Student visa desperation: Appeals blow out, asylum claims climb

A growing number of international students are seeking asylum each month and thousands are challenging their visa refusals in a sign the federal government’s crackdown on foreign student numbers will create trouble for other parts of the migration system.

More than 500 international students applied for asylum in August, the largest number for one month in at least six years, as a squeeze on visas drives people towards other options for staying in Australia.

Former immigration department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said it was probably the highest proportion of students claiming asylum since the early 1990s, when Bob Hawke granted asylum to 48,000 Chinese visa holders, most of them students, following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Bob Hawke, delivering an emotional speech at a memorial service for victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, offered asylum to Chinese students in Australia.Credit: Graham Tidy

There have also been 13,003 new cases challenging student visa refusals at the Administration Appeals Tribunal since January – a figure that exceeds the past four years combined – as the effects of Labor’s student visa crackdown flow through to the broader migration system.

New data tabled to the Senate reveals the measures people already in Australia are trying to avoid departure as Labor tries to bring down migration levels by rejecting more than a quarter of student visa applications made onshore.

It shows the federal government will keep facing challenges as it targets international students – who make up the largest portion of Australia’s temporary migrants and are the biggest feeder of permanent migration – by getting tougher on visa conditions, cracking down on those not genuine about studying and hiking the student visa application fee.

The Coalition will keep fighting the government on migration as the federal election approaches. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has already described foreign students trying to extend their stays in Australia as “the modern version of the boat arrivals” in an interview with 2GB’s Ray Hadley.

Coalition senator Sarah Henderson, who requested the data in the Senate, said it demonstrated the havoc caused by the government’s “discriminatory and reckless approach” to student caps as well as Ministerial Direction 107, which has severely reduced student numbers from South Asia as well as enrolments in regional universities.

“The latest surge in protection visa applications by foreign students is a direct consequence of Labor’s disastrous mishandling of immigration,” she said.

While this masthead last week revealed that visa applications from prospective offshore students had dramatically declined under the federal government’s crackdown, onshore applications remain strong: the 35,000 applications for July and August exceed the 30,000 from the same period last year.

That’s despite rejection rates rising steeply from March for people who applied for a student visa and were already in the country on a previous student, visitor or working holidaymaker visa.

Many are resisting the crackdown. When the rejection rate more than doubled – from 10 per cent in February to 22 per cent in March – so did the appeal numbers, from 402 in February to 850 in March. Asylum claims also grew from 274 to 396.

The general trend has continued throughout the year. In August, the latest month for which data is available, more than 25 per cent of onshore student visa applications were rejected, 2154 people appealed their visa refusal in the AAT, and 516 claimed asylum.

The number of students who claimed asylum in August made up a quarter of all protection visa applications that month.

Rizvi said the difference between now and the 1990s was that most students applying for asylum were not successful. “You’ve got a large, growing number of people applying for asylum who are not getting it. The question is: what do they then do?”

He said students whose visas were rejected could go down a long pathway: appeal their visa refusal in the tribunal, which takes up to 743 days. If they get their visa refused, they could apply for asylum. If that claim is rejected, they could appeal again, but wait times for refugee decisions are even longer.

“By then they could have been in the country for 10 or more years. That’s what we’re facing now, but most of those students are only at the start of that journey,” he said.

“Home Affairs will be worrying, hoping they leave, because the worst outcome would be applying for asylum and going underground. At the moment, the departure rates are growing, but they still remain weak compared to the volume of arrivals.”

The latest AAT figures show 13,003 student visa rejection appeals up to August – almost 10,000 more than the total for 2023, with four months still left in 2024.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke declined to comment. However, last month he said he made “no apology for reversing the rorting and exploitation that the former government allowed to flourish in pockets of the higher education sector”.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.