Incoherent student visa policies are undermining economic growth and helping to convert Australia into a ¡°low-skilled guest worker society¡±, according to immigration expert Abul Rizvi.

Dr Rizvi has warned that the recent removal of limits on overseas students¡¯ working hours risks subverting international education and reviving the problems of over a decade ago, when enrolments were motivated by migration and work opportunities rather than course quality.

He said foreign students were increasingly competing for low-skilled jobs with backpackers, Pacific Island agricultural labourers and ¡°trafficked asylum seekers¡±, amid rampant exploitation and wage theft.

All this ran counter to the policy imperative of recruiting ¡°high-performing students¡± to feed skilled migration and fuel Australia¡¯s economic and population growth.

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Addressing a University of Melbourne??on higher education students¡¯ experiences, Dr Rizvi said Australia¡¯s public attitudes and policies towards foreign students had long been contradictory.

He said students had underpinned a skilled migration push that had ¡°made Australia the youngest, most diverse and ¨C until Covid ¨C the fastest growing population in the developed world¡±. Yet international students who stayed on had been decried as ¡°back-door¡± migrants, even during the early 2000s when the link between student visa policy and migration had been ¡°very explicit¡±.

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An August??from parliament¡¯s Joint Standing Committee on Migration concluded that Australia should strive to convince ¡°the best and brightest international students¡­to stay here, particularly to fill persistent skills shortages in the economy¡±. Yet Dr Rizvi said the ¡°genuine temporary entry requirement¡± in student visa applications suggested that people ¡°harbouring thoughts of permanent migration¡± should be rejected.

A Department of ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Affairs??says the requirement is not intended to exclude students who apply for permanent residence after developing skills that ¡°Australia needs¡±. But it also insists that the student visa programme ¡°is not a way for international students to maintain ongoing residency in Australia¡±.

Dr Rizvi, a special adviser with strategic consultants Michelson Alexander and a former immigration department deputy secretary, said ¡°the government wants to have it a bit each way¡±.

He said Canberra¡¯s aspiration to rebuild net overseas migration to about 235,000 a year, as articulated in the?, would be ¡°impossible to deliver without a very strong contribution from overseas students¡±.

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But that contribution looked increasingly unlikely, with Chinese students leaving Australia at twice the rate of other nationalities, and applications from India and Nepal declining ¡°significantly¡± even before the pandemic.

Dr Rizvi said international education was being undermined by the poaching of students and worker exploitation that had ¡°overwhelmed¡± the Fair Work Ombudsman ¨C a problem likely to escalate, with Australia expanding the Pacific Labour Scheme for low-skilled islanders and flagging an agricultural worker visa akin to widely criticised guest worker schemes of the US and Europe.

¡°We now have students with unlimited work rights in tourism, hospitality, retail and agriculture,¡± Dr Rizvi said. ¡°That is a fundamental change to Australian society. It¡¯s a fundamental change I thought Australia would never make.¡±

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com