Graduate visa route should remain, report finds, after home secretary raised immigration concerns
The graduate visa route should remain as it is key to funding British universities and is “not undermining the quality and integrity” of higher education, a new report has said.
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) looked at whether the visa was being abused and if it was not being “driven more by a desire for immigration” after Home Secretary James Cleverly requested an emergency review in March.
A graduate visa permits overseas students to stay in the UK for up to three years after completing a university course in the UK. Partners and children can also apply as dependents.
Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick published a report last week calling for the graduate visa to be abolished, claiming it “allowed people to come and work in the gig economy and on very low wages”.
University and industry leaders had voiced fears that the route, introduced in 2021, could be axed or curtailed if the report had been negative, with universities reporting a steep drop in international students applying over fears of restrictions being introduced.
But the committee, made up of five university professors and a Home Office representative, said they found “no evidence of widespread abuse” of the graduate route.
“The risks of abuse are relatively low due to the limited number of conditions the route imposes,” the report said.
Home Secretary James Cleverly requested the emergency review. Pic: PA
It also found the visa route is helping universities to expand the range of courses offered while making up for financial losses from domestic students and research, and is “supporting the government’s international educational strategy”.
The report said 114,000 graduate route visas were granted for applicants in 2023, with a further 30,000 for dependents.
It said students from India, Nigeria, China and Pakistan account for 70% of all graduate visas, with India accounting for more than 40%.
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MAC chair and leading labour economist Professor Brian Bell, the head of economics at King’s College London, said: “Our review recommends the graduate route should remain as it is, and is not undermining the quality and integrity of the UK’s higher education system.
“The graduate route is a key part of the offer that we make to international students to come and study in the UK.
“The fees that these students pay help universities to cover the losses they make in teaching British students and doing research.
“Without those students, many universities would need to shrink and less research would be done.
“This highlights the complex interaction between immigration policy and higher education policy.”
A government spokesman said: “We are committed to attracting the best and brightest to study at our world-class universities, whilst preventing abuse of our immigration system, which is why the home secretary commissioned an independent review of the graduate route.
“We have already taken decisive action to address unsustainable levels of migration and our plans are working, with a 24% drop in visa applications across key routes in the first three months of this year, compared with the same period last year.
“We are considering the review’s findings very closely and we will respond fully in due course.”
Graduate visa holders help fund universities, the report found. (File pic of Bristol University)
Reacting to the report, Mr Jenrick said the graduate route “should be scrapped” and the UK needs to “urgently unwind the sector’s growing dependency on foreign students” as he called the route a “backdoor for foreign students to do low-wage work…that isn’t attracting top talent”.
He said the review’s conclusions were “constrained by the narrow terms of reference deliberately set by the government” to back up their International Education Strategy that includes the “arbitrary target” of attracting 600,000 foreign students a year.
“If you order white paint, you get a whitewash,” he said.
The report found most people on the graduate route had completed postgraduate courses, with the highest growth in the visa from non-Russell Group universities’ postgraduate courses – accounting for 66% of all graduate visas.
Since 2021, the proportion of main applicants aged over 25 has increased by 15 percentage points to 54% in 2023.
It also found graduate visa holders are initially overrepresented in lower-paid work but their job prospects and wages improve over time.
Among the first cohort of graduate visa holders, about half moved to skilled worker visas, primarily into skilled roles.
Crypto industry executives have urged the US Securities and Exchange Commission to shift its thinking on blockchain privacy tools, pitching that there are legitimate applications for them outside of criminal use.
The SEC hosted crypto and finance executives for a discussion and panel on financial surveillance and privacy on Monday, the agency’s sixth crypto-focused roundtable this year, as it seeks to overhaul its approach to crypto.
StarkWare general counsel Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, who participated in a panel discussion, told Cointelegraph after the event that a major takeaway was that there shouldn’t be an assumption that those using and creating privacy tools are “overwhelmed by wrongdoers.”
“Why is the assumption that an individual needs to affirmatively prove that they are compliant or they’re using the tool for good?”
“As opposed to it being the other way around, where the assumption is that this individual is using the tool for good until there is some sort of indication that they’re using it for bad,” she said.
Kirkpatrick Bos added that “of course, wrongdoers were using, or are using those tools, but there needs to be a balance.”
During the roundtable, Wayne Chang, the founder and CEO of the credential management company SpruceID, said some percentage of users of stablecoins, a crypto tool that is slowly becoming mainstream, will want privacy.
“There are a ton of stablecoins that aren’t onchain yet that would come onchain if there is privacy,” he said. “We’re going to see an increase in demand for privacy-preserving blockchains.”
“My hope is that regulators continue to engage industry, and we can have those discussions on how to keep privacy for folks while also having tools that are useful,” Chang said.
Customer checks are becoming outdated
Kirkpatrick Bos said a discussion on Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) measures focused on whether current rules are sufficient in the age of artificial intelligence.
“The question arose and was debated on the panel, well, what is necessary for Anti-Money Laundering?” she said. “Now we have AI. It’s made manual, AML and KYC antiquated. How do we solve for that?”
“There was a sense that the current system of AML and KYC is antiquated, it’s problematic, it’s ineffective,” she added. “But there needs to be some sort of check when it’s a centralized entity facilitating flows of money to ensure that they’re not helping wrongdoers.”
Many financial institutions request a picture of a user’s driver’s license for its KYC checks, which Kirkpatrick Bos said was “absurd, because an individual can go on the internet and develop a fake driver’s license in a matter of seconds.”
“So the question is, can cryptography-based tools improve that and make it harder for bad guys to do that? But can they also do that and make it harder for bad guys while preserving an individual’s privacy and not revealing data like an address, where it is not necessary to vet the legality of the funds?” she added.
Some projects have begun to test crypto-based solutions for proving identity while claiming to preserve privacy, such as Sam Altman’s World, which gives users a cryptographic key they can use to prove they’re human.
SEC’s Atkins warns of potential for crypto mass surveillance
SEC chair Paul Atkins had given opening remarks at the roundtable, warning that if “pushed in the wrong direction, crypto could become the most powerful financial surveillance architecture ever invented.”
“If the instinct of the government is to treat every wallet like a broker, every piece of software as an exchange, every transaction as a reportable event, and every protocol as a convenient surveillance node, then the government will transform this ecosystem into a financial panopticon,” he added.
Related: SEC ’eased up on’ 60% of crypto enforcement cases under Trump: Report
Atkins said that crypto allows for “privacy-preserving tools that the analog world could not provide,” which some institutions depend on to build positions or test strategies without “instantly telegraphing that activity to competitors.”
He added that some of the technology could balance the government’s interest in deterring security threats and the public’s privacy.
“But to best strike this balance, we must make certain that Americans can use these tools without immediately falling under suspicion.”
Magazine: 2026 is the year of pragmatic privacy in crypto — Canton, Zcash and more
US President Donald Trump says he will review the case of convicted Samourai Wallet developer Keonne Rodriguez, hinting he will explore the possibility of a pardon.
Samourai Wallet co-founders Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill were sentenced on Nov. 19 to five and four years in prison on charges stemming from their involvement in the crypto mixing protocol.
“I’ve heard about it, I’ll look at it,” Trump said when asked about the case at a press conference about the Mexican border at the White House on Monday.
“Okay, let’s take a look at it. You know, you’ll have to tell me. I don’t know anything about it, but we’ll take a look,” he added.
Privacy advocates and crypto users have long been advocating for Rodriguez and Hill, along with Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm, arguing they shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of third parties using their software.
Samourai co-founder says “noise is working”
Rodriguez, who is due to start his time behind bars this week, said in an X post on Monday that the “continued noise” from supporters is working. “Thank you to everyone pushing Donald Trump to pardon Bill and me. Let’s get this over the line.”
In an interview with Bitcoin educator Natalie Brunell on Friday, Rodriguez said he thought there was a chance of receiving a pardon if the case were presented to Trump and the top officials in the administration.
I appreciate @keonne taking some tough questions on the Samourai Wallet case. No topic was off limits.
Keonne is getting ready to report to prison on December 19th but there is an active movement to #PardonSamourai, and Keonne hopes President Trump hears his story.
If you care… pic.twitter.com/iXg3BXr8iq
— Natalie Brunell ⚡️ (@natbrunell) December 12, 2025
“Because President Trump has been touched by a DOJ that was weaponized against him, I think when he sees the facts laid out on the table, he will know exactly what’s going on,” Rodriguez said.
Conventional appeal is unlikely
Rodriguez also said it’s his understanding he waived his right to appeal the sentence when he took the plea deal, adding that he’s not “100% on that, but my understanding is appeal is pretty unlikely.”
Rodriguez and Hill initially pleaded not guilty but then agreed to plead guilty to one charge of operating an illegal money transmitter in July.
They faced at least 25 years in prison on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, which carries a sentence of up to five years.
Up until the sentencing hearing, Rodriguez said he regretted pleading guilty but feared the judge wouldn’t allow key evidence to be used in his defense, such as receiving legal advice before launching Samourai Wallet.
Related: After Samourai, DOJ’s money-transmitter theory now looms over crypto mixers
After crunching the numbers, he also found a “conviction means 25 years, even if you appeal, that you’re sitting in prison for five years waiting for your appeal, your appeal is going to cost you another $7 million on top of the four and a half million you’ve already spent to get to this point. So the numbers just didn’t make any sense.”
Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, Ross Ulbricht
Since taking office, Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao in October, after he pleaded guilty in November 2023 to failing to maintain an effective Anti–Money Laundering program at Binance, in violation of the Bank Secrecy Act.
Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the defunct darknet marketplace the Silk Road, was also granted a presidential pardon on his life sentence in January.
Magazine: Do Kwon sentenced to 15 years, Bitcoin’s ‘choppy dance’: Hodler’s Digest, Dec. 7 – 13
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