UOW given explanation for spike in student visa rejection rate

Now the university is calling for students who have had their visas rejected to get in touch.

The comments come as a migration expert said their business has had a serious hit with almost 50 per cent of all visa applications being rejected in the last month.

UOW Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor Alex Frino met with senior officials from the department earlier this week to discuss the current visa refusal rate.

"We were obviously concerned that based on the reports we were getting from different places, rejections had been high," Mr Frino said.

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The initial concern, he said, was that UOW was the only institution facing this issue.

"That's not the case at all, the rejection has been spiking at 15 per cent throughout the whole sector," he said.

Home Affairs officials told Mr Frino the rejections come as a result of the visa applications backlog and shortage of staff.

"During the year when they were processing huge volumes of visas, due to capacity constraints they put the difficult applications aside and decided to first deal with the easy straightforward ones," he said.

Mr Frino said the "difficult applications" were applications with incomplete information or ones requiring further investigation.

"And now that they are coming back to these applications they put aside, there are more rejections obviously," he said.

The UOW official said he had been assured by home affairs that the "difficult" applications had almost all been dealt with.

A Department of Home Affairs spokesperson said, "the Department works closely with all education sectors to ensure the quality of international education in Australia is maintained and to support providers to attract genuine students."

"The Department will refuse visa applications where fraud is presented," the spokesperson said.

Mr Frino is urging students to seek assistance from UOW if their visas have been rejected, and his comments were backed up by a tweet from Vice Chancellor Patricia Davidson.

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"You get a visa rejected, it's not the end of the world, there's various things you can do and you need to take advice," he said.

Migration agent Savtantar Kumar said the latest topic of conversation among the consultants' network had been the worry about the "unbelievable" visa rejections.

"We are worried about the future of international students and the industry as well," he said.

The Melbourne agent who helps students apply for universities all over Australia said his business had taken a serious hit with almost 50 per cent of all applications being rejected in the past month.

"It looks like visa officers have no clue and some bureaucrats have just provided them with a few guidelines for accepting and refusing applications," Mr Kumar said.

Mr Kumar described the process of filing a student visa application a complex and time-taking one.

"Students provide extensive evidence of financial stability, character, educational qualifications, identity proof, family status and intentions after course completion and if even after that they get refused, then I really don't know what's the solution here," he said.

The answer to both critical skills shortage and general labour shortage, Mr Kumar said, are international students.

"These actions seem to be short-sighted. International students play an important role in the Australian economy," he said.

The Department of Home Affairs has been involving its global visa officers to help process huge volumes of visa applications.

"The Department is drawing flexibly on its global network of visa officers to process applications in line with the Government's priority to process visas as efficiently as possible and reduce the visa backlog," a departmental spokesperson said.

Mr Kumar said the recent rejections highlight inexperience, with seemingly rigid refusal instructions from higher up.

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