Shrinking opportunities to stay in Australia: What should Bangladeshis do now?

Immigration has now become one of the most heated issues in Australian politics and public discourse. If you walk along the streets of Sydney, Melbourne, or any other city, you will hear people talking mainly about two crises: skyrocketing housing rents and the severe cost of living.

For years, the frustration and political tensions surrounding these issues have increasingly been directed at immigrants. Against this backdrop, Australia’s Minister for Immigration and Home Affairs, Tony Burke, stood at the National Press Club in Canberra and announced an outline for a sweeping reform of the country’s immigration system.

Viewed from the ground in Sydney and through everyday experience, it is clear that the message coming from Canberra is not merely a routine administrative announcement.

On the one hand, it reflects a strong administrative push to close long-standing loopholes in the country’s immigration system; on the other, it represents a subtle political maneuver by the governing Labor government to maintain public support ahead of the upcoming federal election.

The new policy brings the biggest restrictions for international students and temporary migrants. Some of the key changes that are set to take effect directly are:

1. Bringing family members will no longer be allowed: Newly arriving international students will no longer be able to bring their spouses or children with them. The same rule will apply to graduate visas. Only researchers at the doctoral or PhD level will be exempt from this restriction. However, families who are already in Australia together will not be separated.

2. Closing loopholes for switching visas: Until now, many people who could not return home after completing their studies or meet the requirements for permanent residency (PR) would enroll in relatively lower-level, low-quality vocational or diploma courses to extend their visas. This practice of “visa hopping” is now being completely closed off.
Under the new rules, students will have to progress only to higher-level qualifications—for example, someone who completes a bachelor’s degree can move on to a master’s degree, but they will no longer be able to repeatedly drop down to lower-level diploma courses simply to maintain their visa status.

3. Closing the pathway to settlement through visitor visas: A mandatory “No Further Stay” condition is being added to tourist or visitor visas. As a result, the opportunity to come to Australia on a visitor visa and then apply onshore for a student or other visa will effectively come to an end.

4. Deportation of unlawful migrants: The government has announced the recruitment of 100 new officers for the Border Force and the use of an old quarantine facility in Melbourne to identify and rapidly remove approximately 77,000 people who remain in Australia after their valid visas have expired.

5. Changing priorities for skilled migration: To address Australia’s severe housing shortage, the government has decided to award construction-related technical skills the same number of points as higher university degrees. Priority will also be given to sectors facing shortages, such as healthcare, teaching, and agricultural labour.

Reform message or political calculation?

The key question now is: Is this genuinely an honest effort to close loopholes in the immigration system, or is it a political maneuver designed to get through the upcoming election?

The reality is that it is both.

From an administrative perspective, over the past two decades, beginning with the government of John Howard, Australia’s immigration system has been largely demand-driven. With market forces left to determine the outcome, the number of international students at universities and temporary workers across various sectors grew rapidly.

Today, temporary migrants account for around 16 percent of Australia’s working-age population. Their number has reached approximately three million. As a result, it is natural that housing and public services have come under intense pressure. From that perspective, tightening regulations to curb irregularities, the activities of unscrupulous education agents, and the business of low-quality, nominal colleges is, in one sense, a rational step.

However, when the timing and context of the announcement are taken into account, the political calculation behind it becomes particularly clear. For years, the far-right politician Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party has railed against immigrants and made significant gains in popularity by stoking white voters’ fears about the housing crisis. In opinion polls, the party had been moving ahead of the opposition coalition and was also taking votes away from the governing Labor Party. The opposition, too, had been putting pressure on the government by demanding a reduction in immigration.

Australia’s current Labour government was facing a dilemma. On the one hand, it did not want to undermine the economy, because if the country’s $54 billion international education sector collapsed, or if skilled workers failed to enter the construction and healthcare sectors, the broader economy would suffer severely.

The government therefore did not make any major new cuts to the overall migration intake. Instead, it turned the estimates announced in the May budget—245,000 for the current financial year and 225,000 for the following year—into stricter administrative controls. In other words, there was no actual reduction in the numbers; rather, the government’s main political objective was to reduce electoral risk by sending the public and One Nation-leaning voters the message that “we have the situation firmly under control.”

This new reality is a major blow to students and aspiring migrants from middle-class families in Bangladesh.

Every year, thousands of young people from Bangladesh move to Australia. Many families sell land or dip into their savings to send their children there, hoping that their sons or daughters will be able to work alongside their studies, cover their expenses, and eventually find some way to obtain permanent residency. With the new rules shutting down the option of bringing family members, married students will face significantly greater financial and emotional pressure. For many, coming to a country alone and covering sky-high tuition fees and living expenses will become extremely difficult.

In addition, some intermediary agencies in Dhaka and other cities had promoted attractive claims such as, “You can enter on a visitor visa and become a student,” or “Once you get into Australia, you can enroll in some private college, renew your visa, and stay.” The Australian government’s tougher measures have closed off these backdoor routes virtually overnight.

The protests by angry students on the streets of Sydney, as well as the anxiety that has emerged within the Bangladeshi community in Australia, are entirely understandable. However, rather than panicking, the wiser approach is to deal with this reality calmly and rationally.

First, stop falling into the agency trap: Sitting in Dhaka and believing an agent who says, “Let’s get to Australia by any means necessary; we’ll figure out the rest later,” is a self-destructive mindset that must be completely abandoned. The days of spending years caught up in lengthy visa-switching or appeal processes are over.

Second, make an honest assessment of academic ability and financial capacity: Australia has not closed its doors to higher education. Rather, it is seeking to create an environment for quality higher education. The door remains open for those with excellent academic records, strong English-language skills, and genuine financial capacity to cover the costs of their studies. Those whose primary objective is simply to work or live with their families would be better off not coming to Australia under the current rules.

Third, focus on in-demand fields: Those who ultimately want to settle in Australia need to consider the actual demands of the Australian labor market. Skilled migrants are still in strong demand in areas such as construction engineering, nursing, healthcare, specialized teaching, and technical professions. Therefore, rather than enrolling in generic business programs or nominal diploma courses, prospective students should plan higher education directly in professional fields that are on Australia’s priority lists.

Fourth, for those already in Australia: There is no rule requiring students who are already in the country to separate from their families. However, they should avoid enrolling in cheap courses based on dishonest advice, complete their mainstream studies on the strength of their own abilities, and obtain the qualifications needed to enter the workforce legally as soon as possible.

Immigration has now become a hard football game in Australian politics, with one side passing the ball toward the other. But even amid this political heat, the truth is that Australia can never completely shut down immigration. Its economy needs skilled people to remain sustainable. The path remains open for those who follow the rules and move forward with genuine skills and a clear plan. But there should now be no doubt about Canberra’s tough message: the days of surviving by exploiting loopholes are over.

* Kawsar Khan is the Sydney correspondent for Prothom Alo and an immigration lawyer
Email: kawsar.khan.au@gmail.com
* The opinion expressed here are solely those of the author.
* This article appeared in Prothom Alo online and has  been translated for Prothom Alo English Online