Amber Rudd has a strategy for reducing immigration to Britain: getting rid of me.

The home secretary announced at Conservative party conference on Tuesday that among the measures she will be taking to reduce immigration to the UK will be a crackdown on the number of students from outside Europe and the families who come with them.

That’s me. I’m Australian, and have been able to live and work in this country for the last two years because my partner, also Australian, is doing a PhD here.

My partner is on what’s called a Tier Four student visa; I’m here on the Tier Four dependent spouse visa, which I’ve always thought was erroneously named. I can report that there is very little “dependency” involved in being the partner of an international student in this country.

Despite the fact that international students are worth an estimated £8bn a year to the economy, often pay tuition fees that are triple those paid by local students and supply roughly 30% of revenue for British universities, it is very difficult to get a visa to study here as an international student from outside the European Economic Area.

To qualify for a visa you first need to prove that you’ll cost the British government absolutely nothing. Applicants need to have a certain amount of money in their bank account to prove they can get by in case of an emergency without resorting to government help. The NHS isn’t free for them either; non-EEA migrants now also have to pay an “immigration health surcharge”, at the time of their visa application. This costs between £150 and £200 per year (though this was introduced after I arrived in the country, so it doesn’t apply to me).

It is also made clear to you before you apply to live in the UK that if you do, you will have no access to state assistance – no benefits at all. Indeed, this message is literally stamped onto my visa, right across the centre: “No recourse to public funds.” Why on my visa, which is stuck inside my passport and which I only see while waiting in queues at airports? I don’t know. In case I’m tempted to ask a border official for a financial handout as I head through customs, perhaps. The rules are that I may live here and work, but can expect no government help.

Which is fine by me. I like working. I am healthy and able and have been lucky enough to get a job I love. I pay taxes, I contribute to the economy; in short, I’m abiding by the rules laid out by the Home Office. Except it seems that those rules, or at least the goalposts, have shifted.

While announcing her proposed changes to immigration laws, Rudd observed with incredulity that “while an international student is studying here, their family members can do any form of work”.

Putting aside her disingenuous talk of “family members”, as if international students are bringing with them three generations of relatives, rather than the family members who are actually allowed to accompany them – a partner and dependent children – when did it become an outrageous thing for people coming to a country to get jobs, earn money and support themselves – and pay taxes?

Rudd is creating an impossible situation for migrants. Those who receive benefits are demonised, those who cannot receive benefits will now be demonised for working. What is she proposing? That only those who have enough savings to support themselves for five years can move here? That international students and their families must live in a penniless unemployed limbo, filling their bellies with sheer gratitude at being allowed into Britain? That they can work, but only in a crummy job that pays minimum wage, assigned to them as they arrive at Heathrow? It’s hard to see what she is suggesting a “good migrant” might look like and indeed, whether she believes they actually exist.

On the scale of migrant privilege I’m right up at the advantaged end. I’m not here seeking asylum, I haven’t left a country rife with war or hardship. I’m white and speak English and, unlike some who move here (and indeed some who were born here) I’ve never had racism directed at me. I love living in Britain – beautiful, opportunity-rich, quirky place that it is – but if worse came to worst, I could leave and go home to a country where there is peace, economic prosperity and considerably better weather.

But despite my being among the most privileged migrants in the UK, Rudd’s speech scared me. She asserted that these immigration policies were not about “pulling up the drawbridge”, but I see no other way to interpret them.

The message from the Conservative party is that no matter how brilliant the research of international students, how much that work advances the reputation of British universities, how high the tuition fees they pay, how hard their partners work or how much we contribute in taxes, because we are not British, this country simply doesn’t want us.