Brexit Britain, for all its flaws, has been welcoming to me. When the UK was a member of the European Union, the only way to control immigration was to crack down on non-EU visas. Ten years ago, Americans like me who studied in Britain and wanted to stay needed to earn £35,000 a year (which would be £47,000 now). That was unrealistic for a recent graduate. After Brexit, Boris Johnson brought back the old post-study visa, giving us two years to find work and requiring a more achievable minimum salary of £26,000. Finally, international students who won places at British universities could meet their EU equals as, well, equals. We had a realistic chance of staying here to work, live and contribute.

The Boris visa was introduced at a time when Brexit was expected to lower immigration levels. As things turned out, the long recovery from lockdown and furlough led to a shortage of native workers and as a result, net migration reached three times pre-Brexit levels. It’s for this reason that Johnson and Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, want the visa salary threshold to be pushed back to £40,000. Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, is said to be in general agreement along with Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister. I finished university last year, a year after the graduate visa was brought back. That makes me one of the lucky foreign graduates to catch what may turn out to be only a three-year window of opportunity to work here.

Britain will simply lose out on tens of thousands of skilled, well-educated young people

With a general election due next year, coupled with public concern about immigration, it’s easy to see the reason for this proposed policy change, But I’m not sure that the past week’s shift to what Badenoch called a ‘strongest measures possible’ approach is going to improve things in Britain, as the country will lose out on tens of thousands of skilled, well-educated young people. Those of us who moved here in the post-Brexit years would have only two options: the mother of all pay rises, or deportation. This applies to all recent arrivals. Whether you’re from America, India, France or Australia, your future in the UK is more uncertain.

I understand Braverman’s concern about the numbers and the resulting pressure on, for instance, housing and wages. But it’s wrong to assume all newcomers are taking more than they give. International students bring in some £37 billion a year, not just in fees but also in the money we spend in British businesses. I paid about £30,000 a year to study at St Andrews, where a large population of international students (about 45 per cent of the student body) subsidises the other students who pay less, or nothing. Is this something that ministers really want to cut down on? And if so, what will replace the money we would no longer be paying? The British taxpayer, it seems to me, is burdened enough.

When foreign graduates switch to a work visa, they pay an NHS health surcharge of around £1,250. And once employed, we are taxed on our salaries, like everyone else. Most international graduates I know want to stay in the UK permanently, start families and build their lives here. But how many of us would make it to £40,000 in time? It gives us two years within which to rank among the best-paid third of earners.

The UK has some of the best universities in the world. These institutions draw in young people from across the globe who have the determination to start new lives far from their home towns and families. But the changes Braverman proposes mean we would not only have to find jobs that pay us above the average, but we’d have to go home and look for work in the UK from there. I would be forced to return to the US to apply for a job in the UK and try to persuade an employer to fork out £364 (or more) a year to sponsor my work visa, despite never having met me.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) estimates that a graduate is paid on average £27,000 a year in their first job. The prospect of my earning £40,000 as a young journalist is laughable. Many jobs, journalism included, begin with low-paid shifts which then become something more long term. I applied to a Spectator internship scheme and came in at short notice for a one-week placement. Six months later, I’m still here. This is often the way for graduate-level office jobs: you accept low pay as the price for observing and learning. But under Braverman’s system, that route would simply not be open to people like me. A starting salary bar of £40,000 would deny entry-level workers the kinds of slow-burn jobs with potential to turn into long-term careers.

Braverman has complained of international students ‘bringing in family members who can piggyback onto their student visa’. And it’s true that some 60,000 of the 135,000 dependent visas offered last year went to the children or spouses of Nigerian students. Almost 40,000 went to Indian dependents, a 30-fold increase on the pre-Brexit numbers. But this has already been cut back. The policy won’t take effect until January, and its impact on annual immigration figures won’t be felt for a year. So the pressure will still be there in the upcoming election.

‘When we do it, I will tell you what will happen,’ Johnson wrote recently. ‘A lot of very rich people in this country will go crackers.’ But some low-paid people will go crackers too. Our hopes, made possible by his system, will be crushed. I’ve earned a pittance in my first year since graduating. Not because my degree was in a ‘Mickey Mouse’ subject but because I’ve freelanced, worked part-time and taken unpaid work experience. What I earn at The Spectator just about covers the cost of living and studying journalism on a part-time course.

It has been an honour to come to Britain – or, at least, an honour to be allowed to try. It’s a route that was properly opened up for young Americans by Johnson – and by Brexit. It would be sad to think that the Brexiteers themselves may end up closing it off.