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December 19, 2011 – Are you a Latin American student wishing to apply for an Australia student visa? If you are processing your Australia visa application for students, this is good news!

The Australian government is welcoming Latin American college students and inviting them to study in Australia!

As the U.S. government is making it more increasingly difficult for Latin Americans to obtain student visas, Australia is making it easier for these Latin American college students to get Australian visa application for students.

College fairs attended by representatives from the country’s colleges are showing up at places like Brazil, Chile, Peru, Venezuela and Colombia. They even have an elaborate Spanish-language website set up that ask Latin Americans if they want to study in Australia.

Moreover, the Australian government is also taking part in the attempt to increase the enrollment from Latin American countries. The country is now easing Australian student visa restrictions for higher education students and offering more scholarships to Latinos.

Margaret Gardener, Chair of the Education Advisory Group of the Council for Australia-Latin America Relations, stated that the immigration to Australia event for students has been a big and concerted effort and has made quite a difference.

This initiative began in 2000, when an Australian governmental trade committee presented a report detailing the importance of South America. However, the committee’s conclusion, that a 1992 government recommendation to position Australia in Latin America because the continent was expected to be “a significant economic force”, went unnoticed. As a result, an aggressive stance to build relationships in part through education was undertaken by the Australian government.

The government’s effort had paid off that in 2004, 7,500 Latin Americans studied in Australia. And in 2007, that number jumped to over 20,000 making them the most successful international country in trying to recruit Latin Americans.

According to the Association of International Educators, the reason for the concerted efforts was revenue. In the U.S., $20.23 billion was added to the U.S. economy in the 2010-2011 academic years by the foreign students and their dependents alone.

Though the United States still receives a lion’s share of international students, the number has increasingly been dropping over the last decade. This is attributed to U.S. visa regulations which have remained tight and the increasingly prohibitive cost of education.

According to Francisco Marmolejo, executive director of the Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration, Latin American students are not coming just to the U.S. anymore due to the fact that the U.S. natural allure may not be enough to compete with the efforts made by other countries.

source:
latino.foxnews.com