I sit down with Keeyaa Chaurey on a cold Wednesday afternoon at the London School of Economics. Keeyaa, a citizen of India, is one of over 458,000 international students in the UK.

With most classes over and students either at home or at sports practice, the canteen is dark and relatively empty. The cafe is still open, however, so we talk accompanied by two steaming cups of coffee.

Keeyaa has studied in the United Kingdom since 2014, and has just finished a masters in human rights from the LSE. She has been with her partner, Andrew, for two years.

“He is my first serious relationship,” she says. “We worked really hard on the relationship, and we love each other a lot.”

He is a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, and enjoys a guaranteed right to freedom of movement as a result.

As an Indian citizen, she does not.

Since the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962 ended free movement between Commonwealth countries (i.e. most of the former British Empire) and the UK, immigration has become progressively harder for non-Europeans. While the number and kind of visas has changed, the broad goal of placing controls on non-European immigration has not.

International students, however, have mostly been welcomed. Exempt from the regulations governing how much universities and colleges can charge for an education since 1962, international students from outside the European Economic Area are invaluable sources of revenue for the UK’s multibillion-pound higher education industry. The Higher Education Policy Institute estimated in 2018 that a single cohort of international students could bring a net benefit of £20.3 billion pounds to the UK’s economy, after deducting public costs of £2.3 billion including education, health and social security.

It is no surprise, then, that attempts to regulate international student migration have focused on curtailing “misuse” of the system, rather than directly targeting international students. In 2011, the government set out major student visa reforms that ended the right to post-study work for non-EEA international graduates and tightened requirements for both providers and students. In her announcement to Parliament, then-Home Secretary Theresa May emphasised that these reforms would focus on reducing long-term migration for the purpose of work, rather than short-term migration for the purpose of studying.

This approach to international student migration has had significant impact. The Russell Group, a group of prestigious public research universities, found that the number of international students staying on for work fell by 87% immediately after the post-study work visa scheme was closed.

It’s also tearing relationships just like Keeyaa’s apart.

This is 34-35 Bedford Point, one of just six centres in the UK where visa applicants seeking to extend their stay in the UK can submit their biometric data for visa applications for free.

It costs at least £60 to submit biometric data at paid centres.

Photo by: Robert Liow

“The plan was to find someone back home”

For the majority of international students, the UK is indeed just a temporary home. The Migration Observatory at Oxford found in 2015 that even when the post-study work visa was in effect, “the vast majority of people who enter on student visas are not switching into other categories.”

Not all international students in relationships want to stay. Jessica, a Malaysian postgraduate student with a British boyfriend, is one of those who isn’t sure if she’ll be switching her visa.

Jessica is a student on the MA Digital Journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London, and was formerly the deputy digital editor for an Asian media company. She met her boyfriend Gavin nine years ago, while she was doing her undergraduate degree in Malaysia and he was on his gap year.

While Jessica loves the UK — she first came when she was 14, and fell in love with what she describes as the “gloominess” of the country — she was never sure whether she wanted to settle in the UK. Her career gave her a level of security she did not want to sacrifice; she says she “just stayed on and did my thing in Malaysia” as a result.

However, she and Gavin did discuss her eventual decision to study in the UK. “He told me to take this one year and experience living in the UK to decide if I want to stay on,” she says, “and it’s a good time for me to explore the job market here, network and build connections, and ease into the culture here.”

She reveals that Gavin may want to leave the UK. Gavin has Malaysian heritage, but he doesn’t have Malaysian citizenship; if they return to Malaysia, that means either that he has to set up a business, or else they have to get married.

“We’re both open to staying on or going back,” she says.

Sometimes, however, plans change. Asyiqin Radzuan, a Singaporean international undergraduate studying accounting and finance, had not initially planned to stay on.

Her boyfriend, Matthew, is a triple national, holding British, Australian and Canadian citizenship. He currently studies in London, and has a job offer in the financial sector.

Asyiqin and Matthew met at the University of Glasgow, where they were both students. It was completely unexpected, and not part of her plan — when she came here as a student, she never expected to fall in love with anyone.

“I had the mentality that I would just be here in the UK to study for 4 years and then go back home and start working, and the plan was to find someone back home in Singapore after I’d finished university and started working.”

When she fell in love, however, everything got harder. If she couldn’t stay in the UK, she would have to break up with Matthew.

“I started thinking about how to stay with Matthew in my third year, when he was in his final year,” she says.

“I realised that because he didn’t have any intention to move to Singapore, if I wanted this relationship to last I would have to start looking for jobs or internships in the UK, and that was a very big issue for me, being an international student.”

The headquarters of UK Visas and Immigration, which administers the UK’s border regime. It is located in Croydon, an ethnically diverse area of London home to migrants from all over the world.

Photo by: Robert Liow

Easy come, easy go

For international students from outside the EEA, there are few easy ways to remain in the UK. The more enterprising might try for the various categories of entrepreneurship visas, which require a viable business plan and endorsement from recognised bodies. These visas, however, are few and far between; the latest Home Office statistics from September 2018 show that the majority of visas granted to non-EEA international students are either Tier 2 work visas or family visas.

Asyiqin describes her search for a Tier 2 work visa as her top priority when looking for jobs.

“When I applied for jobs or internships, the first thing I asked was ‘will you sponsor my visa?’ I told them this was my main concern, over anything else.”

Tier 2 work visas are notoriously difficult to get. From 2013 to 2017, the number of international students switching from Tier 4 (student) to Tier 2 work visas never went above 6,000; this is less than one-fifth of the number who were previously applying to stay under the post-study work visa scheme.

While international students get some concessions, the visa requirements are still extremely strict: besides the eligibility criteria for applicants, the jobs they are working in must be at or above a certain skill level, and only licenced employers may sponsor Tier 2 applicants. The guidance on sponsorship, including applying for a licence, runs to 211 pages; in practice, the cost and administrative burden of sponsorship mostly limits the practice to larger employers.

“I would never be able to apply to a small company, like a startup or SME, and I would have to apply to big corporations like J.P. Morgan or HSBC because they were the most likely to sponsor an international student on a visa,” Asyiqin says.

“The number of rejections I got when applying for internships in smaller companies was high because they told me that even if I had gotten the internship, they would not have been able to sponsor a Tier 2 visa for me.”

Keeyaa agrees. She had been looking for a job for two years with no success, as she does not want to work in the City. Her dissertation was on access to medicines, a field which has been identified by the United Nations as a “fundamental element of the right to health”, and she had wanted to work for the Wellcome Trust or in the NGO sector, more generally.

However, none of them would sponsor her visa.

She says: “Most places that I would want to work, they don’t sponsor visas. Unless you do management or finance or law or investment banking or something like that, it’s so unlikely that your visa’s going to get sponsored.”

“International students are expected to have a high-paying job, or be at a good university, to be considered worthy to be in this f***ing country. We spend so much money in this place, we pump thousands of pounds into this place, and what do we get in return?”

A sign opposing discrimination against international students, during the Deptford Town Hall occupation.

International students pay tens of thousands of pounds to study at British institutions, but Home Office rules make it hard to stay in the UK.

Photo by: Robert Liow

Til immigration do us part

For international students (and others) who can’t get a Tier 2 work visa, the UK’s family visa scheme offers another route to remaining here with their partners.

At first sight, it doesn’t look too daunting. The eligibility criteria look deceptively simple: prove that you’re in a qualifying relationship, show that the two of you have enough money, and provide evidence that you speak English. The “primary purpose” rule, which required applicants to prove the nearly impossible — that the primary purpose of their application was not to get British citizenship — was abolished in 1997, purportedly to make the process easier.

The reality, however, is much harsher. Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura, a Bosnian-American writer and lecturer, detailed her gruelling experience with the family visa application in a thread of tweets:

So, for a couple years prior to officially applying for Spousal Settlement, we read and read and read all of the UK’s guidance on this process; one that is completely convoluted and sets you up to fail from the start. We spoke to immigrantion attorney’s, read forums, etc.

— Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura (@Rrrrnessa) November 1, 2019

The money thing: they will only count the income of the sponsor; the British citizen. It doesn’t matter if the applicant has a job, funds. The sponsor has to have a job that makes over 18,600 pounds unless there are dependents in which case it raises to 22,400 or more.

— Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura (@Rrrrnessa) November 1, 2019

The vast majority of British citizen do not have that much in savings. Approximately 41% do not make the 18,600 requirement in order to meet the financia requirement. The Home Office’s response to this is: tough luck, don’t fall in love w/ a foreigner.

— Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura (@Rrrrnessa) November 1, 2019

Asyiqin is disturbed when I mention the minimum income requirement to her. “It means that you are literally regulating that only people who are middle-class and above can bring their spouse to the UK,” she says.

“It means that people who are lower income can’t bring their spouses, and must marry people who are British or already have a visa.”

Jessica has explored the family visa option as well, and doesn’t find it attractive. She also thinks the minimum income requirement is costly, and she says Gavin believes the application is an invasion of his privacy.

“They have to introduce something that can make everyone feel more included and encourage diversity in society, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. If they could introduce something more flexible, then I think everyone would be much happier with the whole situation.”

Nonetheless, some manage to overcome the initial hurdles, only to trip up at a later stage. Further down the thread, Arnesa said that UKVI often turns down genuine applicants, tearing their lives apart.

There are people who have been married for 7 years, 10 years, more even who got denied because the UKVI didn’t believe they were in a genuine relationship. There are people I spoke to who have had to be apart for yearsss, raise their children alone all because of the Home Office.

— Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura (@Rrrrnessa) November 1, 2019

And then, of course, there’s the cost of the application. Applying for a family visa within the UK costs £1,033, and applying from outside it costs £1,523. On top of that is a £400-per-year NHS surcharge (soon to be increased to £625 a year), which works out to £1,000 for a 2.5-year stay (after which the visa needs to be extended, which means going through the entire process all over again).

Add to this the legal fees and other charges that often pop up along the way, and the final sum can be eye-watering. Arnesa estimated the entire process cost her over US$50,000, or £39,000, including another application for her child.

It cost us over $10,000 just in Visa fees (application fee, IHS fees, and priority processing) not to mention all the other costs (accommodation, documents, custody). In order for my British husband to have his family back, we only had to pay the small price of over $50,000.

— Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura (@Rrrrnessa) November 1, 2019

If, at this point, you thought the system was built to exclude all but a select few people, you would be correct.

The back of a Biometric Residence Permit issued to visa-holders, showing the “No Public Funds” condition, which prevents holders from receiving almost all public benefits.

Despite being blamed for “stealing benefits”, almost all migrants who require visas are subject to this condition.

Photo by: Robert Liow

A hostile environment

While the UK’s zealously tough approach to immigration neither started nor ended with Theresa May, the introduction of what became known as the “hostile environment policy” was a serious escalation in the government’s drive to eliminate irregular migration.

The “hostile environment” referred originally to a set of policies targeting irregular migrants. From requiring landlords to check the immigration status of their tenants to charging upfront for life-saving NHS treatment unless patients could prove their right to remain, Home Office rules sought to make it almost impossible to survive in the UK without permission to be here.

However, the policies themselves are a product of a wider hostility to immigration. The most explicit expression of these policies was the Conservative Party’s repeated election pledges to keep net migration (the difference between the number of people entering and leaving the UK) in the “tens of thousands”, which have only recently been abandoned.

Consistently failing to meet their own target didn’t stop the Conservative government from trying to make it harder for people to come to the UK. The Home Office confronted asylum seekers with heavily-criticised language tests; it left highly-skilled migrants after attempts to remove them for entirely legal tax record amendments; and it may have wrongly revoked the visas of thousands of international students, for allegedly cheating in a crucial English-language test.

The government’s determination to cut migration and strengthen the UK’s borders has even proved deadly. In October, police found 39 Vietnamese people dead in the back of a refrigerated lorry. They had been smuggled in from Europe, trying to get around the UK’s border regime, and perished along the way.

Leah Cowan of gal-dem points out that deaths like these are caused, not prevented, by tough borders; faced with the impossibility of crossing the border legally, yet driven by a desire for a better life, migrants have no choice but to subject themselves to the horrors of trafficking.

Why maintain such a violent system? Maya Goodfellow, in her book Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats, traces the roots of the hostile environment to the UK’s history of (almost always racialised) migration controls.

In her telling, the hostile environment is “well aligned” with the UK’s historical approach to migration. From the 1905 Aliens Act intended to keep Jews out, to successive legal restrictions on immigrants from the “new Commonwealth” created after the fall of the British Empire, all the way to New Labour’s soft revival of the far-right slogan “British jobs for British workers” while expanding the use of immigration detention and deportation, Goodfellow argues that the UK has always sought to keep out the “undesirable”, often migrants of colour from the Global South, and grudgingly admit the minimum necessary to keep the economy afloat.

In recent times, she writes, the rhetoric has shifted away from explicitly talking about race, to ideas of “integration” and “belonging”. The government has floated or put in place citizenship classes, language lessons and other homogenising measures since the New Labour era to manage the diversity produced by immigration. Meanwhile, public discourse has painted migrants, in recent years, as both benefit-seekers and job-stealing immigrants. Policymakers see the migrant as one of “them”, out to get the British “us”, and must be defended against — if necessary, to the death.

And thus, the hostile environment extends beyond the policies targeting irregular migrants, to almost everyone who wants to stay.

Keeyaa and Andrew take a selfie in a light moment. Despite their cultural differences, they are also very much alike.

Photo by: Keeyaa Chaurey

“We are very similar people.”

It is undeniable, if concerning, that a significant section of the British public believe that when it comes to migrants, it’s “us vs them”. A 2018 study found that four out of every ten people in the UK believe that “migrants do not properly integrate”.

However, Keeyaa says her relationship with Andrew has been marked not by division, by an incredible understanding.

She says: “He’s a very kind person. We have a lot of fun together, he really makes an effort to understand my culture and where I come from. There’s always going to be a cultural gap, but he does his best to minimise it and we can talk about that kind of stuff.”

“We are very similar people,” she continues. “What we want out of life, each other and the world, are very similar. That’s what helps us bridge that cultural gap, otherwise it’s impossible.”

Asyiqin echoes this sentiment. Like Andrew, Matthew is white.

“I was looking for someone who was from the same culture as me, whose relationship with his family was similar to mine, so that we could bond well and there wouldn’t be an issue with cultural misunderstanding,” she says.

I ask Asyiqin when she first started thinking of Matthew as a long-term partner. She says: “I realised I could see myself with him in the long term when he started trying to understand the culture I’m from, my family, and the way that I understand and think of things because of the way I was raised, rather than saying ‘this is not how it’s done in the UK.'”

Even the differences, though, can’t keep people apart. While Keeyaa feels that London, in particular, can be isolating, she would stay in the UK with Andrew if given the chance.

“I love the freedom I feel here, but I also hate it here and feel very isolated. I feel constantly reminded of my position as a postcolonial subject, and a big part of my stay here has been trying to articulate the distance I’ve felt here from most places and people.”

However, her whole life, she says, is now here — and, having lived in Delhi and Gurgaon in India, she enjoys the safety.

“I don’t feel constantly threatened in the same way I do there. Everything is so convenient and easy, just walking to the shop and buying veggies or using public transport without fear. These are big things for me.”

At the same time, Keeyaa acknowledges that the relative safety of the UK comes from the wealth it’s drawn from its former colonies. She thinks it should be much easier for international students to settle permanently in the UK, especially for students from Commonwealth countries like India.

“The UK also needs to acknowledge that a lot of people who come to this country are from Commonwealth nations; they have a responsibility to us,” she says.

“They built this country on the blood of our ancestors, and they think they can treat us like this?”

Keeyaa’s Biometric Residence Permit. She has to leave the country by 23 January, 2020.

Most international students from outside the EEA only have four months to find a job after finishing their course.

Otherwise, they must leave.

Photo by: Robert Liow

Love beyond borders

For Asyiqin and Keeyaa, thankfully, love has found a way.

Asyiqin has secured a graduate scheme in the UK. While she is still unsure of whether she wants to stay in the UK for the long term, she is glad that she has the chance to work here for now.

“My plan is to work for the company for at least 5-7 years before I decide on what I want in the future, because I don’t know where I’ll be 10 years from now.”

Keeyaa, meanwhile, is moving to The Netherlands with Andrew, taking advantage of its “orientation year visa” for certain Masters students.

She is thankful that his job, in qualitative recruitment, means he doesn’t have to be in one place. “We knew that we wanted to be together, and because he can work remotely, it’s easier for him to follow me.”

Otherwise, she says, they would have to break up. “Long distance is punishing, and I wouldn’t be allowed back in the country. He would have to be going back and forth if we did visit, and it’s just too hard.”

Unfortunately for many others, however, it isn’t so simple. While Boris Johnson’s government may have reversed Theresa May’s decision to cancel the post-study work visa scheme, the new scheme won’t kick in until 2021, leaving many current international students in the lurch.

Meanwhile, it remains incredibly hard for international students to remain in the UK. Even those who do get Tier 2 work visas can only stay for a maximum of six years without going through the arduous family visa route, unless they’ve been here for a total of ten years, they’re in a shortage occupation or earn over a salary floor (which is over £6,000 more than the average salary of £29,588).

The unavoidable conclusion is this: in creating a hostile environment for irregular migrants, the UK has also, perhaps unintentionally, created a hostile environment for love.