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Immigration Daily News ELICOS schools in prostitution racket and DIBP says it is unaware of this scam
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ELICOS schools in prostitution racket and DIBP says it is unaware of this scam
Is unregistered migration practice helping women from Hong Kong pose as English language students to gain entry into Australia to work in the country's lucrative sex trade? According to a report in the South China Morning Post (SCMP) a spokesman for the Australian department of immigration said it was not aware of language schools being used as fronts for illegal sex work however women's advocated groups say the problem is rampant.
The DIBP spokesmen, oddly enough, pointed out to the SCMP that those on student visas could legally work for up to 20 hours per week while attending classes. Prostitution is legal in Australia. Does DIBP see the issue then as working in excess of 20 hours?
Women's advocate groups in Hong Kong warn that these young women lured into Australia by syndicates risk falling into sex slavery and debt bondage.
“The practice has been going on for several years and some schools are complicit in facilitating the work, according to sex workers' associations and sources close to the prostitutes,” states the report referring to sources from women’s advocate groups in Hong Kong.
The Australian media also recently highlighted the issue noting that perceived higher wages and an easier lifestyle have long lured Asian sex workers to Australia. A University of New South Wales study found that more than half of Sydney's prostitutes were Asian.
"In the past three weeks, I have met up with 17 new ladies who have travelled to Sydney from Hong Kong on student paperwork supplied by the school, so they can enter Sydney and commence working in brothels," according to an unnamed SCMP source who claimed to have helped the women settle in Australia. The women typically hailed from towns in the New Territories and can earn about HK$60,000 (AU$10,000) per week by working seven-day weeks in Sydney's brothels, the SCMP source said.
Paperwork from the schools helped them pass immigration but was quickly discarded upon arrival, said the source, adding that the women even joked about not attending class.
According to Zi Teng, a Hong Kong-based women's rights group, Australia has long been a popular destination for Hong Kong sex workers and the practice of using language schools as a cover was not new.
"It's been going on for several years. Some of the schools know about it. It depends on the so-called agents," a spokeswoman for the group said. The agents often connect the women in Hong Kong with the schools in Australia. "The agents are usually ethnic Chinese with permanent resident status in Australia," the spokeswoman said.
The brothels encouraged women to convince friends in Hong Kong to join the industry, both the spokeswoman and the source said. The spokeswoman said many women were willing to take risks for the promise of more money. "It's like gambling," she said.
A 2013 case involving four women from Malaysia helped illuminate the use of student visas in the sex trade. The four, lured to Sydney with promises of an education, were told they owed A$5,000 (HK$30,500) each, and put to work for up to 17 hours a day in a legal brothel. Brothel-keeper Chee Mei Wong was jailed for six years for offences including visa violations.
Comments
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Thursday, 05 March 2015I have been a Solicitor for 26 years and immediately before that I worked in Investigations Branch and Compliance.
This scam was operating then ( 26 years ago) and continues to operate today. The solution to this exploitation is to impose a new schedule 8 condition regarding work.
this is what condition 8106 would look like if amended and it could be imported in to every visa where there is a permission to work:
"The holder must engage in work in Australia which is directly relevant to the conduct of the business or in the case of a student is not otherwise proscribed by legislative instrument."
This would require the Minister to create a legislative instrument ( I can draft that too if you like) which then specifies that students are prohibited from being employed in or associated with the occupation of sex worker.
This would create a proper basis for the exercise of powers under section 116 to cancel and in the case where an employer was found to be employing a person on a student visa contrary to the conditions of their visa to be caught by the aid and abet provisions of the Crimes Act 1914....I can frame the indictment too if need be.
This is a no brainer, the difficulty here is a lack of will...as they say in the classics "NO GUTS NO GLORY".
i feel sorry for these students who find themselves working as "sex workers" to pay for their study. it isn't work and it isn't sexy.
Immigration blog
It is common knowledge that the sex industry has used the student visa pathway to facilitate prostitutes working in Australia. There have been reported cases where "study rooms" are set up in brothels to ensure that the "student" could not be accused of working more than the 40 hours per fortnight so it could be legitimately claimed that she was not "working" for the total hours she was on the premises.
Several years ago there was a case of a registered migration agent operating from an office in Sussex Street who had lodged thousands of identical applications for protection visas with the sole purpose of extending the time in Australia the cancelled student visa applicants could work as prostitutes.
Even the huge costs of FMC and High Court challenges do not deter the use of such as stalling tactics to facilitate a further several years of obscene profits.
All very sad but very true.