"This is the Modern Version of the Boat Arrivals”: Peter Dutton, By James Reed
At present the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) has been flooded with appeals about student visa decisions, mainly from Chinese and Indian students.There were 2,057 cases lodged with the AAT in the previous 12 months, but 8,204 cases in this year to May 31. Speaking on radio the leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton said that this was the "modern version of boat arrivals." "People have found a weakness in the system, they are exploiting the weakness … and ultimately have stayed in Australia or they have extended their stay."
And he is right. The Guardian.com, who ran with this story opened with the sob, sob account of an international student who said, why are you comparing us to illegals? Well, Dutton was not; he was lamenting the massive legal costs that the Chinese and Indian students are clocking up through use of the AAT, whose resources could have been better spent.
The entire international student supermarket needs to be closed down and education be made for Australians for nation building purposes.
"Raghav Motani knew he would be paying $70,000 in student fees for his two-year master's degree in Australia. He knew about the visa processing fees, insurance policy, health coverage and expensive housing – $800 a fortnight.
But when the University of Technology Sydney's international student officer heard the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, had compared him and his peers to the "modern version of boat arrivals", he had some questions.
"Why are you using these words to describe us? What have we done that's unlawful?" he said. "We've not come illegally, we've not jumped borders, why are we framed like this? We're helping the economy, we're putting a lot of money into it. Protect us."
Speaking on 2GB on Thursday, Dutton was commenting on a report in the Australian highlighting a surge the administrative appeals tribunal (AAT) had experienced in student visa decisions, "most of them from Indian and Chinese students".
There were 8,204 student visa cases lodged with the tribunal in the year to 31 May, compared with 2,057 in the previous 12 months. Only people already in Australia who have had their temporary visa appealed or rejected can appeal with the tribunal, which costs $3,496.
"I just think when you look at the detail, this is the modern version of the boat arrivals," Dutton said, using rhetoric reminiscent of the Abbott-led Coalition's 2013 campaign to "stop the boats".
"People have found a weakness in the system, they are exploiting the weakness … and ultimately have stayed in Australia or they have extended their stay."
Weihong Liang, the chair of the NSW International Student Representative Committee, said the "constant targeting" of international students was creating an "unwelcome atmosphere".
"I'm tired of hearing these negative and divisive comments," he said. "It seems there's a growing trend to compete over who can be tougher on international students.
"People will carefully consider their study destinations and choose places that are more welcoming, open and inclusive of diverse cultures."
The International Education Association of Australia (IEAA)'s CEO, Phil Honeywood, said Dutton's comparison also failed to acknowledge the Coalition was responsible for creating a loophole during the pandemic that made it easier for non-genuine students to stay in Australia for economic reasons.
"The Morrison government – without any consultation with the international education sector – announced uncapped work rights for supposedly full-time overseas students," he said.
"Dutton was a key minister in government in the relevant portfolio that was front and centre when non-genuine students were allowed in. This created an influx [of people] … particularly from the subcontinent, who came to Australia to make money rather than to study."
The policy was reversed by Labor in July last year, capping working hours at 24 a fortnight. But by then, Honeywood said, Australia's educational reputation had been "compromised".
He attributed the rise in appeals to a concurrent spike in student visa refusals – part of a federal government crackdown on non-genuine students found in a parliamentary inquiry to use study as a back door for work and permanent residency.
Just 80% of student visas were granted in the year to 31 August, the latest data shows, compared with 95.7% in 2020-2021.
To Honeywood, comparing international students appealing visa decisions with asylum seekers was "palpably wrong". "The majority of these people were allowed in under the Morrison government on planes," he said.
"Many months ago Peter Dutton made it clear he wanted to fight an election on migration – and Labor ministers have told me they have little choice."
A spokesperson for the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said the government "won't apologise for returning integrity to the international education system", adding it was "unclear" what Dutton was criticising.
"Is it the AAT that he stacked and we are replacing, or the issues with international education that emerged when he was minister and we have made wholesale reform to fix?" the spokesperson said.
"Clearly Peter Dutton doesn't think we should be rejecting fraudulent student visa applications – our government won't apologise for returning integrity to the international education system."
In July, the federal government more than doubled the international student visa fee to $1,600, after adding tougher visa conditions, stronger English-language tests and more rules for education agents who bring overseas students to Australia.
A month later, the education minster, Jason Clare, announced the commonwealth's proposed international student cap which would limit student enrolments to 270,000 across the tertiary sector.
Mehreen Faruqi, the Greens' deputy leader and spokesperson for higher education, said both major parties were launching a bipartisan "attack" on the sector.
"Labor … has made international students the new political footballs in this racist dog-whistling game. Migrants, international students and people of colour will yet again be harmed by this dangerous rhetoric."
Time as well to vote out of parliament the Greens, who should be called the Reds.
As noted at Macrobusiness,com.au, former students are not wantingto return to their hom countries but are seeking bridgingvisas, so Dutton is right this felsexactly like asylum seeking, complete wit the drain on he austrlai courtsysterm: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/09/thousands-of-international-students-seek-asylum/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily+MacroBusiness+-+Feed&utm_content=Daily+MacroBusiness+-+Feed+CID_380c89af48633c5b56d1c8f6dc83fabb&utm_source=Email+marketing+software&utm_term=Thousands+of+international+students+seek+asylum
Australia's courts and tribunals are bracing for tens of thousands of international students to appeal against the refusal or cancellation of their visas, amid concerns that foreign visa-holders are gaming the system to circumvent a federal government push to slash net migration.
Anthony Albanese has been warned that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and courts will "drown" in appeals from onshore international students whose visas have been or are in the process of being cancelled or refused by the Department of Home Affairs. With almost 700,000 international students currently in the country, The Australian can reveal the AAT has already been swamped with visa review applications, which can take years to process and are often lead to appeals in federal courts.
New AAT figures show the number of international students who lodged reviews of their student visa refusal or cancellation between September 1 last year and August 31 soared to 15,754, compared with just 2244 the year before. In July and August this year, 4863 appeals against student visa decisions were lodged with the AAT, more than double the number lodged in the entire 2022-23 financial year.
The Australian understands many of the international students lodging applications to review their visa refusals and cancellations are from India and China.
The surge in reviews has raised concerns that visa holders who have completed their studies and failed to find an employer or partner to sponsor them to remain in the country could claim asylum to avoid deportation, which experts are warning may clog up the migration system for up to a decade.
Ahead of the launch of a new appeals body to replace the AAT on October 14, a spokesman for Home Affairs and Immigration Minister Tony Burke defended the government's crackdown on international students, which has primarily targeted those enrolling in private colleges and vocational institutions.
"We make no apology for reversing the rorting and exploitation that the former government allowed to flourish in pockets of the higher education sector," the spokesman said. "A direct consequence of that is rejecting a higher number of student visas. Unfortunately we are not only battling a broken migration system but also inherited an AAT irreversibly damaged as a result of the actions of the former government, that was beset by delays, mismanagement, and an extraordinarily large backlog of applications."
Home Affairs and Immigration Minister Tony Burke. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
The spokesman said the government had invested an additional $206.5m in the new tribunal, to be rebadged as the Administrative Review Tribunal.
The AAT caseload has increased significantly across the migration division as the number of appeals jumped by 185 per cent in August compared with the same time last year, with refugee lodgements up 97 per cent.
The AAT figures also reveal the number of migration cases on hand swelled to 27,710, which is 94 per cent higher than the same period last year.
Former immigration department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said the avalanche of cases was the product of the final stage of a migration "boom", with record numbers of temporary migrants looking for a pathway to remain in Australia by appealing their visa decision. He said the next step was to lodge a protection application.
"The first stage is when a government slams on the accelerator, which is what the Coalition did," Mr Rizvi said. "The second stage is when tightening takes place, which is what the Labor Party did, much too late. They probably started the tightening six-to-12 months later than they should have. And the third stage is, well, what happens to all the people who arrived during the boom?"
Mr Rizvi, who said the average AAT appeal duration was about 270 days, estimated there could be as many as 100,000 student visa applications sitting with the department. He warned that rejected student visa applicants had the option to appeal, which could create a legacy that haunted the migration system for a decade.
"(The AAT) can't cope. They have to be given more resources, otherwise they'll just keep drowning," he said.
Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said the surge in AAT reviews was "another immigration mess of Labor's own making".
"They boasted that they were processing visas at record rates and now we know that proper checks and balances were not put in place," Mr Tehan said.
The clash over international student visas comes after Peter Dutton in May vowed to slash permanent migration by 25 per cent for two years to help address housing shortages, and the Albanese government pledged to lower net overseas migration.
The Albanese government is on track to overshoot its net migration target of 395,000 in 2023-24 after Australian Bureau of Statistics figures last week revealed net migration increased by 509,800 people in the year to March. The May budget forecast that net overseas migration in 2024-25 would be 260,000.
The Coalition has linked the rise in student visa refusals to the controversial Ministerial Direction 107, which ordered Home Affairs Department officials to deprioritise the processing of student visa applications deemed to be "high-risk", causing rejection rates to increase. The government has indicated it will scrap the direction once international student caps are introduced.
The Australian understands that a significant proportion of the international students having visa applications refused or cancelled are studying courses such as hairdressing, cooking and auto-mechanic trades via Registered Training Organisations.
Sources said a majority of students launching appeals were not studying but were using the visas as a means to winning permanent residency. Some have been in Australia for more than a decade and have applied for up to three or four different student visas. After completing studies, some seek an employer to sponsor them, find partners in Australia to obtain a partner visa or claim protection. When international students have visas refused, they can apply for a review by the AAT and are issued a bridging visa allowing them to stay in Australia.
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