Student visa: Crackdown on concurrent enrolments, higher financial thresholds; Health workforce certificates scrapped from 16 Sep 2023

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Changes to Australia’s international student visa program have begun with likely more on the way. Additionally, international medical graduate (IMGs) will no longer need their employer to obtain a health workforce certificate from 16 September 2023.

Student visa crackdown

The Minister for Home Affairs announced over the weekend a raft of measures to sure up the integrity of Australia’s student visa program. Education services is Australia’s fourth largest export.

The first is that concurrent enrolments, the ability for international students, those who hold a subclass 500 – Student visa, to be enrolled in more than one course of study, will no longer be possible if they have not completed at least 6 months of their principal course.

The ability to enrol international students is through the Provider Registration and International Student Management System (PRISMS), which is an online system accessible by education providers to facilitate issuing Certificates of Enrolment. Certificates of Enrolment are required to lodge a student visa application.

PRISMS, which is managed by the Department of Education, will bar the ability to add a concurrent enrolment until at least 6 months after the student visa holder’s principal course of study. This will not apply to international students who have been granted a release from their principal course.

The purpose of this is to stop international students from moving from one course to another. The integrity concern is that some are using this process to cease the original course for which they were granted a student visa, usually a higher education course, to move to a cheaper vocational course. There were 17,000 concurrent enrolments in the first half of 2023 compared to around 10,500 for the same period in 2019 and 2022 combined.

This change, while prudent, seems to not prevent those from waiting out the initial 6 months. A better approach to ensuring integrity would be to monitor enrolments for compliance with visa condition 8202. This visa condition requires students to: be enrolled in a full-time registered course, achieve satisfactory course progress and attendance, and maintain enrolment in a course at the same or higher AQF level for which they obtained their visa.

If a student visa holder’s new course is below the AQF level they were granted a visa, they must apply for, and be approved, a new student visa to avoid breaching this condition. The only exception to this is a drop from AQF level 10 (doctoral degree) to 9 (master’s degree). Changing from an AQF course to a non-AQF course also requires a new student visa.

Monitoring adverse changes to enrolled AQF levels and following through by issuing notices of intention to cancel visas, would be a significant disincentive to exploit the program. A cancelled student visa for breaching 8202 will result in a 3-year bar (public interest criterion 4013) for almost all temporary visas. The exception to this bar is difficult to satisfy.

The second change is that the evidence of financial capacity to study will increase by 17 per cent from 1 October 2023 from AUD 21,041 to AUD 24,505, which is the annual living costs for a primary applicant if they intend to stay in Australia for at least 12 months or more. It is expected that the annual living costs, annual school costs, and personal annual income of the primary applicant’s parent, spouse or de facto partner will also increase in proportion to their current amounts.

Evidence of financial capacity is necessary to show if requested or if a computer program requires an applicant to provide it. That computer program is the Document Checklist Tool available on the Department of Home Affairs website, and factors in the course of study, country of passport, and education provider. With the promise of additional scrutiny to high-risk cohorts, the computer program may be tweaked so more applicants will be required to provide financial evidence.

Lastly, education providers may not be spared this crackdown. Suspension certificates may be issued to high-risk education providers that will see them unable to enrol international students with factors considered such as application rates with fraudulent documents and provider refusal rates. This would hurt any affected education provider greatly given the profit margins of international students. Around 200 education providers have refusal rates higher than 50 per cent.

While refusal rates may be an indication of a “dodgy” college, this should not be the only factor to consider. Visa applications are outside the control of an education institution, and they would not advise on visa applications. More robust indications may be those who take on a greater share of concurrent enrolments, and where course completion rates are low, among other things.

Health workforce certificates abolished from 16 September 2023

The requirement for health workforce certificates and health workforce exemption certificates for employers to sponsor IMGs will be dropped from 16 September 2023 according to Home Affairs.

A health workforce certificate or health workforce exemption certificate, is required for the following occupations:

  • 253111 General Practitioner

  • 253112 Resident Medical Officer

  • 253999 Medical Practitioners (nec)

They apply to:

  • Subclass 482 Temporary Skills Shortage visas,

  • Subclass 494 Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (Provisional) visas,

  • Subclass 186 Employer Nomination Scheme visas, and

  • Subclass 187 Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme visas.

This was introduced to push more overseas-trained doctors to work in regional areas. Why this will be abolished is unclear, however, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) states there is and will continue to be a sustained shortage of GPs in Australia. It seems this shortage is not confined to just regional areas.

Applications for these certificates will continue to be processed until 13 September 2023.

This means that the visa occupation lists must be updated to remove the caveats in place for these occupations. This raises the prospect that further and more substantive changes to the occupation lists, such as adding or removing occupations, may also occur.