Australia has announced sweeping changes to its migration system, tightening visa rules for international students and backpackers as the government moves to reduce net migration and ease pressure on housing and infrastructure.
The new measures, unveiled on Thursday by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, will prevent most international students from bringing spouses, partners and children to Australia while studying, except for some students from Pacific Island and Southeast Asian nations and certain categories such as doctoral candidates.
Under the new rules, foreign students will no longer be allowed to bring partners and children to join them while they study in Australia, and people who overstay their working holiday visas will face tougher enforcement.
The government is also cracking down on so-called “visa hopping,” where foreign migrants who are already in Australia move from one type of temporary visa to another to extend their stay.
“If you want to come on a temporary basis to Australia, apply for a temporary visa. If you want to come to Australia permanently, apply for a permanent visa. And if you no longer have a valid visa, you should leave Australia,” Burke said.
In remarks to the National Press Club in Canberra on Thursday, Burke insisted that immigration remains “fundamentally a strength” for Australia, but acknowledged that rules needed adjusting to ease pressure on housing.
“We need immigration to soften enough that housing has a chance to catch up,” he said, while stressing the housing shortage was not caused by migrants.
Burke said it was “simply demonstrably wrong” that his ruling center-left Labor party was beefing up its visa rules as a response to a surge in the polls by the far-right One Nation.
The hard-right party said this week that it would cut the number of temporary migrants by 750,000 over the next three years to give Australians “breathing space.”
The cost of living and immigration have ranked as some of voters’ most pressing concerns in recent polls.
