Cockroaches and balconies as bedrooms: How foreign student Valentina survived Sydney
When Chilean national Valentina Olivares arrived in Sydney in 2016 as an international student, the reality of life in Australia was far from the rosy picture painted by migration agents.
She had to work cash-in-hand jobs and didn’t realise she had any employment rights. Then there was the struggle to find liveable accommodation, dealing with bullying landlords and dodgy share houses.
Valentina Olivares, a Chilean international student.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
“The agents say they will support students to find a job and say they have a list of employers with many jobs waiting with good salaries,” she said. “But this is not the reality. People are misled, there is misinformation.”
A new report from the Migrant Workers Centre has found significant problems with migration and education agents’ practices, which are often marred by high costs, low standards of professionalism and incorrect advice.
A survey found 46 per cent of students faced at least one significant problem with the service they used and 36 per cent received incorrect advice.
The report found some international students were directed by education agents into “ghost colleges”, with concern that advice was skewed towards options which offer the adviser the highest commission.
Students reported enrolling in “dodgy” colleges on the advice of agents, not knowing that it primarily served as a means of obtaining visas for work purposes.
“A key finding is that the inherent power imbalance in the client-adviser relationship can be readily exploited during periods of prolonged visa uncertainty,” the report read.
“Migrant workers place considerable trust and confidence in migration advisers, relying heavily on their advice due to a range of barriers that make it difficult to find reliable information about visa options.
‘We are totally unprotected. Politicians are blaming us for the housing crisis but we are not the cause - we are also the victims.’
International student Valentina Olivares
“Alarmingly, this power imbalance is exploited by some advisers for financial gain, often through false or overstated assurances about acquiring more secure visa options.”
The report made several recommendations including that the government establish an education agent register and review commission-based services provided by advisers.
Olivares studied English when she arrived in Australia and struggled to find work, despite assurances from agents that employment was plentiful. She was eventually hired as a waitress and paid cash in hand.
“I didn’t have any type of sick leave or holidays but I didn’t realise I was entitled to rights as a migrant,” she said.
“I thought they were doing me a favour.”
Many international students are dealing with poor conditions.Credit: Oscar Colman
She found the advice from migration agents was often unclear and slow and the real costs of her English course significantly higher than what she had been told.
Affordable accommodation was difficult to find so she shared rooms with housemates to keeps costs down in apartments full of cockroaches. In one of her sharehouses, the landlord even converted the apartment balcony into an extra bedroom, which meant there was no natural light in living areas.
Olivares, who went on to study a master’s degree and is now on a post-study visa, said the landlord had abusive rules and behaviours, “fining” her because she moved a desk from her room to the living room.
“We are totally unprotected,” she said. “Politicians are blaming us for the housing crisis but we are not the cause – we are also the victims.
“No one can afford the cost of living.”
Melanie MacFarlane, chair of the International Students Education Agents Association, said there were unscrupulous operators who took advantage of a very vulnerable cohort.
“But I would say those are the ones who generally go hand in hand with unscrupulous education providers and ghost colleges,” she said.
MacFarlane said the association wanted greater self-regulation, including a requirement that education agents were required to be accredited through global company ICEF.
She opposed the suggestion that education agents be regulated in a similar way to migration agents, which are registered and monitored through the Department of Home Affairs.
Valentina lived in some dirty sharehouses to save money.Credit: Oscar Colman
A recent report by the Australian National Audit Office into the Migration Agents Registration Authority (Omara), overseen by Home Affairs, found agents were not effectively regulated and the authority did not take appropriate action to sanction migration agents.
“If you’ve got the regulatory body who can’t properly handle those complaints and follow them up properly then you’ve got real problems,” MacFarlane said.
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