FEATURE: Australia losing appeal

Simon Lauder, Sally Sara and James Carleton

Last Updated: Thu, 7 Jan 2010 20:01:00 +1100

Indian interest in Australia as an education destination appears to be faltering, following Federal Immigration Department figures revealing that the number of Indians applying for student visas has fallen by 46 per cent in the past year.

At the same time, Australia has again found itself in a difficult position with India, after the stabbing death of a 21-year-old Indian graduate in the city of Melbourne reignited fears of racist attacks against foreign students.

The January 2 fatal attack on 21-year-old Nitin Garg prompted India's Ministry of External Affairs to issue an advisory, singling out Melbourne, in the eastern state of Victoria, as a street-crime hotspot and called on Indian students to be on alert.

The drop in Indian student visa applicants takes place against an overall decline in the total number of student visa applications from all countries, which has fallen by more than 20 per cent - a figure which will hurt Australia's $15 billion higher education sector.

Australia on defence

Amid growing public anger in India, Australia's High Commissioner Peter Varghese has conceded racism may have played a role in some of the attacks on Indian students in Australia, but says most were crimes of opportunity.

"The vast majority of cases have been examples of opportunistic urban crime," he said to the Indian media.

"In some cases, a small minority of cases, there would appear to be some racial motivation."

But Australia's Immigration Department spokesman Sandy Logan says claims of racism and violence against foreign students are not necessarily to blame for the dip in visa applications.

Tougher scrutiny

He says the Immigration Department has toughened its scrutiny of applications and has been rejecting a higher number of applications from India.

"It is correct to say that there has been a decline in the number of student visa applications coming from India," he said.

"There's also been a decline though, in the number of student visas applications that have been withdrawn by those applicants.

Mr Logan says last August, the Government announced strengthened checking for "high-risk segments of the student visa program."

"It was a targeted series of checks as a result of analysis which suggested the risk was most significant in India, Mauritius, Nepal, Brazil, Zimbabwe and Pakistan," he said.

Mr Logan is reluctant to speculate on the reasons for the dramatic decline in student visa applications from India.

"We are aware that there has been an effect across the board as a result of the global financial crisis," he said.

"But we were also expecting that with greater and more stringent integrity checks, the student visa application cohort from a number of these countries will drop."

Canada a draw

Sanmati Verma, a law student at Melbourne University, says she believes many Indian families are now turning their interest to education destinations such as New Zealand and Canada, which has led to a drop in applicants to Australia.

"what I've heard from discussion with my friends and fam back in india is the channels for travelling to canada and now New Zealand seem to be much more open then they used to be," she said.

In particular, "people have just been waiting for the doors to Canada to open so they can vote with their feet and redirect their children there for study."

While it's hard to predict how a large influx of India students would be greeted by Canada, Ms Verma says it's a positive sign that many of the cities are home to well-established and well-respected Indian communities.

"It is heartening that for example Punjabi is one of the acknowledged languages that Canada operates in, and you can drive through certain capital cities in Canada and see street signs translated into Punjabi."

Violence a factor

But those working in Australia's international education industry say the publicity of violent incidents involving foreign students cannot be ruled out as a factor in the drop in interest from overseas students.

"Of course you would expect there would be some sort of response to that," said Kathryn Richardson, the founder and director of International Education Consultants Australia, , says the publicity of violent incidents involving foreign students in Australia cannot be ruled out as a factor.

"I don't fear, at this stage, that it is something that will be in the long run a dramatic and constant change.
"But if the numbers fall off this year due partly to publicity or bad publicity, it probably wouldn't be surprising."

Opposing views

Opinions are divided within Australia's Indian community on whether Mr Garg's murder was a racist attack.

Vasan Srinivasan, president of the Federation of Indian Associations of Victoria, says the murder was not racially motivated and has travelled to India for a series of briefings with the media and community leaders.

He has accused Indian student leaders in Melbourne of inflaming the issue.

Mr Srinivasan "Each and every time anything happens in the state of Victoria, they immediately come up and say it's a racist attack on Indian students," he said.

Mr Srinivasan says some Indian media outlets are exaggerating the extent of racism in Australia.

India's advisory on Melbourne says acts of violence against Indians have often been accompanied by verbal abuse and fuelled by alcohol and drugs, and warns students not to travel alone at night or carry large amounts of cash.

It says while most Indian students have had a positive experience in Australia, assaults and robberies have been on the rise, despite the efforts of Victorian police.

In response to India's advisory, Australia's Acting Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Crean called for calm, saying Melbourne is not the only city in the world where attacks occur.

A spokesman for Mr Crean noted Melbourne has one of the lowest homicide rates in the world.

Acting Victoria Premier Rob Hulls says the state is a "friendly place to study".

"Whilst warnings are entirely a matter for the Indian government, everyone needs to realise that Melbourne is a welcoming, open place that certainly welcomes Indian students and welcomes students from all around the world," he said.

Calls for action

But there are calls for Australia to do more to back up such statements.

Ms Verma, the Melbourne University law student, says two reports issued by recent Government inquiries into Australia's international education industry fell short of providing concrete recommendations for improving the entire sector.

"There seems to be a focus on sort of lone ranger, dodgy operators that are out there that have absorbed the entire blame for what's happened with the international education sector, whereas I think there could have been more broad recommendations," she said.

She says the interim reports could have recommended devoting a percentage of funds generated from in student enrolments toward services for those students, or come up with guidelines for what a regulator of the international student industry would look like.

"That certainly hasn't been forthcoming, but perhaps the political pressure that's playing out right now might put those issues back on the agenda," she said.