Australia was the best option when Ali Bajwa, originally from Pakistan, wanted to pursue a doctorate in agricultural sciences. The research in the field was avant -garde, universities were highly classified and students abroad were welcome in the country, where international education has been called “the greatest export that we do not fall from the ground.”
Mr. Bajwa arrived a decade ago, specialized in weed control. He brought his family, everyone became naturalized citizens. He spent years in Wagga Wagga, a rural city, working for the state government and continued research in weed sciences. Now he teaches at the University of La Trobe in Melbourne and owns.
But those who expect to follow Mr. Bajwa face a new reality.
The politicians on both sides of the hall have resorted to limit the number of international students as a way of controlling insequible homes, a crisis that is at the top of the minds of voters before the elections of the coming months. The argument is that this will reduce the demand for rents and home homes and reduce prices. It is an important change for Australia, whose economy deepens mining, but that one saw education as a “super growth sector” and tried to compete for students with the United States, Great Britain and Canada.
“We won much more than we lose with international students,” said Mr. Bajwa, 35. “There should be much more focus on improving the criteria or selection requirements than a general prohibition or limiting the number.”
Last year, the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sought to impose a limit on international students, but failed to approve legislation. Since then, students and slow processing rates have increased, reducing the arrival of students from abroad. The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has pledged to impose much stricter restrictions on international students, reducing the number by another 30,000, by a limit of 240,000 newcomers per year, and more that triple the maximum visa rates to UP00.
Strict border controls Duration The coronavirus pandemic kept many international students outside. But Australia made a concerted effort to recover them, temporarily eliminating labor restrictions and offering reimbursements on visa rates. That led to a record of students who arrived in the country in 2023 and 2024, and the registration of total international students exceeded one million for the first time last year.
In September, Mr. Dutton spoke of students who request to remain in the country after their titles as “the modern version of boat arrivals”, in an apparent reference to refugees and asylum seekers.
Australia has long benefited from immigration, which has promoted its younger workforce and demography. About 30 percent of its population was born abroad, and almost half was finally born to parents abroad.
But the views have changed, and not only here. The United States is analyzing and revoking students visas drastically, launching the right to study in the country as a privilege that can be apparently arbitrarily tasks; Canada has stopped the influx of students from abroad; Great Britain has installed new restrictions that said it would prevent people from using student visas to come to the country.
Australia had allowed for a long time and even encouraged the main universities to depend on international students to expand their campus and research programs. Foreigners pay much higher rates than national students and contribute a substantial part of school income.
“International students in Australia had been used for a long time as a form of export industry,” said Peter Hurley, professor of educational policy at the University of Victoria. “In the same way that they promote the sheep industry, it is the same with international education.”
The subsequent increase to the pandemic in international students coincided with an acute crisis of housing housing in Australia. The values of the homes have been fired compared to revenues, increasing around 45 percent since 2020. Sydney was the second most affordable city in the world after Hong in 2023, based on a comparison of medium -sized housing prices with medium revenues.
Although multiple factors have contributed to the crunch in the supply of housing, including labor shortages, the increase in construction costs and regulatory problems, international students have made a convenient segment and not voting to point as a quick solution for politicians.
That feeling was reflected in a question presented to Mr. Albanian, of the Labor Party of the Izquierdo Center, and Mr. Dutton, who directs the Liberal Party, in his first debate on this electoral cycle.
“We have many students who are visiting who are buying homes within the city area,” said a 74 -year -old woman named Janine, who said she was worried about the ability of their children and granddaughter to pay a home. “When will one of our governments appear and say, Australia belongs to the Australians?”
Andrew Norton, a professor of Higher Education Policy at Monash Business School, said there was no doubt that the number of students who arrived in the country, many of them who wanted to remain in the country after graduation, contributed to the side of housing demand.
At the same time, he said, the current peak is a cover due to the duration of accumulated demand, pandemic and ferwer students return home. The proposed limits, he added, would be a short -term solution instead of the most reflexive and integral migration policy reform that is needed.
Critics have also pointed out that international students largely occupy apartments and share concentrated houses near the universities that would generally be the types of houses sought by housing buyers for the first time.
Clifford Suryana, a fourth year student at the University of Sydney, studying law and commerce that is from Surabaya, Indonesia, said he had learned English from Australian teachers who lived in his hometown. When it was time to think about university, he said he felt a general affinity for Australia and that also, although there were commercial and diplomatic ties with Indonesia that would go to career opportunities.
Many of their fellow international students, who represent almost half of the student body at the University of Sydney and represent four fifths of school enrollment rates, contribute much more to the Australian society of what they take from it, he said.
“Most of them because working in Australia or returning to their original country with knowledge they obtained from Australia,” he said. “In my perspective, that would only be good for Australia.”
