The former Morrison Government’s reforms aimed at driving a “rapid return of international students” have accelerated enrolments from Indian and Nepalese ‘students’ seeking work rights and permanent residency.
After the Morrison Government last year uncapped the number of hours that international students could work, and began handing out two year Temporary Graduate work visas to Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector graduates, enrolments from these two nations have literally exploded:
Indian commencements increased by 21 per cent from about 27,400 to 33,300 and Nepal recorded an increase of more than 70 per cent, up from 12,500 to 21,500…
The number of Indian students granted a visa almost doubled between June and July, from just over 3000 to close to 6000, as visa backlogs were worked through by the Home Affairs Department following a boost to staff under Labor.
This outcome was expected. Immediately after the Morrison Government announced these visa changes late last year, I noted they would “inevitably lead to thousands of poor students from developing nations (e.g. the Indian sub-continent) undertaking cheap mickey mouse courses in order to work and gain permanent residency”.
So clearly, the Morrison Government’s visa changes have turbo charged applications from non-genuine students seeking to use the student visa system as a backdoor work visa before transitioning to permanent residency.
In the lead up to the Jobs & Skills Summit, the education-migration lobby has been pressuring the Albanese Government to further expand work rights and permanent residency for international students, knowing full well that it will lead to an avalanche of visa applications from poorer nations.
Judging from the latest comments by education minister Jason Clare, Labor is only too willing to oblige:
“This week is the Jobs and Skills Summit and international students can help us fill some of our critical skills gaps… A lot of those students are delivering us food and serving coffee in between classes”.
“But when they graduate, they go home. Wouldn’t it be great if they stayed on and helped us fill some of the skills gaps we have?”
Mr Clare said other countries had “cottoned on” to the opportunity for international students to stay on after graduating and changed their visa settings accordingly.
“It’s something that’s worth looking at here too”.
All of which proves, yet again, that ‘international education’ is really a people-importing immigration industry rather than a genuine education export industry.
If work rights and permanent residency were scaled back, the whole ‘international education’ industry would collapse.
