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Crackdown on student visa rorters from India and Nepal
Higher education provider Navitas saw $100 million wiped from its shares listed on the stock exchange despite posting a strong increase in earnings. Investors sold-off of on warnings that growth rates in the coming years may be slowing down due to several factors including the crackdown on student visa rorters.
Navitas has written off its Indian recruitment business Study Overseas and the Navitas Resources Institute in the second half of the year, according to a report in The Australian.
Other media reports indicate that a key factor for the write-down is tougher assessments of applicants from Nepal and India. Both universities and the department of immigration consider these countries high risk markets for visa rorts, said the group's chief executive Rod Jones.
"We initially had significant enrolments from countries like Nepal and India," Mr Jones told the AAP. "However, we made a deliberate decision four months ago to reduce those enrolments because we saw lot of the students were not genuine in that they were interested in migration rather than education."
He however said India, alongside China and Vietnam, continues to be one of its biggest markets.
Earlier, the Australian reported that there was increasing evidence that students were entering the country by enrolling in a government-approved university or college under the streamlined visa processing programme, and then jumping ship to a cheap private college to finish their qualification at a fraction of the cost while remaining eligible for post-study work rights.
The report also stated that the Immigration Department wrote to some 1400 students who had left SVP-approved institutions before completion but were still in the country, warning them of the risk of visa cancellation for a breach of their visa conditions.
A DIBP spokesperson told The Australian, “The department continues to closely examine subsequent onshore visa applications from students engaged in course-hopping,” she said. “Where these applications are found to be non-genuine, consideration is also being given to cancelling the student’s existing visa.”
Comments
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Wednesday, 29 July 2015Happy to leave a comment and provide inputs. I lost 2 clients because the 'prestigious' University does not 'deal with onshore' Registered Migration Agents (RMAs) and prefer to deal with off shore (read home country) "Education Consultants" or 'Agents' who are off course non-regulated. I guess it's a $19 Billion education business and the education industry does not want 'due diligence' from us RMAs.
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Thursday, 30 July 2015
Interesting outlook by the college and sadly they, as well as other Universities, do not deal with Onshore Migration Agents. Making the colleges accountable for the actions of their agents or subagents did nothing to stop this abuse. No agency enforced any of the requirements for Universities, TAFE's or RTO's to manage their agents and accept responsibility for their agent's actions. Immigration did affect the Universities and some RTO's to some extent with classifications of their performance with visa grants and visa compliance.
The applicants from some countries do look for the easiest way around the rules to reduce costs and gain maximum benefit. India and Nepal are on the top of the list and lets not forget Indian Applicants started applying through Nepal about 8 years or more ago because it was easier to apply from Nepal than India.
Here's a point though. What is wrong with a student coming to Australia or any other country for that matter, to study and take advantage of visa options for Permanent Residency if they then qualify for the visa/s. Since it is built into the visa system how can it be wrong to want to do this?? And if they don't qualify, going home as required?
Immigration blog
This is not the applicants problem because they are mislead by unregistered people as well as unscrupulous education agents working in those countries. There are many genuine students but they get poor advise. IDP which is one of the biggest education agents in India has no registered migration agents stationed in India to provide genuine advise to students.