Student visa change backtrack

(CS) Student visas will remain valid for the period of one year, following a complaint by three Luxembourg students' unions against issuing visas on a semester basis.

Since September 2011, Luxembourg's immigration office has been issuing six-month visas to non-EU students. The Luxembourg University Students’ Organisation (LUS), the Cercle des Etudiants Africains au Luxembourg (CEAL) and the Union Nationale des Étudiant-e-s du Luxembourg (UNEL) questioned the legality of this move in a statement issued on Thursday morning.

This was promptly followed by a notice from the immigration office just before noon the same day, saying that students are entitled to one-year visas and that everyone holding a six-month visa could get an exchange.

On Monday, the immigration office had still insisted that there were exceptional circumstances to justify the shortened visa validity, according to the students' unions. These included the fact that studies were organised on a semester basis, as well as social security issues.

The unions' open letter questioned the legitimacy of these statements. Negotiations between students' unions and the immigration office have been ongoing since the beginning of November.