It's silly not to count students as migrants, says minister But he also went on the offensive against what he called "very clever people" advancing a "frankly silly" idea. "I think there is a wider point, which is: to say that someone who comes here for three years as a student is not here and doesn't count is absurd," he told MPs. Nobody is arguing that somebody who comes here to work for two years or 18 months isn't an immigrant - of course they are an immigrant. So to say people who come here for longer aren't immigrants just because they have got a student visa, just seems to me to be frankly silly, and it's the sort of silly argument that's often most passionately put by very clever people, and that's what we are getting in this case. He dismissed the suggestion that people arriving in Britain on student visas had less impact on public services than foreign workers. They are living somewhere, so they are having an impact on housing. They will be taking public transport. If they are here for three years it's quite likely they will use the health service," he said. So all the immigration pressures on the public services that we all know about are as affected by an individual student as they are by an individual on a work permit. So I think this whole debate is a complete dead end because it doesn't accord with any kind of common sense. Mr Green refused to say what representations he had received from his ministerial colleagues at the Department for Business. "Ministers discuss policy all the time but sensible ministers don't discuss private policy discussions in public," he said. We all have views on our own policies and other people's policies but as I say it's sensible for ministers to keep these discussions private.