Immigration officials have put up the shutters against students from the subcontinent, causing the first setback in the education sector’s comeback from its 2009 crash, notes a report from The Australian

Student visa grants to these countries fell in the June quarter, after the crackdown on students from India, Vietnam and Nepal by the department of Immigration (DIBP).

Inadequate visa applications by unqualified brokers which fail to properly address the genuine student criteria is often cited as the reason why so many applications from these countries are failing.

Student Visa grants to these countries fell last year by 13 per cent, 18 per cent and 16 per cent respectively. In addition to these refusals, the DIBP cancelled a record 11,000 student visas in the last financial year, which is a 30 per cent increase in the number of cancellations from the previous year.

Already facing a current shortage of 38,000 workers, the tourism industry woes are set to drift into dire straits if it doesn’t find an extra 123,000 workers - including 60,000 skilled workers - by 2020, according to a report by Deloitte Access Economics commissioned by Austrade.

A key recommendation of the report was to relax working-holiday visas for tourism sector work so that visa holders have no restrictions on staying on with the same employer beyond six months and are allowed to extend their stay for a further 12 months for working in the industry.

Former ACTU president cabinet minister Martin Ferguson told The Australian Financial Review (AFR) that the government must be flexible and allow temporary skilled workers when and where they are most needed.

"…with such an unprecedented pipeline of new hotel development and with record international demand, it will be important for governments to be flexible and allow temporary skilled workers when and where they are most needed,” said Mr Ferguson.

Tourism and Transport Forum chief executive Margy Osmond, told the AFR that the report should ring "alarm bells" about the need to attract and retain workers in the tourism industry.

"The Australian government recently announced that they will extend working-holidaymaker visas from six months to 12 months with one employer in Northern Australia – this reform needs to be expanded to cover the entire country," she said.

Following the governments swift action to deport hundreds of non-citizens with a ‘substantial’ criminal record, media reports say the ‘outlaw bikie gang members are rushing to file citizenship to avoid being deported.”

It is estimated that some 400 people linked to organised crime on the federal government’s National Criminal Threat Database are non-citizens, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph. DIBP is in the process of cross-referencing people on such databases to determine if they could be deported.

The government has already cancelled the visas of over 500 foreigners, since July last year. The cancellations have given little or no regard to the length of time they spent in Australia nor the effect of the cancellation on their Australian born partner and children. All it seems to take for the minister to make the call to deport them is if they had been sentenced to a year in jail or were the subject of criminal intelligence suggesting they were a threat to the community.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said in just June he cancelled the visas of 57 criminals and had them removed from Australia or prevented them from returning to Australia.

DIBP figures revealed that New Zealanders make up more than half of the foreigners who have had their visas cancelled. This is followed by citizens of the United Kingdom.

In a move to encourage both Working Holiday (Subclass 417) and Work and Holiday (Subclass 462) visa holders to undertake work in northern Australia the government has announced that such visa holders will be able to apply to work for a single employer for up to 12 months, compared to the usual limit of six months.

From November 21, 2015, Working Holiday Maker (WHM) visa holders who secure work in certain high demand industries in northern Australia will be able to remain with their employer for up to 12 months.

The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton said the changes - an initiative of the Government’s recent White Paper on Developing Northern Australia - will be of significant benefit to the agriculture and tourism sectors in the north of the country.

“These industries are highly seasonal and rely on short term workers to provide labour flexibility in peak periods,” Mr Dutton said.

The changes will also apply to work in northern Australia in aged and disability care, construction and mining.

An 8-year long study, described as one of the most comprehensive studies on immigration in Australia, has found that Australians strongly support immigration and multiculturalism. Support for immigration is particularly strong among young Australians but it dwindles in regions outside capital cities.

Australia is a ‘stable and cohesive society’ with indicators of social cohesion improving particularly in recent years. This is the conclusion of researchers from the Scanlon Foundation, who tracked for 8 years, public attitudes on various social issues including immigration, multiculturalism, discrimination, and belonging, and mapped the national mood via the Scanlon-Monash Index of Social Cohesion.

“The upward trend in the social cohesion index shows that overall, Australia remains a stable and highly cohesive society,” noted the report’s author Professor Andrew Markus.

“It shows experience of discrimination based on ethnic background and religion has lessened from 18% to 15% since last year, and there continues to be a high level of acceptance of immigration and cultural diversity.