Visitors ‘rorting’ system

THOUSANDS of foreign nationals meant to be in Australia on short-term study visas are spending up to a decade in the workforce with authorities powerless to stop the rort.

A NewsCorp investigation into student visas has discovered a system in crisis with rejected international students spending years appealing Department of Home Affairs decisions that they have to leave.

While they wait for their appeals to be heard the rejected students, who in some cases are not even enrolled in a course, are spending years on bridging visas which give them unlimited work rights.

There are now more than 10,000 students waiting for the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to review their cases, with a big backlog blowing out migration hearing times to an average of 77 weeks.

But Attorney-General Christian Porter said the Government has “already taken action to help address the workload of the Migration and Refugee Division of the AAT, by appointing 33 additional members”.

Another 11,000 migration matters – many of which are student visa appeals – are now clogging the Federal Circuit Court, blowing out their average trial times to an incredible 18 months.

In one remarkable case, an AAT member outlined how waiting times can see applicants manipulate the system.

One Vietnamese “student” who arrived while John Howard was prime minister now has a four-year-old child born in Australia that could see her win permanent residency if she can delay her case until 2025.

Children born in Australia to foreign nationals get citizenship at age 10.

There has been an explosion in student visa applications in the past three years, from about 375,000 in 2016-17 to more than 473,000 in the past financial year.

Less than 10 per cent of those are rejected, with the booming international student economy now worth $38 billion a year to the country’s economy.

Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge said the “overwhelming majority of international students come to Australia, conduct their studies and return home”.

But he said that there had been more scrutiny of applications which resulted in more refusals.

Many of those people make up the 216,000 foreigners with bridging visas.