Green MP calls for rule changes to help Afghan Chevening scholars

In an interview on Wednesday with the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, MP and former Green party leader Caroline Lucas called for rule changes to protect Afghan Chevening scholars facing threats in the UK.

The Chevening Scholarship is funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and permits foreign students with leadership qualities to study at universities in the United Kingdom.

She complained that: “Home Office rules have very strict rules on eligibility about who is considered as immediate family. If they are not spouses and children under the age of 18, then it is an awful lot harder to get them out of the country”.

She went on “What I am calling for is for the rules of family reunion to change to allow Chevening Scholars to bring dependent siblings and parents with them. They are at risk, precisely because they have the identification of scholars with this scheme, and their families need the necessary visas and paperwork so they can leave now”.

She said that scholars are at risk because of their identification with the Chevening scheme “And if there was ever a case to look again at the rules on family reunion, this absolutely has to be it, and the government needs to act with urgency because lives are on the risk every day”.

She added that the the Home Office must “honour their commitments to all Chevening scholars” including former ones also at risk. She said that “a number of them [ex-scholars] wrote an open letter to the government in September saying their emails weren’t being answered, that they weren’t getting any kind of support from the government at that time.”

She also criticised the speed of the UK’s Afghan resettlement scheme, saying that “the government has to step up, they keep telling us to wait for the opening of the Afghan citizen resettlement scheme. That was promised on 18th August, six weeks ago, it is completely unacceptable that it has taken so long to get this scheme up and running”.

She added that: “Every day is a matter of life and death” for those seeking to flee Afghanistan.