Australia | Visa issuance reviewed

Visa issuance reviewed

Although the 2000/2001 change in Australia's visa issuance regulations affected some markets badly at the time, subsequent amendments to the regulations have ironed out a number of problems, and Tim Smith at the Australian Council for Private Education and Training (Acpet) believes that now the ''education industry has recovered'' again.

At International House Sydney, Timothy Eckenfels is also upbeat. ''Overall, we have received mostly positive comments from our agents about the acceptance rate and shortening of visa processing times in Brazil, Slovakia, Korea and China.''

Nevertheless, some difficulties remain, hampering market growth from a number of countries. ''Australia has a reputation as being a difficult place to enter for many markets and student visas are expensive and take too long to process,'' claims David Scott of The English Language Company Australia. ''We are losing out to countries such as New Zealand where visa processing is much easier and cheaper. This concerns us, particularly with new Eastern European markets opening up.''

China has also had problems with visas, according to a number of industry sources. ''The [Australian] embassy [in China] seems to time the process so that every student arrives one to two weeks late. The visas aren't denied, but it causes real problems for schools which don't allow late starts,'' says Bonnie Cothren at the Intensive English Language Institute, Flinders University.

However, some changes were introduced last year, which many schools hope will help speed up the visa issuance process in certain countries. Since July, a scheme has been in operation in China, India and Thailand whereby certain education agents can obtain an electronic visa for their clients and bypass the pre-visa assessment requirement.

However, problems remain among agents not eligible for this e-visa trial in the designated countries, and Eckenfels adds, ''While Thailand has been selected as an e-visa destination, agents are still complaining that it is taking six-to-eight weeks for a student visa to be issued.''

Cothren adds that the inability of most students to apply for an initial student visa on-shore has been a ''disaster''. She explains, ''Many students want to come on a visitor's visa and make sure that they have made a good choice of school before committing to the student visa. The result has been that our Korean students study for only two sessions and we have to turn them away even though they would like to study longer.''

On a more positive note, the government has extended working holiday (WH) visas to an increasing number of countries, which will have a positive impact on the industry. Among those countries on the WH visa list are France, Italy, Belgium and most recently, Taiwan. Sue Blundell at English Australia reports, ''Working holiday visas make up 11 per cent of students undertaking English language programmes in Australia. WH visas open up opportunities for a different profile of students.''