Lose-Lose Position

[Aryan2013]

"Damian Green is boasting today of a 62% decline in student visas in the first quarter of 2012 but if you think of international students as ‘education export customers’ instead and that boast starts to look economically illiterate.

Even worse, the ‘benefits’ of reduced student immigration in terms of reduced net migration will be short-lived because the vast majority of students only stay for a few years, a short-term fall in immigration will be followed, as night follows day, but a fall in emigration which will wipe out most of the impact on net migration (although possibly not until after the 2015 election).

So far, the government has had a relatively easy ride from the likes of Migration Watch, who lobbied hard for the net migration target in the first place. But if net migration remains at current high levels this will change, and Ministers may find themselves attacked both for imposing unnecessary costs on the economy in tough times, and for failing to deliver reduced net migration: the definition of a political lose-lose position."

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/ ... never-set/