Students from Odisha, studying in Britain, on Monday urged the visiting state chief minister Naveen Patnaik, to take up with the British Government their concerns over the recent changes to post-study work visa rules.
Previously, foreign students were allowed to stay on and work for up to two years after finishing their studies, but under new rules for non-European students, introduced last month, only those with a firm job offer of a minimum £20,000 a year from a government-approved would be eligible for post-study visas.
Sounik Kajal Kumar Dash of Coventry University, who led a group of students to a meeting with Mr Patnaik, said they gave him a memorandum seeking his intervention.
“We told him that we have spent a lot of money to come here and most of us have taken loans for our studies. We will find it very difficult to pay back our loans if we are not allowed to work here,’’ he said.
Mr Dash said they also conveyed to him their concerns about the security of foreign students following the racist murder of an Indian student last year.
