Labor tightens the screws on student visa switching

Australia’s migration debate has acquired another layer of paperwork, which is often how governments signal that they have decided the loophole was getting a little too comfortable. Labor is moving against so-called visa hopping by international students, while also turning its attention to migration agents and lawyers accused of helping people stretch claims that do not have much, if any, legal weight.

From Friday, international students who want to transfer courses will need to apply for a separate visa. That sits on top of earlier rules that already stop students moving down to a lower-level course, such as shifting from a bachelor’s or master’s degree to a vocational program. The government is also planning that, from 1 July 2027, a student’s visa will not be extended even if the student is changing courses.

The interim rules are tighter still. A student will not be able to transfer within 12 months of starting a course. Julian Hill, the assistant minister for international education, told the Migration Institute of Australia that the aim was to stop the rise of what he called permanently temporary migration. He said Australians would not expect to hop from visa to visa for years or decades in another country and game other nations’ appeals and courts systems, and that guests in Australia should not expect anything different.

Tony Burke, the home affairs minister, said in a social media post that the new rules were intended to end student visa hopping and to ensure Australians could have confidence in the migration system. The government has been forced to make these changes without separate legislation, because it does not have the support of the Coalition or the Greens. That is politics, Australian-style: the ambition is large, the parliamentary arithmetic less so.

The broader aim is plain enough. Labor wants to bring net overseas migration down from almost 300,000 a year to 225,000 by 2028. At the same time, there are now more than 400,000 people on bridging visas, which can be issued when a visa expires and someone is waiting for a decision on a new application, or to asylum seekers and non-citizens. A large share of those cases involves international students applying for a different visa, and the government clearly wants that number reduced.

The crackdown does not stop with students. The government is proposing to ban migration agents from helping with applications they know, or reasonably ought to know, do not have a reasonable factual or legal basis. Hill said the Department of Home Affairs would consult on how migration lawyers could also be held to account for similar poor practices.

He said increasingly sophisticated forms of migration-related misconduct, carried out by a small number of bad actors, were causing disproportionate harm. In his telling, they often target people at vulnerable points in their lives, when misleading claims, false promises and unrealistic assurances are easiest to sell. Taking cash in those circumstances, he said, is not helping people but exploiting them and selling false hope.

Hill also said one lawyer had submitted an application with the intention of it being refused, then appealed it to the administrative appeals tribunal to be refused again, before it was ultimately submitted for ministerial intervention. He added that there had been outrageous online advertising by lawyers, including ads that appeared to coach people on how to claim they were bisexual when they were not, or how to convince the department they were being persecuted when they were not, in order to support a protection claim.

The government’s message is not subtle. It wants fewer course changes, fewer dubious claims and fewer ways for the migration system to be used as a waiting room with better branding. Whether the new rules will do the job is another question, but the political direction is clear enough: Labor wants a system that looks less permanently temporary and more like a system with actual limits.

Written by Christiane Hofreiter christiane.hofreiter@alpineweekly.com