Coaching on Zoom, “fake” documents to secure a visa and “don’t panic” advice during questions at immigration – this is the story of one family’s attempt to get to the UK.

Sky News follows the journey of a family who came from India on student and dependent visas – obtained they say from “agents” using false documents – but have now spent two years waiting for a decision on their leave to remain.

“110% fake,” says Sami. “The agent put the money in the account – which is fake. It’s nothing. But he creates the document like I have the money.”

Sami – not his real name – is explaining how he came to the UK with his wife and two young children on student and dependent visas which he says were obtained by agents – or criminal gangs – in India using fake bank statements.

It is a rare insight into claims of abuse of Britain’s immigration system.

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How they got here

Sami says the family needed to show they could support themselves financially in the UK – which they couldn’t.

He says the agents created fake bank documents purporting to show the family had a lump sum of £10,000 in one bank account and a loan of nearly £25,000 in a second account – to cover living expenses in the UK. None of this was true.

He says he paid agents in India nearly all his life savings – more than £20,000 – to arrange a place on a master’s course for his wife.

“I sell my house, then secondly I sell my motorbike – Yamaha – thirdly I sell my wife’s whole gold – earrings, the chain, and some rings,” Sami tells us.

They arrived in early 2023 but when his wife failed to attend the university, they were sent a letter by the Home Office telling them their visas had been cancelled, and they would have to leave the UK by October that year.

Since then, they have been in a cycle of rejections and reapplying for leave to remain, and their case remains unresolved.

A poor man from India, Sami says it was always his dream to live in the UK. So he began researching how to get here.

“UK is my dream country. So that’s why I was choosing the UK. Cricket – Ashes, like England and Australia. My favourite cricketer and bowler, Andrew Flintoff. Greenery, lots of people moving in London. London, then, I decided this is a good place to move.”

Training sessions

When they found the agents to arrange their passage to Britain, Sami says his wife was even given coaching via Zoom while still in India ahead of any potentially difficult questions by UK immigration officials at Heathrow.

In the videos, Sami’s wife repeats her lines again and again.

“Why UK?” asks the woman doing the training. “UK is a multicultural country,” says Sami’s wife.

At another coaching session – this time in the agent’s office, and filmed by Sami – she rehearses: “My hobbies are gardening, reading, newspaper, cooking, baking etc.”

The agents – or criminal gangs – also provided a crib sheet of written tips titled “don’t get panic at the time of immigration”. It contains handwritten notes suggesting things to say about university courses.

But having been granted visas to come to the UK, Sami admits it was never their intention that his wife would study.

Ever since our first meeting, Sami has always clung on to the hope that with two young children – one needing medical treatment – the Home Office is unlikely to send them back to India.

“There is a condition that if your kids are with you, they are not going to detain or deport you. Maybe they give you a chance,” he says.

“My application is still in the Home Office. The government will decide.”

Sami says he is happy they came to the UK – but when we first met four months ago, he and his family were living in one room in a house shared by 13 people.

He isn’t sure of the exact number of people living in the house – or their legal status – but signals: “Upstairs – the bachelors.”

Sami’s wife is cooking in what is basically a cupboard.

“This is a small single room,” he says. “I sleep on the floor, My daughter, and my son, they sleep on the bed.”

Relying on food banks

Subsequently, social services became involved in their case – declaring them destitute because of their immigration status and have provided them with new accommodation.

Sami has been using a food bank run by Asma Haq of the Marks Gate Relief Project.

She says: “As far as they’re concerned they haven’t done anything wrong. But the reality only hits them when they are left penniless.

“They have no accommodation, they don’t know where to go, and the agent stops making contact with them. That’s when they come to food banks like ourselves.”

‘There needs to be a tightened leash’

But Asma tells us she believes Sami is not an isolated case – she believes one in 10 of the people who use the food bank have come to the country illegally or have over-stayed legal visas.

“I just feel like the Home Office’s policies have been quite relaxed and there needs to be a tightened leash. It’s just visas that have been given left, right and centre so easily and so quickly,” she says.

“And the follow-up on the people who have entered into the country on those visas has been poor. Sometimes – I know because I deal with clients – some of them, as far as the Home Office is concerned, they’ve arrived legally.

“But then the paperwork they’ve supplied to the Home Office is actually fake paperwork, fake documentation that they’ve got processed back home.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Since we have not been supplied with any identifying information in relation to this case, we are not in a position to comment on the claims made.

“However, stringent systems are in place to identify and prevent fraudulent student visa applications, and we will continue to take tough action against companies and agents who are seeking to abuse, exploit or defraud international students.”

In the few short years since Brexit, numerous rule changes have impacted the number and type of students coming to the UK.

In January 2023, Sami and his two children arrived from India as dependents of his wife, who was accepted to study on a master’s course in London.

They were among the 657,000 people granted student and dependant visas in the year to June 2023, the highest number in figures collected since 2006.

Nearly 200,000 of those – 28% of the total – were from India, making it the top nationality, followed by Nigeria and China. Together, these three nationalities accounted for two thirds of all student visas granted.

Sami – which is not his real name – claims that agents in India helped to create fake financial documents to secure the family’s visa approval, and that these were used in their application to the Home Office.

Sami also says his wife never intended to study.

While many of the students who arrive in the UK have legitimate documentation, it is impossible to know exactly how many do not – the Home Office collects figures on detected cases but does not publish them, while Sami’s case was allegedly undetected.

The number of student visas granted has since fallen by a third from its 2023 peak, to 436,000 in the latest figures for the year ending June 2025, though remains higher than the average 305,000 per year from 2012 to 2021.

In 2023, there were 154,000 visas granted for the dependents of students, for example partners and children – more than one dependant for every three main student visas granted. By 2025, the number of had fallen to 18,000.

This was largely driven by rule changes introduced by the Conservatives in January 2024, limiting students’ ability to bring dependents with them to the UK – meaning this option would now be closed to Sami’s family.

Be in the audience for our immigration debate.

New rules to prevent visa switching

Sami says he paid all his savings to agents in India who told him that he and his wife would easily be able to switch their visas when they arrived and pursue their dream of settling in the UK.

Indeed, from around 2019, the practice of visa switching became increasingly common with students more likely to move to a work or other visa either before their course finished or at the end of their studies. They were also more likely to stay in the UK for longer.

A quarter of international students who first came to study in 2019 were still in the UK five years later in 2024 with valid leave to remain – the highest proportion since the Home Office began keeping records in 2008.

Similarly, students who arrived in 2021 were far more likely to remain in the UK at the end of three years than their predecessors, increasing from around 34% from 2011 to 2018, to 59% by 2021.

And those who were still in the UK after three years were for the first time more likely to be working than still studying.

The Home Office says the increase can be explained by a larger number of students at master’s level transitioning to the graduate and other work routes.

Attempts by Sami and his family to switch visa have so far been unsuccessful, as their original visas were cancelled when his wife failed to register on her master’s course.

Rules brought in by Rishi Sunak’s government from July 2023 now prevent people from arriving on student visas switching to work ones before completing their studies.

Universities supported closing this “loophole”, says Jamie Arrowsmith, director of Universities UK International, as it was “not in the university’s interest if individuals come on a study visa and then leave their courses after three months”.

The government now plans to reduce the time that graduates can stay on to work after their studies from two years to 18 months.

Stricter rules are also in place from this month around visa refusal and course completion rates that universities must meet, with penalties for universities and sponsors that fail to meet targets.

“Effectively, the government is tightening regulation that already exists. That will be challenging for universities, and it will take time, but ultimately those changes are going to be implemented, and we’ve been working closely with government,” Mr Arrowsmith told Sky News.

Asylum claims

Sami and his family have applied for asylum and are currently awaiting a decision on their case, in the hope of securing valid leave to remain in the UK.

Sami has told us he wants to be able to work in the UK, but as he is currently without a valid visa or asylum, he’s not legally allowed to.

The family were assessed as destitute by social services and received support from council and charities.

The number of asylum claims from people who originally arrived on student visas has increased more than those on other visa types in recent years, with 14,800 asylum claims in the year ending June 2025, though down from a peak of 16,500 in the year to June 2023.

For every 50 student visas granted between 2021 and 2025, one person applied for asylum who had originally held a student visa.

There isn’t data available on the proportion of those claims that were successful.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said she wants to “clamp down” on people claiming asylum at the end of their study visa, and the government is actively contacting international students to warn them not to overstay their visa.

In the year to June 2025, 10,441 people were returned voluntarily, or forcibly removed, who had previously applied for asylum, though not all of those would have applied for asylum within that year.

Universities rely on international fees

Fee income from international students has been an important part of universities’ funding models since 2018/19, says Mr Arrowsmith, as successive governments have chosen not to increase student funding in line with inflation.

This has meant that universities have had to make up the shortfall in other ways, which has been mostly through international student fee income.

Foreign students’ fees contributed 23% of universities total income in 2023/24, at £12.1bn, increasing from 16% of university income in 2018/19.

“We have seen a decline in the last two years of the number of international students coming to the UK, and that does pose challenges for finances of UK universities,” Mr Arrowsmith said.

“Ultimately what we need is a more sustainable funding settlement for our universities”.

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The leader of Britain’s trade unions has urged Labour to fight Reform UK by hitting millionaires, banks and gambling with higher taxes.

Paul Nowak, general secretary of the TUC, has published an opinion poll of 5,000 adults.

He says the results suggest a significant number of Labour voters are leaning to Reform.

His call comes ahead of the TUC’s annual conference starting in Brighton this weekend, when the high-tax policy is expected to be overwhelmingly approved.

“I’ve seen first-hand the experience of the wealth tax, the solidarity tax in Spain and it raised billions of euros,” Mr Nowak said in a pre-conference interview with Sky News.

“It didn’t lead to an exodus of millionaires or wealthy people from Spain and Spain now has one of the fastest growing economies in the OECD. So I think it’s a good example of a wealth tax in action.

“But it’s not the only option the government has. They could equalise capital gains tax with income tax.

“They could have a windfall tax on the banks and the financial institutions who have got record profits.

“And they could tax the gambling industry much more fairly.”

He continued: “The big four banks between them had profits of nearly £46bn last year alone, mainly because we’re in a high interest rates environment.

“Under the previous Conservative government, when the energy companies had huge windfall profits, they moved to a windfall tax, extended by Labour.

“We think they should take a similar approach in banking and other sectors where we may see those windfall profits.”

Labour voters ‘leaning to Reform’

The debate over a wealth tax was triggered by a call by former Labour leader Lord Kinnock, in an interview on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips on Sky News on 6 July, for a 2% levy on people with assets of more than £10m.

Weeks later, it was backed by Labour’s former shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, on Sky News political editor Beth Rigby‘s Electoral Dysfunction podcast, but rejected by Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Ms Reeves will deliver the budget on 26 November.

On the TUC’s poll, carried out on 15-19 August, Mr Nowak said 74% of 2024 Labour voters who are now “leaning to Reform” backed wealth, gambling, and bank taxes.

This was also true for 84% of 2024 Conservative to Labour switchers.

Read more:
No room for Treasury complacency
Dodds says she ‘hopes’ Reeves considering wealth tax

‘A clear dividing line’

“We polled the public on a 2% wealth tax on those with assets of more than £10m,” Mr Nowak said. “Most people would recognise, if you’ve got £10m in assets, you could probably afford to pay a little bit more in tax.

“This is a clear dividing line between the government and Reform, showing you are on the side of working people.

“We know some [union] members voted for Reform at the last general election and clearly Reform was the biggest party at the local elections and union members would have been among those who cast their vote for Reform.

“My job isn’t to tell trade union members which way they should vote or not. What we want to do is expose the gap between what Nigel Farage says and what he does.

“He says he stands up for working people and then votes against rights for millions of working people when it’s introduced in parliament.

“He says he stands up for British industry and supports Donald Trump and his destructive tariffs. And he talks about tax cuts for the rich when we know that we need those with the broader shoulders to pay their fair share.”