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| Foreign students good for labour market |
2/21/2007 |
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21 February 2007
AMSTERDAM – The Netherlands should do more to keep foreign students on its labour market. Relaxed immigration regulations for students from outside the EU are needed for this.
This is contained in a report published by the Advisory Committee on Alien Affairs (ACVZ) on Tuesday.
The committee proposes allowing students from outside the EU a year to look for a job after completing their study in the Netherlands. Current regulations give them only three months after graduation to find work.
The salary requirements for these students must also be relaxed, said the ACVZ. Current legislation groups these students along with other foreign knowledge workers and stipulates that students will only be granted a residence permit if they receive a starting salary of 34,000 euro gross annually.
The regulations for foreign knowledge workers assume that they are in a more advanced stage in their career however. That is why the advisory committee suggested a minimum salary requirement of 26,000 euro for graduates of universities of applied science (HBOs) and 31,000 euro for foreign students who have completed other (academic) university programmes (WO). This figures are more in line with the average starting salaries for graduates of these higher education programmes.
At the moment some 3.5 percent of students in higher education in the Netherlands come from outside the EU. A particularly large number of students comes from China, but there are also many from Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Turkey.
The ACVZ concluded that the Netherlands hosts a relatively small number of students from outside the EU, compared to other European countries. The committee said this was unfortunate because the Netherlands certainly needs graduates, especially of technical programmes.
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