Education agents say the government’s visa application crackdown has become extreme and is causing panic among universities and other providers.
Australian private colleges are blacklisting students from entire countries as part of an unprecedented reaction to the government’s visa crackdown.
Imagine Education Australia, a vocational college and English language school, wrote to agents this month and said it would only be accepting applicants from Europe and 11 other countries due to uncertainty around visa grant rates and wait times. Kaplan Business College also contacted agents, saying it had paused all applications from Pakistan and Nigeria. “KBS has determined that all outstanding applications from offshore Pakistan and Nigerian applicants are no longer likely to meet the criteria to be granted a student visa to study in Australia,” it read. “A number of Australian Universities have also had to make this difficult decision and are conducting the same process with their own student applicants and holders.
Her company operates largely in Latin America and has experienced a huge surge in visa rejections among Colombian students, which she said was about 70 per cent since the start of the year.