The asylum backdoor system for international students should be closed

International students have been refilling Australian university coffers since the pandemic, but the new boom has seen coteries of undergraduates enter the country on visas, only to then seek asylum.

The number of international students applying for sanctuary has increased threefold in six years. Student protection claims have jumped from 5 to 15 per cent of the national asylum-seeker caseload since 2018, with 357 applications last May, up from 239 in April and 315 in March, the surge adding to a record-breaking backlog of 40,000 people overall looking for safe haven in Australia.

Department of Home Affairs figures, obtained exclusively by the Herald’s Angus Thompson, show Chinese nationals consistently lead the monthly figures for student protection claims: 3555 Chinese students applied for protection in the five years to May, compared to 1788 Malaysians and 1112 Indians. However, nearly 94 per cent of Chinese visa applications were granted, against 66 per cent for Indian applicants and 76 per cent for Colombians.

Asylum seekers, workers and visitors have long attempted backdoor entry to Australia, and the unprecedented numbers of students now trying the gambit is perplexing. The requests for asylum have hit the university sector, already beset by a number of overseas student scandals, including rorting the entry system with fake secondary school diplomas and English-language tests, prompting universities to consider stricter rules for Chinese nationals.

Former deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration Abul Rizvi predicted asylum claims would continue to grow as a result of restrictions on visa-hopping and the Albanese government’s slated student caps to reduce overseas migration. He also linked the number of Chinese students being granted asylum to the fact that they constitute the majority of the international intake by the most prestigious tertiary institutions – the Group of Eight universities.

At 21 per cent of all international students, Chinese students are specially important to universities’ bottom lines. After iron ore, coal and natural gas, international students are Australia’s fourth-largest export industry, with the higher education system reaping $34 billion each year from tuition fees alone.

Last December, in a bid to stem the flow of students coming into the country, a range of new regulations were introduced, including a stricter English-language test for students; a toughening of the “genuine student test”, which attempts to weed out applicants not genuinely interested in studying; a crackdown on students moving from universities to the vocational sector, which allows them to work more; and restricting access to visas after graduation that permit students to stay on and work.

But the growth in students seeking asylum is new territory. The Albanese government quite properly is being urged to overhaul the risk-based system as it slashes migration. Undoubtedly, some claims will be legitimate, some not. And in the overall scheme of immigration, the number of university asylum claims is small.

But the uptick in asylum seekers who obtain visas to enter Australia under the guise of studying feeds concerns the overall system is ripe for rorting.

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