AF Education
专属博客 Liam Carrigan
英国在尝试关闭留学生的大门吗？
Raising the Drawbridge: Is the UK Closing its Doors to International Students?
政治很少是一个愉快的话题。拥有不同的意见和想法是人类特有的，也是我们最大的冲突和痛苦的来源。
Politics is seldom a pleasant subject. Different opinions and different ideas are simultaneously what makes us unique as human beings but is also our single greatest source of conflict and anguish.
不管怎样，为免影响你的判断，我觉得还是应该在我进入下一步论述之前阐述一下我的立场。
Anyway, without getting too existential about the whole thing, I feel it is important to set out my own position on the issues at hand today prior to going into further detail.
我一直都是一个坚定的国际主义者。我相信会见来自不同文化国家和文化背景的人、与人友好、跟他们一起工作，能大大地丰富我的经验。没有人独断专行，而且最棒是我在办公室里总会被解决问题的不同方法启发我的思想。
I am and always have been a staunch internationalist. I believe that meeting, befriending and working alongside people from different countries and different cultural backgrounds is an enriching experience for all concerned. Nobody has the monopoly on good ideas, and it’s always enlightening to hear different perspectives on how to solve a particular problem in the workplace.
可惜的是，新一届的英国首相特雷莎·梅和我对国际关系的积极看法却大相径庭。
Sadly, it would seem that the UK’s new Prime Minister Theresa May does not share my optimistic view of foreign relations.
自从去年夏天英国通过公投脱离欧盟之后，梅太太领导的右翼政府针对外国移民的政策就变得越来越激进，凡事都以英国人优先。
Since coming to power last summer on the back of the UK’s self-flagellating vote to leave the European Union, Mrs. May’s right-wing government has invoked increasingly aggressive anti-foreigner rhetoric and has made looking after Britain first her top priority.
对于中国学生来说，一个不好的结果就是英国对留学生的政策可能又要改变了，而且显然不是变得更宽松。
An unfortunate side-effect of this where Chinese students are concerned is that it looks like conditions for foreign students in the UK may change, and certainly not for the better.
在不承认外国学生对英国经济做出的巨大财政贡献的情况下，政府继续奉行的一系列政策，正日益使英国学术界陷入尴尬的境地。
Without acknowledging the massive financial contribution that foreign students make to the UK economy, the government continues to pursue a line of policy that is becoming increasingly a source of huge embarrassment to the UK’s academic community.
值得赞扬的是，许多英国的顶尖学术机构如伦敦政治经济学院以及伦敦大学学院迅速地谴责了英国政府这种对外强硬的政策。
To their credit, many of the UK’s top academic institutions such as London School of Economics and University College London have been quick to condemn the more jingoistic elements of the government’s proposals.
事实上受学术界的很大影响，英国政府迫使英国企业列出一共有多少外国人为其供职的政策很快便失败了。显然现在的政府对欧洲历史并不够了解。在上世纪30年代，就曾有一位欧洲领导人尝试让少数民族披露他们的人口数字，结果也未能如愿。
In fact it was due in no small part to this concerted intervention by academia, that the government’s plan to force companies to list how many foreigners they have working for them was quickly torpedoed. Clearly this government hasn’t read much European history. I believe there was another European leader, back in the 1930s who tried to force minorities to reveal their numbers, and that didn’t end well either for the minority in question, or, ultimately, for him.
回到正题，现时最大的问题是英国政府对中国留学生的政策是双重的打击。
Anyway, back on topic. The biggest potential problems posed by the UK government’s plans to Chinese students are two-fold.
一方面，他们计划让外国留学生在英国毕业之后更难以获得签证，尽管让高技术人员成为劳动力有很明显的好处。另一方面他们又旨在约束留学生只在最高级的精英学校学习。
On one hand, they are planning to make it far more difficult to obtain a visa to continue working in the UK after graduation, despite the obvious benefits of having highly skilled people entering the workforce. Additionally, they are planning to restrict the institutions at which foreign students can study to only the highest level, elite schools.
事实上，如果你看一些相关的评论，对中国学生的担心不要太多。
Actually though, once you pick your way through all the rhetoric, there really isn’t too much here to be worried about for Chinese students.
几乎所有来自中国的留学生都想进入英国的精英学校。并且，相比起其他国家的留学生，毕业之后仍希望留在英国的中国学生比例也相当低。
Almost all of those from China who apply to study in the UK are only interested in the elite schools anyway. Also, when compared to other countries the rates of Chinese students who wish to stay on and settle in the UK post graduation are pretty low.
因此，事实上，如果英国政府真的成功推行了这个政策，去英国留学的中国学生很有可能比以前更多，而代价就是来自其他欧盟国家的学生则越来越不欢迎脱欧的英国了。
So, in actuality, if the UK government is successful in pushing forward this agenda, chances are we may actually see more Chinese students going to the UK than before, at the expense of students from other EU nations who, in the face of Brexit are being made to feel increasingly unwelcome.
最终，我真的没看到现状有很大的变化。
Ultimately though, I really don’t see things changing much from the current status quo.
英国左翼和右翼政党还有越来越高涨的舆论批判英国政府在没有充分的计划，就做了离开欧盟的错误决定。英国是否真的会脱欧仍备受质疑，在金融和社会方面的明显影响之下，不仅留学生，整个社会关系都会受到影响。
There is a growing groundswell of opinion from both the left and right of UK politics that the government has made a massive miscalculation in choosing to leave the EU without sufficient planning. Many are questioning now whether Brexit will even happen at all, given the obvious financial and social penalties, not just to students but to international relations as a whole.
另外，值得注意的是，虽然移民政策由英国国会制定，但至少苏格兰和北爱尔兰还有自主拟定教育政策的权利。这意味着即使英格兰对中国学生越有敌对态度，像爱丁堡、圣安德鲁斯、格拉斯哥和贝尔法斯特等地仍会一如既往地欢迎中国学生。而且苏格兰和北爱尔兰的绝大部分人口都投票留在欧盟，因此任凭英格兰再怎么闹独立和保持中立都不见得会左右大局。
On another note, it is also worth remembering that although immigration policy remains the preserve of the UK parliament, education is, at least in the context of Scotland and Northern Ireland, a devolved power. This means that even if England does somehow become more hostile to Chinese students, the likes of Edinburgh, St Andrew’s, Glasgow and Belfast will continue to show them the same warm welcome they always have. With both Scotland and Northern Ireland also voting overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, the chances of them remaining in an increasingly unbalanced United Kingdom with an isolationist England and an indifferent Wales is becoming more and more unlikely.
所以，总的来说，在短期和中期来说，对于想要在英国学习的学生来说没什么是会变化的，就算长远来说会有什么变化，如果它们真的会发生，对来英国留学的中国学生的影响也是微不足道的。
So, in conclusion, nothing is going to change at all for Chinese students looking to study in the UK in the short to medium term, and even the proposed long term changes, if they are ever actually allowed to happen, will have an, at worst, negligible impact on students coming into the UK from China.
所以，继续保持你到牛津、剑桥、圣安德鲁斯的梦想吧，他们和以前一样，依然在同一个地方等着你！
So, keep dreaming of that place in Oxford, Cambridge or St. Andrews, it’s still just as close today as it ever was!
