How Foreign Students Lost Their Sheen in a Nation of Immigrants

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/world/australia/international-students-caps.html

https://archive.ph/2Y61G

How Foreign Students Lost Their Sheen in a Nation of Immigrants
Both major political parties are pledging steep cuts on the number of foreigners allowed to study in Australia as a way to rein in runaway housing prices.
By Victoria Kim
April 27, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET

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Last year, the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sought to to impose a limit on international students but failed to pass legislation. It has since increased student visa fees and slowed processing, reducing the arrival of students from overseas. The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has pledged to put far stricter restrictions on international students, slashing the number by a further 30,000, for a cap of 240,000 new arrivals a year — and more than tripling the maximum visa fees to up to 5,000 Australian dollars, about $3,200.

Strict border controls during the coronavirus pandemic kept many international students out. But Australia then made a concerted effort to bring them back — temporarily removing work restrictions and offering rebates on visa fees. That led to a record surge of students arriving in the country in 2023 and 2024, with total international student enrollment topping a million for the first time last year.

In September, Mr. Dutton spoke of students who apply to remain in the country after their degrees as “the modern version of the boat arrivals,” in an apparent reference to refugees and asylum seekers.

Australia has long benefited from immigration, which has boosted its labor force and younger demography. About 30 percent of its population was born overseas, and nearly half has at least one parent born overseas.

But views have shifted, and not just here. The United States is scrutinizing and revoking student visas in drastic fashion, casting the right to study in the country as a privilege that can be taken away seemingly arbitrarily; Canada has put the brakes on the influx of students from abroad; Britain has installed new restrictions that it said would prevent people from using student visas to come work in the country.

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