Go-slow visas to provide quick fix for ballooning international student numbers

Labor will plough ahead with its plan to limit international student numbers after new laws were torpedoed by Peter Dutton, instead issuing a go-slow on visa processing to tame the flow of foreign enrolments.

Under pressure on immigration amid a housing and cost-of-living crisis that will define next year’s election, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke will on Thursday order department officials to put the brakes on processing student visa approvals once a university nears the target the government set for it.

The government has found new ways to control the intake of international students.Credit: Penny Stephens

The new scheme, confirmed by government sources briefed on the matter, will maintain the essence of the cap system without the need for legislation after the Coalition voted down the proposed laws, creating a headache for Labor by hampering efforts to bring down migrant numbers.

Labor on Wednesday revealed new targets of 340,000 net overseas migrants for 2024-25, revising its forecasts up 30 per cent from previous estimates after failing to meet its previous targets for two years in a row as student arrivals soared and departures slowed.

The laws voted down by the Coalition would have put caps on foreign students at each university, TAFE and private college, set at 270,000 new enrolments across the system for next year.

The new Ministerial Direction 111 will work by forcing departmental officials to prioritise student visas for each tertiary institution until they reach 80 per cent of the cap figure.

After that, an effective go-slow on approvals will be enforced to reduce the chance that institutions overshoot the enrolment targets the government handed to them.

Legally, the government is required to process each visa. But it is able to shift resources to delay processing and put an effective halt on certain applications.

The direction should help Labor achieve its goal of reducing student numbers by 53,000 (or 16 per cent) on 2023 levels.

The new scheme will replace the unpopular Ministerial Direction 107, which Labor introduced last December to cut numbers in the short term by slowing visa processing for smaller universities and students from countries with a higher risk of breaching visa rules.

Most universities hated that measure because it was a blunt tool that was applied unevenly: thousands fewer students from south Asia were approved for visas and regional universities had their enrolments slashed, while big city universities could keep growing their student numbers and continue to recruit from China.

The direction helped bring down student numbers by 26 per cent in 2023-24, according to statistics released last week.

Universities Australia chair David Lloyd was optimistic about the changes. “We can say we’re open for business as a nation, there’s no legislated cap, and there’ll be equity of prioritisation for all institutions,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean you only get 80 per cent. Above that number, you will just get processed at a different rate. Technically, you can exceed 100 per cent if you wanted to.”

But government sources said they were confident that other policies – such as beefed-up integrity measures and hiking the student visa fee from $710 to $1600 – would help keep a lid on the system.

They said the new direction would be fairer to universities and diversify the education market by boosting student numbers outside the cities and reducing reliance on Chinese students.

Burke said the cap model rejected by the parliament was the ideal option but using visa approval speeds to curtail numbers was the next best tool at the government’s disposal.

“Peter Dutton wants to talk tough on migration but has voted to let it rip when it comes to international students – this is a counterbalance to his recklessness,” Burke said.

Labor has been pressuring Dutton on his migration record after he voted down the caps legislation and walked back an earlier commitment to set a new, lower target for net migration.

The opposition argued Labor’s caps bill was deeply flawed and would have hurt private providers who were not engaged in sham practices, but they did not reveal their alternative for lowering student numbers.

International education sector lobbyist Phil Honeywood said the changes would put an end to the crackdown on students from south Asia, allowing regional universities and private colleges to restart their stalled marketing.

He added that previous governments had dialled up and down the speed of visa processing to manage the flow of migration.

“Labor is keen to obviously not have a message that the floodgates have been reopened, as they were under the Morrison government,” Honeywood said, praising the government for listening to the sector’s concerns.

International students are key to the government’s hopes of reducing immigration numbers because they are the biggest group of temporary migrants and the largest feeder of permanent migration.

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