UK’s Indo-Pacific Minister Seema Malhotra has defended her government’s immigration proposals during a visit to India, while expressing concern about a rise in foreign students seeking asylum at the end of their studies.

Under the new plans, some migrants could have to wait up to 20 years before they can settle permanently in the UK and the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain will be extended from five to 10 years.

The proposals will apply to an estimated 2.6 million people who arrived in the country since 2021. They have drawn criticism from some quarters, including a few Labour MPs, even though the Conservatives gave the measures a cautious welcome.

The reforms are “in line with what countries around the world do” to stop the abuse of their immigration systems, Malhotra told the BBC in the southern Indian city of Chennai, adding that there was a “very strong message we also send, which is that we welcome those coming legally”.

According to Malhotra some16,000 international students from across the world had applied for asylum in the UK last year after completing their courses, which she said was evidence of abuse of legal migration routes.

A further 14,800 students sought asylum this year to June 2025, latest Home Office figures show. It is unclear how many of them are Indian nationals.

“We’ve seen visa abuse in the case of legal routes, where people have gone legally and then sought to overstay when their visas weren’t extended,” Malhotra said.

“If you see that level of abuse, it undermines your immigration system. It undermines public confidence, and the fairness and control people expect.”

India remains one of the UK’s biggest sources of international students, but demand is cooling.

The number of Indian students heading to the UK has fallen 11% from last year as tougher immigration rules kick in. This has triggered concern among UK universities which rely on foreign students and are already under financial strain.

According to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, India was the top country of origin for foreign students in the UK in 2023-2024, making up 25% of arrivals. China followed at 23% while Nigeria made up 8%.

Malhotra said while Britain still “very much welcomes” Indian students, her government was working with universities to ensure they are genuine foreign students.

She said the recently concluded free trade agreement (FTA) between the UK and India had also encouraged UK universities to open local campuses in India, with Liverpool University announcing it will open a campus in Bengaluru city in 2026 last week.

The FTA, signed in July after years of negotiations, is forecast to boost the UK’s GDP by £4.8bn annually and expand bilateral trade between the two countries by £25.5bn.

As part of the education chapter in the deal, nine UK universities have been cleared to set up campuses across India.

However, these wider trade ambitions face a domestic political climate that has hardened around migration.

During a visit to India in October, Sir Keir Starmer said the UK would not relax visa rules for Indian nationals despite Delhi’s long-standing push for easier mobility in return for trade concessions.

Malhotra rejected the idea that Britain wants deeper trade while shutting the door to Indian professionals, citing the nearly half-a-million visas granted to Indian nationals last year across work, study and visitor categories.

The UK is moving towards a “contribution-based” immigration system, where settlement and long-term stay depend on a person’s economic contribution rather than the length of time they have lived in the country, Malhotra said.

The government’s proposal to overhaul the UK’s immigration system is part of a broader attempt to show firmer control over borders, but has drawn criticism from some Labour MPs and members of the House of Lords, particularly over their potential impact on international recruitment in sectors like healthcare and social care.

While the reforms are still under consultation, Malhotra, when asked about settlement routes for migrant professionals like nurses and care workers said, “we are expanding routes for those with skills in areas that the UK requires”.

A survey by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) had warned that up to 50,000 nurses could leave the UK if the government went ahead with its immigration proposals.

The report notes that the UK now has more than 200,000 internationally educated nursing staff, making up around 25% of the country’s total nursing workforce of 794,000.

A significant number of these nurses and care workers are from India. Several investigations, including by the BBC, have shown that many of them have fallen prey to cross-border visa scams and lost hundreds of thousands of pounds.

But Malhotra said the UK was ramping up efforts to protect people from such exploitation and working with law enforcement agencies of countries like India to share intelligence and crack down on such gangs.

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Fletcher fought for greater recognition of one of the deadliest incidents of race violence in US history.

Viola Ford Fletcher, one of the last survivors of Oklahoma’s 1921 Tulsa Massacre, has died at age 111.

Despite her advanced age, Fletcher was a well-known activist thanks to her work trying to win justice for the victims of one of the worst episodes of racial violence in United States history.

“Today, our city mourns the loss of Mother Viola Fletcher. She was a survivor of one of the darkest chapters in our city’s history and endured more than anyone should,” Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols wrote in a Facebook post. “Mother Fletcher carried 111 years of truth, resilience, and grace and was a reminder of how far we’ve come and how far we must still go.”

Fletcher was seven years old at the time of the Tulsa Massacre in Oklahoma, a state living under the Jim Crow system that segregated the US South from the end of the 1800s until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

The massacre began on May 31, 1921, when police arrested 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a Black shoeshiner, over allegations that he had assaulted a white woman, according to a report by the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

As a survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Viola Ford Fletcher bravely shared her story so that we’d never forget this painful part of our history. Michelle and I are grateful for her lifelong work to advance civil rights, and send our love to her family. https://t.co/km7RXnDKcW

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 25, 2025

When a group of white men gathered at the courthouse calling for Rowland to be lynched, a group of Black men from a nearby community responded and tried to protect him before “all hell broke out”, the report said.

Over the next two days, vigilante groups and law enforcement looted and burned down 35 blocks of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, which was then home to one of the wealthiest Black communities in the US. The Bureau of Labour Statistics in 2024 estimated that the scale of the damage was around $32.2m when adjusted for inflation.

As many as 300 residents of Tulsa were killed and another 700 injured, the report said, although the final tally is unknown because many were buried in unmarked graves.

Survivors like Fletcher and her family were forced to leave the area. Left destitute, her family became sharecroppers, a form of subsistence work where farmers give over almost all their harvest to their landlord.

Rowland was never charged, after Sarah Page, the lift operator he was accused of assaulting, said that she did not want to prosecute the case.

Despite the scale of devastation, the Tulsa Massacre received limited national attention until Oklahoma state launched an investigative commission in 1997. Efforts to win compensation for victims in 2001, however, failed due to the statute of limitations.

On the centennial anniversary of the massacre, Fletcher testified before the US Congress in 2021 about her experiences and co-authored a memoir, Don’t Let Them Bury My Story, with her grandson in 2023.

Fletcher was mourned by US leaders like former President Barack Obama.

“As a survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Viola Ford Fletcher bravely shared her story so that we’d never forget this painful part of our history. Michelle and I are grateful for her lifelong work to advance civil rights, and send our love to her family,” Obama posted on X.