After the controversy of the accommodation crisis caused primarily by the massive intake of overseas students, mainly from communist China, pushed by the evil un-Australian universities, the globo commo Albo government moved to look like it was trying to do something about the numbers. Even though the country was shut up quick smart during Covid, somehow stopping the flood of cashed-up foreign students was a problem. Of course, the Labor government wants such students as part of the accepted Great White Replacement program of all Leftist governments.
In the year to September 2023, the annual net influx of foreign students, tourists and workers reached a peak of 560,000, which is extraordinary. This arose from the government playing catch-up after Covid lockdowns, as Big Business who control both parties, was whinging that their quick fix for profits, immigration, was down, and the government better get the numbers up quick smart, or else. And they did that with the granting of student visas over 40 percent of the pre-Covid days, and extending the time a person on a temporary graduate visa could stay, if only they took some shonky course from an equally dodgy college or whatever. Thus, at the end of August 2024, there were over 900,000 foreigners in Australia on a temporary student or graduate visas, a national disgrace. The accommodation crisis this caused generated a response from Labor to impose caps on foreign students in higher education and vocational training, which led to the evil, traitorous universities crying out in pain, as they were pulling in billions from the Chinese, and vice-chancellors, on multi-million dollar salaries, were living it high as crooks do.
And here we are today, foreign students engaging in all sorts of schemes to stay, such as visa hopping, usually done by low-skilled migrants from low-income countries such as Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, who aim to ultimately get up enough points for permanent residency. As noted by The Australian: "The total number of students and graduates here on temporary visas has not budged since the tightening of rules in March but there has been a 40 per cent jump in the number of foreigners here on bridging visas; there are now 324,000 waiting for a decision on another visa application and the number is growing.
Figures supplied to the Senate last week show that in the eight months to August, there have been more than 13,000 new cases challenging student visa refusals at what is now known as the Administrative Review Tribunal. That's triple the number across the same period in 2019, or more than the entire case load across the past four calendar years."
Immigration will spell the doom of this country, but no doubt Australia was not meant by the elites to be to be a long-term country; what will the place be like in say 200 years? "Their" politicians are only concerned with the next election. The fall of ancient Rome was easy compared to all this, a death by bs.
" … as the professor in the practice of higher education policy at the Australian National University's POLIS: The Centre for Social Policy Research explains, a year ago Labor changed its mind, with a steady run of policy moves inflicting "blow after blow on the international education industry", most of which made it more difficult and costly to obtain a student visa. Refusal rates for offshore student visa applications have increased, while a ministerial directive effectively put a handbrake on processing for universities and students with the highest risk rating.
In an August paper for ANU's Migration Hub, Norton argues "the reasons for this change of direction are mixed".
"Some government policy shifts tackle problems that the international education industry generally acknowledges, including students primarily motivated by earning money rather than studying, and English language proficiency," he writes.
"Other policies are new means of pursuing an old policy goal, encouraging international students to meet Australia's labour force needs. To these the government has added a new policy objective, reducing Australia's population. Pressure on accommodation and other services is cited as a reason."
At the end of August, there were more than 900,000 foreigners here on a temporary student or graduate visa, or 200,000 more than the pre-Covid peak. "This is why the government has decided to slow down arrivals and speed up departures," Norton writes.
One of the blunt tools Labor has reached for, against the advice of many without a vested interest, is the imposition of a cap on foreign students in higher education and vocational training.
Even the Reserve Bank board expressed its concerns last month about the ploy and wondered how it would affect inflation. "Lower numbers of international student arrivals would be likely to reduce aggregate demand (including for housing), but also lower growth in population and therefore the economy's supply capacity," the RBA board said in the minutes of its policy meeting.
Norton argues the prudent course would have been for a "period of pause and reflection" to see how the suite of demand squeezes played out, not the poorly thought-through caps that will harm the sector, mistreat students and academics, and damage the nation's reputation.
It appears almost certain that new international student numbers will be capped at 270,000 next year after a Senate inquiry last week warned a portion of the spectacular recovery in foreign enrolments "has been driven by non-genuine students and unscrupulous providers". "In the long term, these issues have the potential to damage Australia's reputation," the report says.
The Senate committee backed unprecedented powers for Education Minister Jason Clare to cap enrolments and set quotas for every university and training provider "to ensure the quality and integrity of the international education sector".
It did not support a provision to give Clare course-level control over the more than 25,000 courses foreigners currently can choose from; Norton argues better parliamentary scrutiny of the way caps are set is required. The Coalition supports student caps in principle to maintain education quality for local students and to quell the people boom but takes issue with many of the proposals it believes will harm providers.
Norton argues we're at a major turning point in higher education. "This bill, in combination with planned controls on domestic student enrolments, signals the demise of student choice and university autonomy," he wrote in The Conversation last week when the Senate report was tabled. "A new era of bureaucratic control from Canberra is arriving."
One of the practices Labor wanted to curb was onshore "visa hopping", where a student moves from visa to visa, extending their stay and hoping to eventually gain permanent residency via a flawed "points system" that favours such behaviour. This usually leads to the limbo of "permanent temporariness", and as Martin Parkinson's migration review found, undermines the integrity of the visa system.
One-third of those on graduate visas were seeking to prolong their stay in Australia through another student visa. New research from the nonpartisan e61 Institute shows visa hoppers are typically low-skilled migrants from low-income countries such as Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
Authors Silvia Griselda and Harshit Shah found during their time as graduate visa holders, visa hoppers earn 20 per cent less than other graduate visa holders and 10 per cent less than other graduate visa holders in the same occupation.
In March, the government implemented the Genuine Student requirement to stop people from hopping from student visa to student visa unless there is credible course progression. Then from July 1 it banned visitor and temporary graduate visa holders from applying for student visas onshore.
As well, to end the loopholes that allow some graduates to stay indefinitely, Labor introduced significantly shorter post-study work rights, reduced age limits from 50 to 35, and increased English-language requirements.
The e61 authors conclude that the ban on visa hopping could actually raise the average quality of the pool of prospective migrants.
"In the long run, these higher-quality migrants could have a significant fiscal impact in Australia and help achieve the goals of the country's permanent migration system," they write.
But a dynamic migration system replete with loopholes, rorts, exploitation and perversities will continually throw up a new series of policy challenges. The rate of overseas departures (that is, foreigners and Australians) has barely changed, stuck at around 50,000 a quarter, while the government was expecting that to be 75,000 a quarter.
The total number of students and graduates here on temporary visas has not budged since the tightening of rules in March but there has been a 40 per cent jump in the number of foreigners here on bridging visas; there are now 324,000 waiting for a decision on another visa application and the number is growing.
Figures supplied to the Senate last week show that in the eight months to August, there have been more than 13,000 new cases challenging student visa refusals at what is now known as the Administrative Review Tribunal. That's triple the number across the same period in 2019, or more than the entire case load across the past four calendar years.
From January to August there have been more than 3000 asylum claims by people whose last substantive visa granted was a student visa, with more than 500 lodgements in August alone. Not one to let an opportunity slip by without a cut-through and incendiary gibe, Peter Dutton has called visa hopping "the modern version of the boat arrivals".
The Prime Minister is in the wars on several fronts, not least around the purchase of his Copacabana eyrie. But that's neither here nor there for the coming election campaign, where the cost-of-living crisis from high and persistent inflation, stagnant living standards, failing school performance, dearth of affordable housing for our young, ailing aged care and health systems, perilous energy transition and mismanaged migration will dominate the policy contest.
Rather than panicky moves that catch people by surprise and hurt successful export industries, Labor should get cracking on a new points test for permanent migrants, plan the intake over a longer time horizon, prioritise foreign workers to build homes, and work quickly with local governments and the states to populate our much-ignored regions and towns. Instead, we're doubling down on toil and trouble."