Third stage of student visa boom grinds on in September

With a surge in student visa applications, Dr Abul Rizvi analyses the causes and effects of the boom as the number of students being trapped in immigration limbo rises.

THERE ARE THREE stages to a student visa boom.

The first involves rapidly growing offshore student visa applications and grants beyond any sustainable level. A sustainable level of student applications and grants is one where the number of new student arrivals; minus the number of students and temporary graduates securing permanent residence; minus the number of student and temporary graduate departures is zero. Apart from briefly during COVID, there has been no year in the last decade when that has been the case.

That means the number of students in immigration limbo continues to rise.

The most recent boom was triggered by the Coalition Government stomping on the student visa accelerator by providing unrestricted work rights, fee-free visa applications and creating the special COVID visa that around 100,000 students who were already in Australia found incredibly attractive. The COVID visa also provided unrestricted work rights but no need to pay tuition fees or to study.

The boom in offshore student applications led the international education industry to think the 2022 and 2023 application rate (see Chart 1) could go on forever and would cover for the losses universities incurred during COVID. That was never going to be the case but most education providers refused to believe the rivers of gold would slow.

The second stage was when the Labor Government belatedly started winding back the changes made by the Coalition and gradually tightened student visa policy from July 2023 onwards. That led to a strong increase in offshore refusal rates which shocked the industry, particularly lower-tier universities and private providers.

The reduced flow of students from offshore led some providers to increase onshore poaching. Students who were surprised by the cost of living in Australia moved to cheaper providers where studying was not too onerous and the opportunity to work longer hours (illegally) was easier to arrange. Onshore student applications boomed (Chart 2).

The third stage is when students and temporary graduates start to run out of visa options. As more and more onshore student applications are refused because they struggle to meet the “genuine student” test, they appeal their refusals to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (now the Administrative Review Tribunal, or A.R.T.).

The backlog of onshore student visa refusals at the A.R.T. is now 17,225. This backlog is now growing at over 2,000 per month. There have been over 7,000 student visa refusals appealed in just the three months to September 2024 (see Chart 3). There are a further 1,125 appeals against refused temporary graduate applications at end September 2024. Student visa cancellations at the A.R.T. are also rising strongly with 629 of these at the A.R.T. at end September 2024.

There are likely over 100,000 students in the onshore student visa application backlog with the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). At the current onshore refusal rate, a substantial portion of these will be refused and find their way to the A.R.T. With a further 600,000+ people in Australia on student visas, a number that will continue to grow, we can expect that the backlog of student visa refusals at the A.R.T. will continue to rise. It simply does not have the resources to cope.

Students who lose their appeals at the A.R.T. have very limited choices after having been living and working in Australia for many years. They can either depart, go underground or apply for asylum. At least a quarter of current monthly asylum applications are former students. This portion will continue to rise.

These trends are unlikely to be of concern to the international education industry or to the Minister and Department of Education. Not their problem. Their focus is solely on tuition fee revenue. But they will be worrying the Minister for Immigration and DHA who will regularly need to explain what they are doing about these trends as more and more students get trapped in immigration limbo.

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Dr Abul Rizvi is an Independent Australia columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.