Melbourne Mayor wants unlimited work visas for international students

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In December, the Morrison Government announced reforms to visa arrangements to ensure a “rapid return of international students”.

The reforms included:

  • granting a two year Temporary Graduate visa to Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector graduates; and
  • extending the temporary graduate visa from two to three years for masters by coursework graduates.

The great immigration scab grab continues, with Melbourne’s Lord Mayor and former Property Council chief, Sally Capp, lobbying the federal government to give unlimited post-study work visas and then permanent residency to international students that study at an Australian university:

Lord mayor Sally Capp will lobby the next federal government to make it easier for international students to work in Australia for as long as they like once they finish their degrees…

Graduates who maintain work over four years would then have a clear pathway to permanent residency under the proposal, which Cr Capp will outline in a speech to the Melbourne Press Club on Wednesday…

In Cr Capp’s speech, seen by The Age, she will point out Melbourne’s greatest challenge has flipped from harnessing a decade-long population boom leading up to the pandemic, when the Victorian capital’s population was projected to leapfrog Sydney’s by 2026.

Amid federal Treasury projections that tens of thousands of Victorians will depart for other states over the next three years, the second-term mayor will say “drastic and brave” action such as her international student plan is required.

“It will help to make Australia a more attractive and conducive destination for students and allow us to retain smart and globally connected talent and address current labour and skills shortages,” the speech says…

Cr Capp says Melbourne will lobby the next federal government “in lockstep” with the think tank Committee for Sydney on helping international students enter the workforce.

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It gets even worse: the Property Council of Victoria wants the state government to “launch an international marketing campaign to entice foreign students and offer $15,000 grants to anyone who relocates from interstate or overseas”. So taxpayers would effectively pay international students $15,000 to come here! Wasn’t international education supposed to be an export?

Memo to Sally Capp: Melburnians are sick to death of endless force-fed immigration, which saw the city’s population balloon by 1.6 million people in only 20 years:

Melbourne's population

Break-neck growth pre-pandemic.

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Few Melburnians want the city’s population to “leapfrog” past Sydney’s to a projected 10 million people mid-century. Livability across Melbourne has already been trashed.

The Melbourne City Council’s proposed reforms would inevitably lead to tens of thousands of poor students from developing nations (e.g. Nepal) flooding Melbourne to work and gain permanent residency.

It would turn international education into a bigger import industry, as even more students would come to Australia to work as much as possible in order to send money home to their families.

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It would crush employment opportunities and wages for younger Australians, while jacking up their housing costs.

These proposed visa reforms are further proof that ‘international education’ is really a people-importing immigration industry rather than a genuine education export industry. Student visas are really just low-skilled work visas in disguise, designed to provide employers with cheap labour and to suppress wages, alongside juicing housing demand.

The Property Council’s blood clearly still flows strong through Sally Capp’s veins.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.