Bring on the Common Good

The BBC's Sports Editor came to the UK from India as a student in 1969.
The British High Commissioner in New Delhi has proudly issued 44,000 student visas this year. There was no mention on BBC Radio 4's The New Art of Diplomacy (15 December) about any of them returning home after completing their studies.
It is because the UK is such an attractive destination (for which history plays a major part) that, regardless of whether native British men can live and work abroad through marriage, it is necessary for the UK to close that particular loophole by which foreign and Commonwealth men can take up permanent residence in the UK.
The burning issue of equality is trumped by relativism with reference to the common good.

50 Years On

On 7 December 1959 I arrived in Kobe, Japan, for the first time: with a tourist visa.
If you wanted to change your visa status you couldn't do it in Japan - you had to leave the country and apply for it outside Japan - usually Hong Kong or the Republic of Korea.
Such is not the case with the UK.
Foreigners (from outside the EU) who arrive with tourist, student, work (there are more than 80 different categories, according to former Home Secretary David Blunkett), other, or no visa are legally able to continue to live in the UK after their time limit.
The Government's Migration Advisory Committee has (belatedly! - 4 December 2009) recommended that the concession that enables foreign students with low qualifications to stay on and work, be ended.
Even if the Government does that, these students will still be able to employ the well-worn ruse that everyone knows - marriage.