Temporary visa holders in Australia surge to record 2.9 million — 10 per cent of population
The number of temporary visa holders in Australia has surged to a record 2.9 million, including an “astonishing” number among one group.
The number of temporary visa holders in Australia has surged to a record 2.925 million, as the Labor government is accused of having no plan to rein in the ever-increasing numbers putting pressure on the country’s strained housing market.
International students, Kiwis, an “astonishing” number of people on bridging visas, and failed asylum seekers awaiting deportation now make up 10 per cent of the population, Home Affairs figures show.
The total number of temporary visa holders in the country has increased by around 1.2 million since 2019, a nearly 70 per cent rise, to 2,925,604 at the end of October.
That figure includes 731,234 New Zealand citizens, 638,166 students, 240,332 temporary graduates, 402,652 bridging visa holders, 238,322 temporary skilled workers, 226,962 working holiday makers and 360,214 tourists.
“Just about everything is up — there’s nothing that’s fallen over the last decade,” said Dr Abul Rizvi, former deputy secretary of the Immigration Department. “The only one that hasn’t really gone up is visitors. We’re not getting the tourism numbers we did pre-Covid.”
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Dr Rizvi, who served at the Immigration Department from 1991 to 2007, said Australia’s visa system was more overloaded than ever and “unable to cope with the volume”, particularly of bridging visas.
When the bridging visa system was brought in three decades ago, it was never intended to be for “more than a few thousand” people, according to Dr Rizvi.
Under the universal visa system introduced in 1994, all non-citizens in the country were required to have a visa. That meant a solution was needed to avoid making “unlawful non-citizens” out of migrants who were awaiting a decision but whose current visa was no longer valid.
“Some people [in the department] argued creating bridging visas would create an incentive for inefficient visa processing and the government to say, ‘We don’t have to have an efficient system because we can just fall back on the bridging visa,” Dr Rizvi said.
“We were all in agreement large numbers of bridging visas is a really, really bad thing. We didn’t think the system [would get] so incredibly out of control. We just never anticipated that.”
There are now nearly eight times as many people on bridging visas as 10 years ago.
Much of that was driven by a surge in asylum applications by Chinese and Malaysian nationals between 2015 and 2020, who were simply seeking a backdoor work visa for a few years while waiting to be processed.
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“There’s an element of gaming [the system] but that’s a really small element,” said Dr Rizvi. “The bigger [problem] is visa design, funding of processing and policy settings.”
Meanwhile, the number of failed refugees yet to be deported has blown past 100,000 for the first time to reach 101,976 as of October 31, while another 26,298 asylum seekers were still awaiting determination.
Actual deportations of failed asylum seekers averaged around a dozen per month last financial year, while fewer than five were sent home in October.
Compounding visa processing delays, the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) — which examines rulings under Commonwealth laws including immigration and citizenship — is overwhelmed with a backlog that now stands at more than 124,000, driven by an “explosion” in student visa cases recent years.
The overwhelming majority of the ART’s time is now devoted to reviewing visa appeals, with 69,931 migration matters currently pending — including 46,601 student visa decisions.
Another 40,427 protection visa refusals are awaiting review.
The latter figure, subtracted from the 101,976 failed asylum seekers awaiting deportation, suggests there are nearly 62,000 unlawful non-citizens floating around the country who have all but exhausted their avenues of appeal.
Only a small number of visa applicants rejected again by the ART seek higher judicial review from the federal court.
Amid a flood of international students attempting to leapfrog onto protection visas with “really weak” claims, Dr Rizvi previously called for the Home Affairs to prioritise processing asylum applications from newest to oldest in order to clear out the backlog.
Asked at a Senate Estimates hearing last week if the tribunal was adopting such a strategy, ART chief executive and principal registrar Michael Hawkins said the understaffed body “simply don’t have the resources”.
“There’s not a lot of triaging [of student visa cases] going on because we simply don’t have the resources to attack the study visa cohort,” he said.
Of the 3864 study visa finalisations between July and September, 45 per cent resulted in a changed decision, according to the latest ART figures.
Just 9 per cent of the 7975 protection visa refusals were overturned in the same period. The bulk of failed refugees were from Malaysia, which saw 2086 total applications and a 7 per cent success rate.
There were 2033 refugee claims from Pacific nations, also rejected at a rate of 93 per cent, while there were 1732 applications from Chinese citizens with a success rate of just 4 per cent.
Dr Rizvi said the government must urgently “slow the rate at which temporary visa holders in Australia are growing”.
“Secondly, there is a huge backlog of people who applied for permanent visas — a large portion will qualify, but the number of places [in the permanent migration program] is inadequate,” he said.
In September, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke confirmed the 2025-26 permanent migration figure would remain at 185,000.
Despite calls to slow the rate of migration, Dr Rizvi said the only solution would be to temporarily increase the permanent migration cap to absorb the cohort currently in limbo.
“I know the politics is horrible, but at some stage a government will have to bite the bullet,” he said. “Probably you need to up the number of places by about 50,000 for the next three years and [then] go back to something that’s sustainable.”
The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), published in September, show Australia’s population grew 1.6 per cent in the 12 months to March 31, reaching 27,536,874 people.
Of that, net overseas migration accounted for 315,900 people, while natural increase — births minus deaths — was just 107,400.
The ABS will publish the closely watched net overseas migration figure for the full financial year on December 18.
The federal government is also slated to reveal its updated migration forecasts in its mid-year budget update some time this month.
Labor has been under growing pressure to reduce net overseas migration, which is down from its record peak of 536,000 in 2022-23 but remains far above pre-Covid levels.
Net permanent and long-term migrant arrivals — which differ slightly from net overseas migration — hit a record-breaking 415,760 in the first three quarters of 2025, ABS data last month showed.
The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a conservative think tank, said the figures showed “the federal government’s ‘Big Australia’ policy is well and truly in full flight”.
“The federal government’s out-of-control migration program does not have the consent of the community, and it is not targeted toward areas of economic need,” IPA deputy executive director Daniel Wild said.
“Is there any wonder that a growing number of Australians want to hit the brakes on migration inflow until such a time that housing, public infrastructure, and critical services are able to keep up with this rapid explosion in population?”
Dr Rizvi said Labor appeared to have walked away from its promise rein in the flood of temporary visas.
“The Labor government promised prior to the 2019 election that it would significantly reduce reliance on temporary entry visas,” he said.
“The Migration Strategy it issued in 2023 said it would reduce reliance on temporary entry visas. I think it’s a reasonable question to ask, what happened to the promise?”
A Home Affairs spokesman said the government’s “implementation of various migration measures has ensured migration delivers for the nation and helped return net overseas migration to near pre-pandemic levels”.
Those measures included increasing minimum English language requirements for student and graduate visas, preventing visitor visa and temporary graduate visa holders from applying for student visas onshore, and ending Covid-era uncapped working hours for international students.
“Student visa lodgements decreased by 26 per cent in the 2024-25 program year compared with 2023-24,” he said.
“Temporary graduate visa lodgements decreased by 31 per cent in that period.
“The majority of bridging visas granted are associated with a substantive visa application, with most applicants having applied for a new visa while they were holding a substantive visa.
“The increase in number of people holding a bridging visa in Australia can be attributed to growth in application volumes for student visas, skills in demand visas, partner visas and employer nomination scheme visas.”
Originally published as Temporary visa holders in Australia surge to record 2.9 million — 10 per cent of population
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