Abul Rizvi

Jan 15, 2025 | johnmenadue.com | Abul Rizvi

In his unofficial election policy launch this week, Peter Dutton re-announced his promise to cut the migration program and to cap overseas students at metropolitan universities. Without a hint of embarrassment, he also said he was a strong believer in the ‘rule of law’. His record shows he has little belief in the rules embodied in the Migration Act nor would he have the legal powers to implement these promises if elected.

Jan 13, 2025 | independentaustralia.net | Abul Rizvi

If the extraordinary November 2024 offshore student visa grants for the higher education sector continue, the Government will have an even bigger challenge than it already had to resolving Australia’s third student visa boom and reducing net migration to the Treasury forecasts. Australia has had two previous student visa booms. The first started in the late 1980s and took five to six years to fully address. The second started around 2006-07 and also took many years to address.

Jan 6, 2025 | independentaustralia.net | Abul Rizvi

After repeatedly missing its net migration forecasts in recent years by a very wide margin, in December 2024, Treasury’s Centre for Population provided an update of its net migration forecast. But can this now be believed? The key development is that net migration is forecast to fall to 257,400 in 2025-26 compared to Treasury’s belatedly updated forecast for 2024-25 of 341,700 (up between 50,000 and 130,000 from its original forecast).

Dec 22, 2024 | independentaustralia.net | Abul Rizvi

The Go8 lobby group has created a straw man argument over a new Ministerial Direction to limit their previously privileged order of processing over regional universities. To much fanfare, the Government has issued a new Ministerial Direction 111 on student visa processing to replace the previous Ministerial Direction 107. So what effect will it have and why is the Group of Eight (Go8) leading universities lobby group complaining so loudly? The DHA media release on this is HERE.

Dec 19, 2024 | independentaustralia.net | Abul Rizvi

Treasury has increased forecasts for Australia's net migration by 80,000 — an ambitious move in a strong labour market with employers still sponsoring new migrants and new visa initiatives that have to be accommodated, writes Dr Abul Rizvi. THE AUSTRALIAN TREASURY HAS RELENTED to the hard reality of data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on net permanent and long-term movements and how immigration policy works – at least for 2024-2025.