Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will pressure Australia to speed up Indian visa approvals during his visit to Melbourne later this week.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) confirmed Mr Modi would raise the issue with counterpart Anthony Albanese after he lands in Australia on Wednesday for the Australia-India Annual Leaders’ Summit.
Mr Albanese will join the Indian leader at a sold-out event called “Melbourne Meets Modi” at Marvel Stadium in Docklands on Thursday, and the pair will participate in a sports showcase event at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Mr Modi will also address business leaders at an India-Australia CEOs Forum during the three-day visit, and Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece hopes to show Mr Modi his plans to build a Little India precinct.
MEA Joint Secretary (Indo-Pacific) Vishwesh Negi was asked about Australia’s student visa caps and rising rejection rates during a special briefing about the visit on Friday.
“We are aware of the concerns of Indian students facing delays in approval of the student visa applications including various other aspects as part of the process of admission,” Mr Negi said.
“We continue to remain engaged with the Australian government to ensure that the visa process for Indian students does not reduce opportunities for genuine students and professionals to move from India to pursue their interests in Australia.
“We are engaged with Australia on this issue, and it will be part of the discussion between the leaders.”
Data from May showed student visa rejections for Indian applicants have risen from one in three in March 2024 to almost half this year, after visa rules were quietly tightened in January amid concerns over a fake Indian degree bust late last year.
During Mr Modi’s previous visit to Australia in 2023 he attended a booked-out event in Sydney where Indian immigrants gave him a rock star reception and Mr Albanese called him “the boss”, and visited at Sydney’s Little India in Harris Park where he unveiled a plaque.
The two countries then signed the Australia-India Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreement, which included Labor’s controversial Mobility Arrangement for Talented Early-professionals Scheme (MATES).
MATES allows thousands of Indian graduates or young professionals to live and work in Australia for two years, and then apply for permanent skilled visas.
On top of MATES, the deal allowed for five-year student visas for Indians, eight-year temporary work visas for Indian graduates, unlimited work rights for spouses, and three-month visitor visas for family or business purposes, with no caps on numbers.
Earlier in the same year, the Albanese government signed a pact called The Mechanism for Mutual Recognition of Qualifications, which forces Australia to recognise all Indian educational qualifications from secondary school through to the doctorate degree level, for both education and employment purposes.
Record-high immigration from India since Mr Albanese was elected in 2022 pushed the Indian-born resident population up to 971,000 as of June 30 last year, making them the largest foreign-born group for the first time in Australia’s history.
In 2024 it was estimated there were another 200,971 people born in Australia with Indian ancestry, and 113,947 who were born in other countries but have Indian ancestry.
Header image: Left right, Anthony Albanese and Narendra Modi meet at a summit, and at an event in Sydney in 2023 (PMO).
