Latest news with #migrationpolicy
News.com.au
6 days ago
- Business
- News.com.au
Labor confirms international student cap will rise with focus on Southeast Asia
The international student cap in Australia will increase from next year with an extra 25,000 placements on offer for universities. The Albanese government has announced this week that 295,000 places, up from 270,000, will be available after it was forced to limit enrolments in 2024 due to record migration that led to a spike in home rental prices. Students from Southeast Asia will be prioritised in ongoing efforts to boost engagement with the region, a close strategic partner of Australia. Universities will receive the same allocation next year as they did in 2025 and can apply to have their allotment increased if they can prove domestic and international students have 'access to safe and secure housing' and increased engagement with Southeast Asia. International students moving from secondary schools in Australia to publicly-funded universities or TAFE are exempt from the cap. Education Minister Jason Clare said the international education sector is an 'incredibly important export' to Australia but the growth has to be managed to ensure its sustainability. 'International education doesn't just make us money, it makes us friends,' he said. 'This is about making sure international education grows in a way that supports students, universities and the national interest. 'The new planning level gives the sector certainty to continue delivering a high-quality educational experience to international students, while addressing national priorities.' Data from the Department of Home Affairs showed there were more than 257,000 student visa applications in 2024-25, with just over 234,000 granted. The Coalition had argued during the federal election for a limit of 240,000 international student placements, 30,000 less than Labor's policy.
RNZ News
6 days ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Australia lifts foreign student cap to 295,000 and prioritises Southeast Asia
Australia will raise its cap on foreign students by 9 percent to 295,000 next year. Photo: 123RF Australia will raise its cap on foreign students by 9 percent to 295,000 next year and prioritise applicants from Southeast Asia, the government said on Monday. Limits on places were announced last year as a way to rein in record migration that had contributed to a surge in housing prices, with 270,000 places made available for 2025. An additional 25,000 places were being granted in 2026 as the policy was successfully bringing down "out of control" international student numbers, the government said. "This is about making sure international education grows in a way that supports students, universities and the national interest," Education Minister Jason Clare said in a statement. Australia granted nearly 600,000 student visas in the 2023 financial year, as international students returned to the country in record numbers following Covid-19. Australia's largest cohorts of students come from China and India. As well as introducing the cap on numbers, the government also more than doubled the visa fee for foreign students in 2024 and pledged to close loopholes in rules that allowed them to continuously extend their stay. The government's measures to curb migration were "bearing fruit" and allowed for a modest increase in the cap in 2026, International Education Assistant Minister Julian Hill said. "The numbers were growing out of control," Hill told national broadcaster ABC. "The government has taken tough decisions over the last 12 months, not always loved by the sector, to get the numbers down and get them to a more sustainable footing." Roughly two-thirds of places will be allocated to universities and one-third to the vocational skills training sector. Larger, public universities would need to demonstrate domestic and international students had "access to safe and secure housing" and recruit more students from Southeast Asia to increase their individual allocations, the government said. It was important "for Australia's future soft power that we continue to bring the best and brightest from our (Southeast Asian) neighbours to have a bit of Australia with them for the rest of their life", Hill said. Relations with Southeast Asia have been a focus of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's Labor government as it looks to reduce Australia's economic dependence on China. Universities Australia welcomed the "sensible" increase in places. "Universities have called for growth in this critically important sector, and the government has honoured this," chief executive Luke Sheehy said. Australia has one of the highest shares of international students globally. The sector contributed more than AU$51 billion (NZ$55.87b) to the economy in 2024, the country's top services export. - Reuters
Telegraph
17-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
The cost of mass migration has been concealed from the public
Every now and again, news stories collide in a way that casts new light on an old problem. This week, it was the release of data that showed 1.3m foreign nationals claiming Universal Credit, and a Reform councillor begging for more visas for low-skill, low-wage migrants to keep care homes in her constituency open. British migration policy is covered with a veil of ignorance. If you try to find out what the costs of our approach actually are, you frequently find the data isn't collected, isn't analysed or isn't published. Yet the benefits are. They manifest in the Government facing lower pressure for wage rises in care homes, higher tax takes and higher aggregate growth. One way of looking at this is as incompetence: the state is carrying out a huge social and economic experiment without tracking the results. An alternative is to say that the Government doesn't want to know, because migration has become a way to push debts into the future without freaking out the bond markets. Britain's citizens are entitled to state care from cradle to grave, with most of the costs at the late end. This means the Government needs to pay out pensions, provide social care through local authorities with very little money and staff schools and hospitals. And it needs to do so at a budget price in order to avoid unpopular tax increases. There are only three ways it can do this. The first is to be ruthlessly efficient, invest in capital equipment, restructure organisations, and squeeze every last drop of effort out of public sector workers. Obviously, this is a non-starter. The second is to borrow money, rack up debts and push the cost into the future. This has been, and remains, a favoured option – with the Government running a deficit in all but 13 years since the end of the Second World War. But there are limits, and as Rachel Reeves has found, the bond markets are increasingly uneasy over the scale of UK spending. Which brings us to migration. Look at the composition and scale of the inflow over the last few years, and the impression is that of a state which is trying to hold down borrowing today by piling up spending obligations in the future. Migration is used to suppress the cost of services the Government pays for by circumventing demands for wage rises, and to ward off predictions of lower growth by pumping up workforce projections. Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts – and indeed the Government's fiscal rules – are based on short-term windows and targets, and in part on optimistic Treasury spending plans that might be politely described as works of creative fiction. Even very low-wage migration can be fiscally positive over these periods, or a slightly longer term. Most newcomers will be unable to claim benefits for a period of at least five years – the length of a typical OBR forecast window – and will make limited use of the NHS. Over this period, migration can be used to boost flagging growth figures, or restock the supply of workers in fields where the Government is desperate to avoid additional outlays. In the long run, the bills come due. Workers who stay in Britain become eligible for benefits. They have children who go to schools. They get old, they get sick and they retire. And the cost of providing their healthcare, pensions and social care begins to creep up. OBR modelling suggests that a low-wage migrant arriving at 25 will pose a net cost to Britain of about £187,000 by the time they hit 65. Should they live to 85, that cost rises to £769,000, and by the age of 90 it exceeds £1m. Even migrants earning average wages become less attractive – about a quarter of those aged 25 today will live to 95 or older, by which point their lifetime fiscal contribution has flipped to be heavily negative. The core of the problem is that the British state is very large. Unadjusted for household size, it's not until the 70th percentile of the population – an income of about £62,000 per year – that households become net contributors to the public finances. Everyone else is taking out more than they're putting in. And as a result, a good chunk of migration ends up simply adding to the net extractors in the long run. You can see this in action by looking at the history of the soon to be closed care worker visa. As the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has helpfully noted, between 2021 and the first quarter of 2024 roughly 144,000 visas were issued to the social care sector, which from 2022 benefited from a special scheme with a minimum salary of £20,480 as part of the Conservatives' commitment to 'a high-skilled, high-wage economy'. The long-term problem with this approach is obvious. The MAC itself has noted that workers on the health and care route – a figure including non-care workers – tended to be paid less than the UK average, and to bring large numbers of dependants. As a result, it estimated their household fiscal contributions at about £2,500 a year at present. Applying the OBR figures for low wage migration to the care workers, the implication is that those 144,000 visas – assuming the holder is young, and lives to the UK average of 85 years – will cost about £111bn. Then there are the dependants. The MAC analysis for all health and care workers used figures of roughly 0.5 adult dependants and 0.6 child dependants. If the adults also work in low-skilled professions, and the children live UK average lives, then they will probably cost another £64bn over their lifetimes. Liz Truss's mini-Budget went down in flames over £45bn in tax cuts. Now consider, briefly, how the bond markets would have reacted had Boris Johnson stood up in 2022 and announced that he intended to borrow an additional £175bn to cover the operation of social care for a few short years. Running these costs through migration rather than bonds keeps them off the books. It doesn't erase them entirely. And while healthcare and pension liabilities are less binding than debts that have crystallised, we've also seen just how hard it is to cut spending on these categories, and how rapidly spending is forecast to rise. When push comes to shove, a future government might struggle to choose between honouring debts and honouring promises to its population. A better way to resolve this would be to stop the future clash arising. The Government is already consulting on changes to Indefinite Leave to Remain. But there is no timetable for these changes in place, and this cohort of extremely expensive migrants will be eligible to start submitting claims in just two years from now. Speeding up this policy shift – or introducing lifetime restrictions on the eligibility of future cohorts who receive residence to rely on the welfare state – is a priority. The migration-debt trade should be dropped before it finally blows up.
Associated Press
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
Poland reinstates border controls with Germany and Lithuania to discourage asylum-seekers
SLUBICE, Poland (AP) — Poland reinstated border controls on Monday with neighboring Germany and Lithuania following similar German restrictions imposed earlier this year aimed at discouraging asylum-seekers. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose government recently survived a confidence vote in parliament, announced the restrictions last week. Pressure has been mounting after far-right groups in Poland have alleged Germany was transporting migrants into Polish territory after they reached Western Europe. The reinstated controls, which began overnight Sunday, will last for an initial period of 30 days, though authorities have not ruled out extending them, according to the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration. 'Illegal migration is simply a crime,' Polish Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said Sunday during a news conference. The Polish border with Lithuania, which stretches 104 kilometers (65 miles), will see checks in 13 locations. Poland's border with Germany, 467 kilometers (290 miles) long, will have controls at 52 crossing points. After taking office in May, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who made a tougher migration policy a pillar of his election campaign, ordered more police at the border and said some asylum-seekers trying to enter Europe's biggest economy would be turned away. Last week, Merz said Poland and Germany were in close contact to keep the impact of Germany's border controls 'as low as possible.' The European Union has a visa-free travel area, known as Schengen, that allows citizens of most member states to travel easily across borders for work and pleasure. Switzerland also belongs to Schengen although it is not an EU member. According to the EU, member states are allowed to temporarily reintroduce border controls in cases of a serious threat, like internal security. It says border controls should be applied as a last resort in exceptional situations, and must be limited in time. __ Associated Press videojournalist Rafal Niedzielski in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report. ___ Follow AP's global coverage of migration at
Al Arabiya
01-07-2025
- Business
- Al Arabiya
Poland Will Temporarily Reinstate Border Controls With Germany and Lithuania
Poland will temporarily reinstate border controls with neighboring Germany and Lithuania, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday. The decision comes after new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made a tougher migration policy a pillar of his election campaign in February. After he took office in May, Germany stationed more police at the border and said some asylum-seekers trying to enter Europe's biggest economy would be turned away. Even before that, Merz's predecessor in February had extended by six months the border checks it imposed on all its frontiers last fall as it attempted to cut the number of migrants arriving in the country. The European Union has a visa-free travel area known as Schengen that allows citizens of most member states to travel easily across borders for work and pleasure. Switzerland also belongs to Schengen, although it is not an EU member. According to the EU, member states are allowed to temporarily reintroduce border controls in cases of a serious threat, like internal security. It says border controls should be applied as a last resort in exceptional situations and must be limited in time. In the past, Tusk has repeatedly denounced Germany's temporary border measures as 'unacceptable.' Several of Germany's neighbors have recently expressed dismay at the enforced border controls by Berlin, saying it slows down cross-border traffic of daily commuters and threatens visa-free Schengen travel. Tusk said Tuesday the temporary measures will come into force on Monday, the Polish news agency PAP reported. Just before Tusk announced the move, Merz had told reporters at a press conference in Berlin that his government was in very close contact with the Polish government to keep the impact of Germany's border controls with Poland as low as possible.
