Beware a new scam involving Australia’s agricultural visa

For the past few weeks, my phone seemed like an information desk. There were messages arriving as soon as I woke up in the morning, phone calls from Bangladesh in the afternoon, and by night there were several more messages on Messenger and WhatsApp. Some are from people I know; others are complete strangers. Some ask on behalf of a nephew, while others are asking for themselves. The question is always essentially the same: “Brother, is Australia really issuing visas for agricultural work?” There is a restrained excitement in their voices, as if a genuine opportunity has finally arrived.

The same picture can be seen on social media. Some posts say, “Australia is fast-tracking visas for Bangladeshi agricultural workers,” while others claim that a visa can be obtained within 10–15 days without any experience or English-language certificate.

So let me make this clear at the outset: Many people, lured by flashy advertisements on social media, are beginning to believe that, as if by some magic wand, the doors of Australia’s vast farms have suddenly opened to Bangladeshis. But let me state this in the clearest and most unequivocal terms: There is no direct agricultural visa to Australia for Bangladeshis. The thriving business being run by these broker networks is, from beginning to end, a serious scam.

However, the rumour did not arise out of thin air. There is a real news story behind it, and brokers have seized on it. Starting in July this year, the Australian government slowed the processing of Working Holiday Maker visas for young people from overseas. At the same time, the harvest season was approaching.

According to the National Farmers’ Federation of Australia, Working Holiday Maker visa holders fill one in every seven jobs on farms. The slowdown in processing angered local farmers, and their organisations began lobbying in Canberra. Under pressure, Home Affairs and Immigration Minister Tony Burke announced at the National Press Club on September 17 that agriculture and fisheries would be added to the priority list for skilled-worker visa processing, and that first-year applications for Working Holiday Maker visas would once again be processed at the normal pace.

This is where the manipulation comes in. What was described in the Australian media as “faster visas for farms” became “agricultural visas for Bangladeshis” when the story reached Bangladesh. Yet the announcement did not open any new door; it referred only to people who were already eligible and were citizens of specified countries.

In the same speech, the minister said that there would now be a lottery for second-year Working Holiday Maker visas, with 45,000 places available; about 57,000 people had been eligible for this category last year. There will be only 5,000 places for third-year visas, compared with about 31,000 people in that category last year. In other words, Australia is not opening its doors, it is tightening the rules further. There is no reason to think that a country reducing the number of places available even to its existing visitors would suddenly fling open its farm gates to a new country.

So how do foreign workers actually get to Australian farms? The main route is the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility program, commonly known as “PALM.” Minister Burke himself has said that this is the main agricultural visa pathway. The program is open only to nine Pacific island countries and Timor-Leste: Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Workers can stay for up to nine months for seasonal work, or for one to four years under longer-term contracts. Workers are selected through government labour-sending agencies in those countries.

The most important point is stated on the program’s official website itself: no one needs to pay money or provide gifts to participate in it, and employers cover workers’ initial airfare costs. Just think about it: if the genuine program does not require applicants to pay money, then which program does the person sitting in Dhaka, Chattogram, or Khulna represent when they are demanding hundreds of thousands of taka in the name of an “agricultural visa”?

Brokers most commonly invoke the Working Holiday Maker visa. They claim that anyone between the ages of 18 and 30 can apply. This is only half true—and half-truths can be the most dangerous. This visa is available only to citizens of certain countries. There are two categories, Subclass 417 and Subclass 462; Bangladesh is on neither list.

Neighboring India was added to the list in 2024 under an arrangement between the two countries, and even then places are allocated through a lottery. Getting onto such a list involves years of negotiations between the two governments. No one gets a place on it through a broker’s recommendation.

This may raise the question: does that mean there are no legal pathways for Bangladeshis to come to Australia? Of course there are, but none offers a shortcut. There are student visas, skilled migration visas, and employer-sponsored work visas. The employer-sponsored temporary visa that came into effect in December 2024 is called the Skills in Demand visa (Subclass 482).

These pathways require an occupation on an approved list, evidence of skills, relevant work experience, English-language proficiency, and an eligible employer capable of sponsoring the worker in accordance with the law. There is simply no easy, direct pathway for bringing workers from Bangladesh to Australia for ordinary jobs such as fruit picking or farm cleaning. Moreover, the government is currently tightening immigration controls, so the rate of successful visa applications has also fallen considerably.

Checking whether a visa is genuine is not particularly difficult either. Once a visa is granted, the grant notice contains a reference number that can be verified through Australia’s official visa verification service, VEVO. Anyone providing immigration advice in Australia must be registered. If someone cannot provide the registration number of a registered migration professional, cannot identify the visa subclass and provide its details, or promises a “visa in 10 days,” the conversation should end right there.

New scams are emerging all the time, so there is no substitute for caution. In some cases, even if a visa appears in VEVO, additional verification and scrutiny may still be necessary.

On the other hand, the Bangladesh government also has an urgent role to play in preventing such fraud. The Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) and the Bangladesh High Commission in Canberra should regularly issue clear warnings to the public. In the longer term, diplomatic efforts could also be made to have Bangladesh added to the list of countries eligible for the Working Holiday Maker visa. However, the reality is that with Australia moving toward reducing immigration, such efforts may not produce results easily.

Every day, people who contact me through various channels to ask about this issue have one thing in common: hope. I do not like to shatter that hope. But accepting today’s harsh reality is far better than selling your land and handing over everything you own to a broker based on false promises. If someone comes along offering to sell you the key to a door that has never been opened, remember that the real key is already in your own hands, and that key is awareness: do not fall into the trap of fraud.

* Kawsar Khan is Prothom Alo’s Sydney correspondent and a registered migration adviser in Australia.

* The views expressed here are the author’s own.

* This article appeared in Prothom Alo Online and has been translatee by Ayesha Kabir for Prothom Alo English Online.