Student from India, Nepal and Sri Lanka have had their request for student visa for Australia's vocational to higher education declined.
The international visa for vocational students in India, Nepal and Pakistan has dropped to less than one in four. The Australian visa authorities are concerned about these applicants’ bona fides, as per various reports.
Visa grant rates for vocational education students have been below 50 per cent for most of 2022.
Only 3.8 per cent, that is 34 out of more than 900 student applications in vocational study were approved.
As of July 2022, 96,000 Indian students were studying in Australia, forming the second largest group of foreign students after China.
Australian immigration authorities have traditionally subjected offshore VET applicants to a high degree of scrutiny and hence there has been a high refusal rate
In higher education too, success rate declined to 56 per cent for Indian students, 57 per cent for Pakistani students. Meanwhile, Nepali students received only 33 per cent of visas in higher education and 15 per cent of visas in vocational education.
Australia's Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has recently called immigration system 'clunky, expensive, and is just not working.'
She has announced that former treasury secretary Martin Parkinson, lawyer Joanna Howe and consultant John Azarias would lead a “comprehensive review” of Australia’s migration system.
A registered migration agent based in Melbourne, Vishal Sharma who has clients from India nad Nepal said that a significant number of visas which are refused on basis of non-genuine entrant
“There has been a significant number of visas which are refused on basis of non-genuine entrant without even properly considering the circumstances of genuine students who were planning to study in Australia,” said Sharma to The Australia Today
However, he agreed that there has been a Mafia of dodgy agents operating in the Indian subcontinent which has been trying to arrange visas on basis of fake documents.
The Australian government has attempted to redress visa processing delays by recruiting more new staff and also redistributing the processing workload.
Further, Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), the Australian higher education regulator, has also warned Australian institutions to monitor the activities of their education agents and the international students they enroll.
