Originally Posted by chocolate_frog

Why is the FCO paying student fees? What do we get out of that deal? Genuine Question.

Chevening and Commonwealth Scholarships, mainly. We give the future national and business leaders of the developing world a British education and send 'em back home with a positive impression of Britain.

It's also a great way to ensure that they don't go to the competition, thereby denying them the benefits of the world's best brains.

Originally Posted by Command_doh

You are taking this all rather personally aren't you chum? Personally involved in anything by any chance? ;)

And you were rather quick to jump to their defence. A lingering stench of vested interest there, as well.

Originally Posted by Command_doh

I like the way you are doing a lot of spouting and actually abusing people in Embassy's without appreciating that PBS IS actually an 'open door' policy. I would refer you to Andrew Neathers' statements on the issue of 'changing the face of the British voting public'.

I abuse anyone who proves themselves incompetent at their job. I’ve shown by specific example and with reference to the organisation’s own rules why particular calls shouldn’t have been made. Are you saying that it’s ok for a minor civil servant to over-rule national policy and the law of the land on a whim?

Originally Posted by Command_doh

And CAS's are correct, yes. But when did they come in? Oh, about 5 seconds ago, thats when.

For Tier 4, it was voluntary to use the Visa Sponsor Management System as of October last and compulsory as of 28 Feb. No form of letter is valid now. I look forward to students being refused visas because they haven't provided one.

Originally Posted by Command_doh

And just because someone has a certificate of acceptance, it doesn't automatically follow that they have any intention of following their studies.

Exactly, well done for keeping up. That’s why we report to the UKBA on anyone who fails to show. Regrettably, we’re not allowed to know if they haven’t shown up because they’re under arrest, were turned back at the port of entry, went to a different university instead or were never granted their visa in the first place. But we have to pay at every stage, as does the student – don’t we just! - and we can't reallocate the places because we're never informed they're vacant unless the student chooses to tell us.

Originally Posted by Command_doh

And anyway, you may realise that some people other than your good self are reading this and don't have the benefit of 'jargon', so simplification sometimes helps. I would like to stay away from 'insider acronyms'.

Insider acronyms which were readily explained in the websites I linked to for anyone who had the interest. Your introduction of phrases like ‘trusted partner’ made me assume you were someone who knew what they were talking about. Apologies for the confusion.

Originally Posted by Command_doh

Don't put words into my mouth about 'revoking'. I said 'monitored'.

Apologies for the confusion again, you didn’t say revoked you said 'removing’. As in

Originally Posted by ”Command-doh”

Removing their 'trusted partner' status hasn't yet proved a deterrent for a lot I understand.

Not a single UK HEI has had its ‘trusted partner’ status removed, revoke, folded, spindled or mutilated. Contrary to your assertion.

Originally Posted by Command_doh

Now really, you should learn to either control your blood pressure, or stay away from the keyboard. You obviously know that UKBA/Embassy's and High Commissions are inundated with student applications since PBS was introduced.

Which was predicted in advance, was consistent with a long-term upward trend and which the UKBA were informed officially about some time ago. Yet they didn’t act in any way to be able to cope, nor did they warn anyone that they wouldn’t be able to. Instead they did things like shut every Visa Office in Northern India with little notice. Does that sound like the actions of a half-competent organisation?

Originally Posted by Command_doh

You will be keenly aware that people from whole regions of 'risk' countries have been effectively banned from applying for student visa on the basis of identified mass fraud and facilitation going on.

Which means that a student may miss their chance to study in the UK because the UKBA can’t check to see if they are a genuinely qualified student, not because their not. Or more likely if they have money behind them, they’ll just go to somewhere less busy like the Indians applying from Teheran or the Pakistanis applying from Dubai. Go, team UKBA!

Originally Posted by Command_doh

I can't be bothered to talk to you about the difference between legitimate Colleges and 'duff' schools.

Do you know the difference? The UK government didn't until comparatively recently and I'm still coming across 'colleges' that give me cause for concern. There's no legislation banning improper use of the title 'college'.

Originally Posted by Command_doh

You clearly are well informed in your tiny little area of expertise that relates specifically to your sector, but I'm sure you realise that ECO's and UKBA have far more to deal with than this one specific thing.

Yeah. Like designing a system for administering visas and immigration that didn’t take into account the needs of the largest sponsor sector with the highest turnovers of visas, you mean? One which was based on a system which was designed solely to manage employment immigration? And which dominated their thinking to the extent that even briefings to the HE sector refer to education providers as ‘employers’ and students as ‘employees’? Yeah, I’m sure they have got far better things to do than get it right.

Originally Posted by Command_doh

This is clearly a waste of time. You seem intent on using as many expletives, weasel words and derogatory comments as possible about these Civil Servants in as little a space as is humanly possible. Crack on chump. I can't be bothered with you. I was speaking in layman's terms, but you are obviously stroking yourself at your vast 'expertise' in your nice little area. Great. Bully for you. I would talk to you at length and quote paragraphs, subsections and case history, but there is really no point. You just want to abuse people.

Abusing people who’re incompetent and don’t know their own jobs is a lot of fun and relieves the needless stress of having to deal with idiots like the UKBA. Perhaps if you weren’t stropping like a Princess just because you tried to sound authoritative and got shot down in flames you’d begin to see that this lot are doing nothing that benefits the security of our borders that they weren’t already doing, but are reducing the incentive to have anything to do with the UK by making it a costly fuck-about and one which they carry out with much less efficiency and speed than any other country that uses the same system.

Originally Posted by smartascarrots

I've had a Canadian student name of McGuire who was coming to study a Masters in English Literature refused a student visa because she hadn't supplied proof of English proficiency. They. Are. Shocking.

Cant agree dear boy. Canadians are called things like Bald Bear Whistling and Pokohantis. Not McGuire.

Does her auld Dad drive a taxi by any chance?

Besides, it doesn't matter. All the ECO's are on strike. The poor dears cant retire at 52 on £35k a year any more.

Originally Posted by smartascarrots

Perhaps if you weren’t stropping like a Princess just because you tried to sound authoritative and got shot down in flames

I fail to see where you have done this. You are talking about something very, very specific. Master's students are rarely a problem, but that does not mean they are never a problem. Trusted Partners are invariably established institutions of historically long standing, but it will come as no surprise to you that franchised and long established English colleges are being closely watched. Last I heard, some were suspended - but as we both no that is in itself not an issue for arriving students. But you will forgive me if I cannot be bothered to go into the details of the ostensibly credible learning institutions which are either suspended, notified of Enforcement action or will just rename and reopen after they are shut down and the (nominal) owners slapped on the wrists. If you genuinely think I can be bothered to talk about Universities in the same breath as duff schools that are proliferating this mockery of the changed PBS visa regime, then you are sadly mistaken.

Just as you are mistaken with your smug ascertation that I don't know what I am talking about. I beg to differ. But as I have already explained, I have little time for a sneeringly smug and arrogant person who would rather make sweeping generalisations about a service when - as we both well know - every organisation has good and bad people. You have just sweepingly discredited hundreds or thousands of people who (for the most part) actually want to protect the UK Border from mass and unchecked immigration - seemingly at odds with political agendas from forces well above their pay grades.

Now, we both know we are talking about widely separate issues. I have no bones with long established Universities, Poly's and other associated learning institutions. They are very small beer. But people will make mistakes. Fine, you want to slag everybody off. You admit you get to your vinegar strokes by slagging people off on the Internet. Fantastic.

All that remains to say is that PBS T4(G) visa are exceedingly easy to obtain if you have a CAS, and obviously a place. If your 'friend' didn't have the cleared funds in his/her account when the application was submitted, you and I both know thats an immediate refusal.

Anyway. I really will ignore your superiority complex now, thanks. You have your nice little niche area to spout off on, I would rather concentrate on the big picture and not something that is fundamentally flawed and is virtually impossible to deal with post issue and subsequently becomes a problem here.

Originally Posted by Command_doh

Blah, blah, waffle, injured innocence and the garb of patriotism.

Well done, you're an ECO and I claim my ten pounds. The combat indicators were the speed with which you leapt to their defence, the readiness with which you take offence on their behalf (slagging and abuse in the NAAFI? Who'd ha' thunk it?) and the lack of professional knowledge you bring to the defence. It does not surprise me in the slightest.

Masters students can be a problem, and a very real one. But the solution is not haphazard and subjective decisions based on the application of unlawful criteria. There are only 3 real outcomes to that:

1. The student gives up and goes away, normally to some other country. This is unlikely in the case of a hardened terrorist bent on destroying Britain as they know full well that an unlawful decision gives them a good chance of succeeding on appeal. This is a remarkably small number of cases as people invest far too much time, effort and money in the decision to travel half around the world to do a degree.

2. The student appeals. After a long and costly process, the unlawful decision results in the appeal being upheld, HMG paying the students costs (possibly a little bit of compo if they've missed their start date) and the visa gets issued anyway. If there are genuine lawful grounds for refusal then fair one and the appeal gets refused. Far too often there are not.

3. The student, realising that this is their one shot at a UK education and that the appeals process takes too long, submits a fresh application containing their Bronze Swimming Certificate or a photo of them posing with a clown, or whatever other unnecessary idiocy the ECO has required of them. Satisfied that they've done their bit to secure the nation's borders, the ECO promptly issues the visa. The overwhelming majority of problem cases fall into this category.

Tell me how any of that makes the UK a safer place?

Originally Posted by Command_doh

All that remains to say is that PBS T4(G) visa are exceedingly easy to obtain if you have a CAS, and obviously a place. If your 'friend' didn't have the cleared funds in his/her account when the application was submitted, you and I both know thats an immediate refusal.

Not a ‘friend’, I didn’t know them from Adam. But I did know that there is no requirement for a sponsored student to prove cleared funds in a bank account, only that the student can support themselves without recourse to Public Funds - which have a specific definition in law. If the student was required to have the cash in their bank then these scholarship students and all the other fully-funded students from e.g. Saudi Arabia and Libya would never get into the UK. Yet they do, year in year out and with the full approval of the UK government. Except those bits of it that think they know best.

Originally Posted by Command_doh

I would rather concentrate on the big picture and not something that is fundamentally flawed and is virtually impossible to deal with post issue and subsequently becomes a problem here.

If you were actually concentrating on the big picture you’d be concerning yourself with the people who are opening the UK up to threat by providing broad, sweeping and tree-lined avenues of appeal in their decisions. A decision to refuse a visa based on the law and actual evidence is not something I’d ever dispute and it will stand up in a Court of Law. One based on ignorance of the law, supposition and lack of simple thought is counter-productive and pointless. It will be overturned and it won’t prevent the individual entering the country.

Originally Posted by smartascarrots

Originally Posted by Command_doh

Blah, blah, waffle, injured innocence and the garb of patriotism.

Well done, you're an ECO and I claim my ten pounds. The combat indicators were the speed with which you leapt to their defence, the readiness with which you take offence on their behalf (slagging and abuse in the NAAFI? Who'd ha' thunk it?) and the lack of professional knowledge you bring to the defence. It does not surprise me in the slightest.

Masters students can be a problem, and a very real one. But the solution is not haphazard and subjective decisions based on the application of unlawful criteria. There are only 3 real outcomes to that:

1. The student gives up and goes away, normally to some other country. This is unlikely in the case of a hardened terrorist bent on destroying Britain as they know full well that an unlawful decision gives them a good chance of succeeding on appeal. This is a remarkably small number of cases as people invest far too much time, effort and money in the decision to travel half around the world to do a degree.

2. The student appeals. After a long and costly process, the unlawful decision results in the appeal being upheld, HMG paying the students costs (possibly a little bit of compo if they've missed their start date) and the visa gets issued anyway. If there are genuine lawful grounds for refusal then fair one and the appeal gets refused. Far too often there are not.

3. The student, realising that this is their one shot at a UK education and that the appeals process takes too long, submits a fresh application containing their Bronze Swimming Certificate or a photo of them posing with a clown, or whatever other unnecessary idiocy the ECO has required of them. Satisfied that they've done their bit to secure the nation's borders, the ECO promptly issues the visa. The overwhelming majority of problem cases fall into this category.

Tell me how any of that makes the UK a safer place?

Originally Posted by Command_doh

All that remains to say is that PBS T4(G) visa are exceedingly easy to obtain if you have a CAS, and obviously a place. If your 'friend' didn't have the cleared funds in his/her account when the application was submitted, you and I both know thats an immediate refusal.

Not a ‘friend’, I didn’t know them from Adam. But I did know that there is no requirement for a sponsored student to prove cleared funds in a bank account, only that the student can support themselves without recourse to Public Funds - which have a specific definition in law. If the student was required to have the cash in their bank then these scholarship students and all the other fully-funded students from e.g. Saudi Arabia and Libya would never get into the UK. Yet they do, year in year out and with the full approval of the UK government. Except those bits of it that think they know best.

Originally Posted by Command_doh

I would rather concentrate on the big picture and not something that is fundamentally flawed and is virtually impossible to deal with post issue and subsequently becomes a problem here.

If you were actually concentrating on the big picture you’d be concerning yourself with the people who are opening the UK up to threat by providing broad, sweeping and tree-lined avenues of appeal in their decisions. A decision to refuse a visa based on the law and actual evidence is not something I’d ever dispute and it will stand up in a Court of Law. One based on ignorance of the law, supposition and lack of simple thought is counter-productive and pointless. It will be overturned and it won’t prevent the individual entering the country.

I know I said I wouldn't respond, but I will entertain your zealous attempt to abuse any any every ECO, be it FCO or UKBA.

First point - You are so wrong its laughable. Combat indicators my arse. I have never been an ECO, and most likely never will be ;)

2nd Point. Your reasoning is so narrow and specific, its very hard to actually see what you are talking about. What exactly is a 'sponsored student'? Most people are not in receipt of scholarships. Your examples of Libya and Saudi are in the minority, when juxtaposed against the rest of the world. Most people are 'sponsored' by their families. A considerable number of 'duffers' (for lack of a better word) have to have their families experience hardships or take out exhorbitant loans to present the facade of a stable financial situation. Many more work well in excess of the permissable employment regulations for term time to make ends meet.

But boring you would only like to quote very specific legislature and whinge about a couple of applications that have been refused or granted in error by some biff who probably shouldn't have been in post in the first place. It happens in every organisation.

And you want to talk about the public expense for appeals? Why don't we talk about this idiot Administration that has allowed the farce of appeals for 'extended family' visitors to come and vist 'Joe Bloggs, 12th times removed cousins', brothers', mother? That costs the taxpayer £1 million EACH day.

So bore off you tedious whiner. Please. You are carping about a minority of applications for Masters/Degree students that might have been handled incorrectly - possibly by idiots. Grow up and realise that your narrow sphere is only a drop in the Ocean when compared with the system as a hole.

And be as vague as you like about what you do and what you clear self interest is in it. I hope you are not overly financially penalised by the drastic cuts in authorised overseas student numbers for the 2010/11 intake year....

I really will try to ignore you now. It just depends how much bile is spouted. But essentially, this is going nowhere. You are just determined to down on the system regardless, when in actuality your beef is with a very select few.

smartascarrots are you outraged and regularly fight the corner of every raggetyarsed free-loading student loafer who wants to come to the UK or just the ones you want to sleep with?

The poor dears cant retire at 52 on £35k a year any more.

Yes! Who do they think they are? They will be playing golf next and having Wednesday off for sports before we know it! Or worse still getting paid for weekends they don't even work

Being as the Government are drastically cutting University funding and foreign students fees are in the region of three times that of a domestic student it is inevitable that universities will recruit more heavily amongst foreign students to make ends meet. Therefore the acceptance level by universities of foreign students is likely to be high but that doesn't mean they'll take anyone, it's not in their interests to do so. No shows, either because the student has been refused a visa or because the student has absconded upon arrival in the UK cost a university dear, they lose fee money and they lose a bit of credibility. Most universities very much see it as in their own interests to recruit only the most bona fides of students from overseas but that doesn't make the system foolproof. I can see that it must be frustrating, when having spent a lot of time and effort recruiting overseas students, to have some of them refused entry by quite arbitrary decisions by minor officials.
However, it's also interesting to note that anyone applying to practice medicine in the US from abroad must take a (medical) competency test that is written entirely in English and in which, the answers must be completed entirely in English with the exception of Latin medical terminology.
However Guerrillas not native to the Ivory Coast? Did he make a monkey of himself or what?

Originally Posted by Markintime

However, it's also interesting to note that anyone applying to practice medicine in the US from abroad must take a (medical) competency test that is written entirely in English and in which, the answers must be completed entirely in English with the exception of Latin medical terminology

Ancedotal evidence has shown that in many cases, educational establishments here have admitted they have no process for verifying the person they have accepted to follow a Course of study is the person they 'interview' over the telephone to see if they have a basic command of English. And not some relative/friend/paid agent. Obviously, now that this Administration has 'toughened' the 'robust' T4(G) criteria by making the minimum level of english required to study a recognised higher course of education as 'just below GCSE level' (whatever the fcuk that is supposed to mean), there will be no mass breach of a weak system that doesn't involve an ECO doing his job and assessing credibility, rather than being forced to tick boxes.

But UKBA, the FCO and anyone who tries to do his/her job by attempting to protect the border is clearly a w@nker. Smartascarrots has decreed this, and his tiny little gripe about a couple of alleged cases is more important than policy as a whole.

Anyway, I had better stop now. After all, I won't be responding to him anymore and I have to give him enough time to multi-quote every damn single thing I have said and laugh while he attempts to argue ad nausem over semantics. Like I said, crack on. I am sick of me talking about a general abuse of a weak system and him whinging about 2-3 local f@ck ups by someone who was either overworked, made genuine mistakes or was just incompetent.