A High Court judge has dismissed a legal challenge brought by prospective international students prevented from studying in the UK by the government’s “visa brake”.
Seven students had hoped to overturn the measure imposed by the Home office in March, which suspended study visas for citizens of Afghanistan, Sudan, Cameroon and Myanmar.
They included Razan Farah, who held an offer for the MSc in applied digital health at the University of Oxford, and has ambitions to “advance digital health in Sudan”, and Rawan Ali, who had wished to study an MSc in women’s health at UCL, where she had deferred her place until 2027-28 as a result of the brake.
High Court Karen Steyn has ultimately sided with home secretary Shabana Mahmood, finding that she was not wrong to interpret Home Office data in the way she did.
“I reject the contention that the Secretary of State could not rationally derive any indication of misuse of the student visa route,” the judgment found.
