‘Student caps policy will increase student numbers’ as migration figures released

Former Immigration Department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said Labor’s student caps would effect individual providers but was ‘redundant’ in reducing net migration.

Labor’s international student caps policy will increase student numbers, not decrease them, says a former immigration official. Picture: NewsWire / Glenn Campbell

Labor’s international student caps policy will increase student numbers, not decrease them, a former Immigration Department executive says, as the government concedes it needs to get migration numbers “down to sustainable levels” but that its measures are “starting to work”.

Annual net overseas migration in the year to March 2024 was 509,800 people, with the March 2024 quarter alone being 133,802.

Former Immigration Department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said Labor’s student caps – which limits new foreign students to 270,000 next year – would affect individual providers but was “redundant” at an aggregate level, in terms of reducing net migration.

He said Education Minister Jason Clare’s student caps needed to be considered as a dual policy which included replacing the controversial Ministerial Direction 107, by which Home Affairs rejects student visa applications deemed to be high-risk, significantly disadvantaging regional universities.

“Assuming there are no changes to student visa policy, you would get an outcome well below the caps,” he said.

“In order to make the caps, the government will have to loosen its visa policy ... It just boils down to a question of the degree to which student visa policy is freed up from the tightening that’s been put in place.”

Former Immigration official Abul Rizvi.

Mr Rizvi said Ministerial ­Direction 107 had likely had an impact on net overseas ­migration but that it should still be altered. “We should risk rate by the broad education sector and risk rate by country of origin,” he said.

He said it was expected that the number for the four months to July to be high because there was a large net student arrivals figure in the March quarter of 2024, and a picture of Labor’s “policy tightening” would not be apparent until June quarter figures were available.

The Labor government was far too slow to respond and tighten policy, he said.

“What the student caps do is put the education minister in control of the numbers, not the immigration minister,” he said.

“We know Education wants student numbers to be strong, whereas Immigration is desperate to get net migration under control.”

Employment Minister Murray Watt said migration was down since December 2023 and that “some of our measures (are) starting to work”.

“We recognise that we need to make sure that the numbers of migrants that we have coming to Australia is sustainable,” he said.

“And that’s exactly why we’ve taken a range of actions to bring that number down. We’re starting to see the results of that.

“The numbers that came out today are actually from March, they’re a little bit lagging, and of course a number of the measures that we’ve taken took effect after March.”

Global migration expert Anna Boucher said it was not just international students driving net migration, but also New Zealanders immigrating at record rates, bridging visa holders seeking renewing their visas while seeking a judicial review, and increases in working holiday maker visas.

Associate Professor Boucher said the international student cap policy was more likely not to work because “regional universities have campuses in the city so students will live in the city”.