International student visa appeals skyrocket amid migration crunch
Australia’s courts and tribunals are bracing for tens of thousands of international students appealing their permits being refused or cancelled, as the cohort fights back against Labor’s bid to use increased visa rejections to slash net migration.
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.”
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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