International Students in Australia... of Design & every other school, faculty or college.
The fact that International Students in Australia whose student visas are cancelled, can be remanded in detention for unspecified amounts of time, is another murky topic that actions in the Refugee Rights Movement in Australia are being focused on.
This is being blogged on the ChangeDesign site, as it follows up information communicated through our recent exhibition Designing Refuge: Design Protest & the Refugee Movement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“2,310 former student visa holders have been detained from 1 January 2001 to 22 July 2005.”
- DIMIA reply to Senate Estimates Qon 28 by Senator Carr.
this is an excerpt from “Attachment A- supplementary information for the submission to the senate inquiry into the migration act 1958 Re: ‘the Destention of International Students’”, submitted to the Senate Legal & Constitutional Committee by Michaela Rost on August 24 2005. see below email for weblink to document.
How many academics realise that with International students, who are the cash-cows of our economically rationalised universities, risk cancellation of their Student Visas & possible incarceration if they:
- work (volunteer or paid) more than 20 hours per week whilst uni is in session (condition 8105)
they are then sent the bill for being detained that they owe the Australian government and are not permitted to return to Australia for at least a period of 3 years.
- failure to fulfil course requirements which means less than 80% attendance or repeatedly unsatisfactory academic results. International students are not permitted to resit failed exams without paying up-front to resit the entire subject (and possibly needing to extend their visa).
(condition 8202).
Details of the seriousness of unsatisfactory academic results aren’t communicated to International Students. Scouring the net & reading through various documents I have found no mention of incarceration in prison-like facilities for unspecified periods of time, and the costs associated with such an ordeal…
What is the state of our ‘care of service’ in Australian Universities when we don’t even notice that our international students are being put in detention for their poor academic performance or trying to earn a living to be able to study?