home, and other tax rates are high too. This should mean that the more people spend the better it is, and the faster they will be able to escape the doldrums in the economy.

But no, they decide to kick us out once we have finished our studies. They blame us for the failure of multiculturalism (no it hasn’t failed, but that’s another story) and leeching off the economy. It leaves a very sour taste in your mouth once you have friends who have to miss out on freshers’ and orientation week, and possibly even more, when they haven’t got a visa on time because of stricter rules and slow visa processes. I theorise that the overall inefficiency and delays in the immigration rules due to the amount of paperwork we have to submit. I am lucky to be born in a ‘low-risk’ country, but I can imagine the pains of getting a police certificate and interviews for others.

This simply cannot go on. I’ve had to put up with this for the past 5 years when they really started to amp up the immigration law. You can’t just declare that all apples are bad because of a few rotten apples in the same box; you just throw them out, and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

It’s a right shame that they are denying access to a great education here, and I would not trade my 9 years of living in the UK for anything else. However, when I eventually return to Korea to my family in the next couple of years after working here, I don’t want to leave feeling that I’ve been hurriedly ushered out. That’s just rubbing salt in my wounds.