The UK economy has entered a recession weeks after initiating an immigration policy that hamstrings Nigerians and others seeking to move into that country to obtain a visa.

Since Brexit, the UK’s reliance on overseas workers has increased.

The British Broadcasting Corporation reports cited people spending less, doctors’ strikes and a fall in school attendance as having dragged the UK into recession at the end of last year.

The Office for National Statistics reported that the gross domestic product, a key indicator of the UK government’s economic growth, decreased by 0.3 per cent from October to December. 

The UK economy also contracted between July and September.

The ONS reported that the economy was unchanged in 2023, even though all major sectors contracted in the fourth quarter, with manufacturing, construction, and wholesale being the largest growth inhibitors. 

On January 4, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak outlined his top five priorities in a speech, including halving inflation this year to ease the cost of living and give people financial security, growing the economy, creating better-paid jobs and “opportunity right across the country and making sure our national debt is falling so that we can secure the future of public services.”

The news of the recession came against the backdrop of the UK government’s new student visa policy, which limits the provision permitting dependents for students intending to study in the UK.

In January of this year, the United Kingdom’s Home Office announced the implementation of a policy preventing Nigerian and other international students from bringing dependants into the country via study visas.

Under the new policy, which went into effect on January 1, 2024, families will not be eligible for a visa if their wards are coming to the UK for a regular course or a bachelor’s or master’s degree and want to study for longer than six months.

This rule will also apply to those moving forward from the student visa to the graduate (PSW) visa. 

The British government set a minimum annual salary for foreign workers to be eligible for a skilled worker visa at £38,700 from £26,200. The figure is more than the median average salary of a full-time worker in Britain. The policy will also restrict dependents’ ability to get a visa into the UK. 

Healthcare workers would no longer be able to bring their family members. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s administration believed this would cut immigration into the UK by 300,000 per year. 

The Guardian UK had reported how vice-chancellors in the UK feared that billions of pounds could be lost because of new restrictions on international students, the result of internal government battles over immigration policy.