Australian student visa system abused by people smugglers
October 21 2009 by Liam Clifford
Australia is seeing a trend of people entering the country fraudulently on Australian student visas.
Unscrupulous landlords, employers and migration and
education agents are using Australian student visas to smuggle people into the
country, according to leading recruitment firm IDP Education
Australia.
Tony Pollack, chief executive of IDP, says there is a “chain
of exploitation” abusing the system through which people can move to Australia to study, in order to make money from vulnerable students.
He told The
Australia that students were conned with misrepresentative advice from agents,
and were often found part-time work in Australia and were placed in fraudulent
colleges to do token courses.
Pollack continued to claim that the problem
affected hundreds of students and created a “deep resentment” among the student
population who had been exploited.
Worryingly, The Australian’s own
research found that agents were lending prospective students the $12,000 they
needed in their bank accounts to apply for the Australian student visa.
They are
then often enrolled in bogus colleges owned by the agents themselves or by
relatives living in Australia. They are marked as attending even if they do not
show up to class.
Pollack says the offenders offering bogus student Australian visas must be tracked down and
brought to justice but the education minister Julia Gillard added that the
Australian government ultimately has no sovereign power over agents based in
other countries.
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