The Department of Home Affairs should steadiness granting customer visas and restrict the misuse of this program to bypass offshore visa utility processes, writes Dr Abul Rizvi.
MOST VISITOR VISAS are designed to allow a brief go to of three months or much less, primarily for tourism, enterprise or household go to functions. While speedy processing is a key objective, excessive ranges of holiday makers extending keep after arrival are actually a significant contributor to present file web migration, now approaching 500,000. This works towards the speedy processing objective.
In 2022, guests extending keep after arrival for greater than 12 months contributed round 18% (69,430) to the then file web migration stage of 386,970. This was a lot larger than, for instance, everlasting migrants who solely contributed 14% (53,430). The largest contribution was from abroad college students at 57%.
The all-time file contribution of holiday makers to web migration was in 2019 at 100,280 or an astonishing 40% of web migration, a few of this could have been the impact of worldwide border closures though the contribution of holiday makers to web migration was trending up effectively earlier than the pandemic. It was 60,810 or 24% in 2018.
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A high contribution of visitors to net migration generally reflects a visa system that is not operating efficiently or is being undermined by people trying to bypass the proper offshore visa processes (often assisted by migration agents or lawyers, whether registered or unregistered).
In 2022-2023, visitor visa applications and grants increased steadily, backlogs were cleared, processing times improved but grant rates fell significantly. This is likely a response by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) to rising concerns with the integrity of the visitor visa program, especially after the labour trafficking scam from 2015 until the pandemic and the rise in visitors extending stay long-term after arrival.
If the Government is to get net migration down to the long-term assumption of 235,000 per annum (assumed by Treasury under both major parties but not viewed as a target), management of visitor visas will be one area where policy will need to be tightened noting that overall visitor applications and grants in 2022-2023 were still well below pre-pandemic levels
Table 1: Visitor applications lodged by nationality
Visitor applications lodged in 2022-23 were almost two million below the record year of 2018-19. Source nationalities that were still below their pre-pandemic levels included China, UK, USA, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore and Germany.
These will rise again in 2023-2024, especially from China as group tours under the Approved Destination Status scheme resume with the thawing of the Australia-China relationship. India and Vietnam were the only major source nations with visitor applications well above their pre-pandemic levels in 2022-23.
Table 2: Visitor visa grants by nationality
In terms of visa grants, the UK, USA, China, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan and Germany were well below their pre-pandemic peaks. On the other hand, India, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia were above their pre-pandemic peaks. Grant rates for visitor applications overall fell significantly from 85.3% in June quarter of 2022 to 74.3% in June quarter of 2023.
Table 3: Visitor Visa Grant Rates
This may well be a response to the high rate at which visitors were extending stay after arrival noting that visitors from most nations are assessed against the ‘genuine visit’ requirement.
Unfortunately, the Government does not publish data on the different types of visas visitors are accessing after arrival and the process for accessing this data via freedom of information is both costly and slow.
The visas visitors could potentially access after arrival include:
- Student visas, particularly to avoid the level of scrutiny applied to student visa applicants offshore;
- Working holiday maker visas;
- Temporary work visas;
- Permanent visas; or
- Asylum.
Restoring visa integrity an essential political operation
Restoring integrity in our problematic visa system will be a difficult process, but a necessary one in order to win back the public’s confidence.
It is notable that some of the countries with the largest increase in refusal rates are also those with high rates of unmeritorious asylum applications including India, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Fiji. Unfortunately, DHA has not published data for Malaysia as well a range of other Pacific Island nations which have also been major contributors to unmeritorious asylum applications.
Going forward, DHA will need to find a balance between facilitating rapid entry of genuine visitors while limiting the extent to which the visitor visa program is used to bypass offshore applications for the appropriate visa and thus contribute to a high level of net migration.
Excessive tightening would lead to a backlash from the tourism industry, business lobby groups and migrant communities wanting their families to visit.
A tricky balancing act.
Dr Abul Rizvi is an IA columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.