Thank goodness the UK Border Agency is protecting universities from undesirable aliens ("Visa stranglehold chokes recruitment", 7 October). We all know that a little knowledge transfer is a dangerous thing.
Nonetheless, the visa rules for highly skilled immigrants can challenge our capacity for innovation. For example, recently our Young Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Yeti) programme had a most promising application from a recognised dark matter cloud just beyond the Andromeda galaxy. The applicant, -1 Nietsnie A, wished to apply his antimatter reversal expertise to generate the government's "Big Society" instantaneously.
Combined with our university's expertise in economic time travel, Nietsnie also developed a plan to send the UK budget deficit into the distant past, near the original "Big Buck". Sadly, under immigration rules that exclude most economic migrants, he can't comply with the requirements for biometric information, such as fingerprints and photographs, as he is invisibly "dark". His communications with Earth are composed of tachyonic particles generated from Andromedan superconducting bodily fluids. The UKBA insists it is used to looking for loopholes, not wormholes.
Woody Caan, Anglia Ruskin University.