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October 24, 2011 – No impact studies done on latest Australian migration visa for students’ arrangement!

Last September 22, 2011 – more than 2 months after Michael Knight AO’s report, the Strategic Review of the Student Visa Program 2011 with 41 recommendations was reported to the Australian Government, the immigration to Australia Minister, Chris Bowen MP, and Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations, Senator Chris Evans, released Mr. Knight’s report to the public.

On that same day, the Australian Government announced that it supports in principle all of Mr. Knight’s 41 recommendations, with a few modifications. Implementation of the majority of the recommendations are expected to be between October 2011 and mid 2012, with some other changes expected to commence in early 2013. Some of the reforms included are streamlining of Australian student visa approval for university study from next year and work rights after graduation which is calculated to make Australia more competitive in the global marketplace.

However, it was discovered, after more than two months to consider the likely effect of the changes of the Australia student visa to the number of migration to Australia visa for students applications, that no government agency has tried to determine the impact of the new visa arrangements recommended in the Knight review of the student visa program and their effect on overseas student numbers.

This was confirmed by a spokesman of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) who stated that DIAC, which was charged with applying a new “double genuine” test to visa applicants, hasn’t done any modeling of the impact on student visa numbers.

Moreover, the spokeswoman also said that Austrade, which was recently given carriage of international marketing of education, had also not done any modeling and had no plans for any at this stage.

According to Dr. Birrell, the recent discovery of no modeling is disturbing and he is afraid that what happened during the 2005-08 cooks and hairdresser’s boom, when vocational colleges were in effect selling access to permanent residency showing the cheapest and quickest qualifications, would happen again.

However, the government, in an attempt to cover itself partly, stated that it will hold universities responsible for the Australia migration outcomes of the new scheme and post-study work rights will be scrapped if local labor markets became too tight.

source:
theaustralian.com.au