In the coming months, about 56,000 international students and 24,000 people with short-term travel and work visas will be refunded in Australia, which is the latest policy of the Australian federal government released on the 19th to attract a large number of people back to Australia to help it revitalize the economy and solve the serious shortage of workers.
Starting on Wednesday local time, overseas students, migrant workers and travellers arriving in Australia can apply for a refund fee, which applies to a student visa of $630 and a short-term visa of $495.
(Morrison said he would refund the visa fee and called on more people to return to Australia)
Announcing the measure on Wednesday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the plan was a "thank you" to students returning to Australia and "continuing to choose Australia to complete their studies", while also calling on migrant workers to follow suit and return to Australia. Morrison said: "We hope that everyone can return to Australia as soon as possible to fill the serious labour shortage, especially those who work in areas such as healthcare, aged care, etc., which will help us a lot." ”
For international students, is this policy a benefit or does it make everyone more uncertain? Is there a discount on tuition fees for international students during the pandemic? What was Morrison's attitude before and after? How long is this "benefit" expected to last? Xiao Huang and Lei Lei (pseudonyms), two Australian students, shared their experiences with Jiupai News.
[1] Morrison's attitude has changed: the former "expulsion" has become the current "calling"
Morrison's call for students and migrant workers to return to Australia stands in stark contrast to his attitude during the outbreak, when he said visa holders should leave if they could not support Australia financially. Xiao Huang returned to China when Morrison was "driving people away".
Huang is currently a graduate student at the University of Melbourne, and she is still one year away from graduation. During the period when Australia's borders were not open, she entered Australia through a "third country" in January 2020, and returned to China a semester later due to the outbreak of the epidemic in Australia, after which she has been taking Online Classes at the University of Melbourne.
During the pandemic, not only the president of the University of Melbourne, but also the presidents of Australian universities and education groups have been unhappy with the federal government, criticizing them for not taking any measures to return international students to Australia during the epidemic and repeatedly warning that Australia will lose market share in the lucrative field of studying abroad, losing to competitors such as the United Kingdom and Canada. During this period, the Australian education sector has been calling for international students to be allowed to return to Australia, but Morrison said "it needs to be considered".
(Speech by Morrison)
Morrison's ambiguous attitude made Xiao Huang once have the idea of withdrawing from school, Xiao Huang told the Nine Sect News reporter that just when she wanted to reapply for a British school, Morrison said that "the border will be opened, please wait for international students", xiao Huang, who had been in Australia for a semester at the time, considered that if she could return to Australia immediately, the loss would be only one or two semesters and luggage storage fees, so she began a long wait, during which she had also been paying luggage storage fees for the luggage left in Australia.
In the meantime, all kinds of news of being able to enter the country were confusing, which made her uneasy. It wasn't until January of this year that she waited for Morrison to officially announce the arrival of international students. She said that morrison's free student visa was of little significance compared to her "luggage storage fee" for more than a year, and it would be nice if she could reimburse her next accommodation and transportation expenses.
[2] There is more than one factor to consider when international students return to Australia
Phil Honeywood, chief executive of the Australian Association for International Education, said that although Australia announced the opening of its borders in January this year, the circuit breaker of flights and the new variant virus of Aumequeron have dispelled the idea of many international students returning to Australia, and many international students have chosen to study in other countries.
Lei Lei, a graduate student at the University of Sydney in Australia, who currently has one semester to graduate, said that the Academic Affairs Office of the University of Sydney had issued them a "Questionnaire on Willingness to Return to Australia" as early as the opening of the borders, and gave "students who meet the requirements of the visa fee exemption", but because his visa was already completed at the end of 2019, and the school's visa-free policy was only for 2020 visas, he thought he was going to renew his visa and received a surprise - Morrison's visa-free policy. But he said that the exemption from visa fees was not the most critical factor he considered.
(Eight Member Schools of Australia)
Australia's eight major groups said that in the past, due to the surge in new crown cases and the circuit breaker of flights, the rebate on tuition fees for international students was not enough to make international students have the idea of returning to Australia. Vicki Thomson, chief executive of the Australian Eight Alliance, said: "We have seen a large number of students postpone or even decide to withdraw from school, and the Australian University of Eight has also received a lot of new student emails asking for online learning, of course, there are also inquiry emails for students who want to return to school, but because there are not many flights during the epidemic and there are concerns about the surge in new crown cases in Australia, there are not many students who want to return to Australia." ”
Even with so many difficulties, Lei Lei still plans to return to Australia in February this year, because many of his classmates have arrived, and he said that the days of online classes at home are really uncomfortable, "only to communicate with students at the University of Sydney across the screen", and the students are scattered all over the country, and they can't communicate in their daily lives. Lei Lei told the Nine Sect News reporter that most of the time he was alone at home, taking classes, writing homework and completing exams.
(Morrison is speaking)
Lei Lei also told the reporter of Jiupai News that his classmates went to Australia because they did not want to go to Australia alone in online classes at home, compared to this policy, what attracted him more was the companionship of classmates at home and abroad and the remaining year of study experience that could communicate with teachers face-to-face. He said that the visa-free policy is just the icing on the cake, but with or without this policy, he will move the idea of returning to Australia.
(Melbourne will open a combination of online and offline curriculum model in the next semester)
Finance Minister Josh Frydenberg said the rebate scheme, which is expected to cost $55 million, would target 175,000 visa holders, including 150,000 students and 23,500 work and holidaymakers, who have already obtained Australian visas.
[3] Only 7 days of quarantine are required: the quarantine time for entering Australia is shortened again
According to foreign media reports, in order to allow more people to quickly return to work, Morrison relaxed the quarantine requirements for close contacts last week. But unions warn that the number of people infected could increase as a result of the reduction in quarantine times.
Mark Butler, a labor health spokesman, said that the policy of shortening the quarantine time and visa-free issued on the 19th local time was aimed at diverting people's attention from the federal government's failure to deal with the Omicron virus. During this period, COVID-19 kits in pharmacies were snapped up, and the shortage of ingredients in supermarkets was not well solved. During this period, the federal government issued a "visa-free fee" policy on the one hand to attract more "labor" and "economic power", on the other hand, to divert everyone's attention to epidemic prevention and control.
(Covid-19 self-test kits sold out in Australian stores)
When asked if they had considered nucleic acid testing in Australia, Xiaohuang and Lei Lei said that they were very sure, because they had asked the students who arrived in Australia where to buy the new crown kit. They said they would stock up on enough kits in case of emergency (in addition to the free nucleic acid testing provided by the government for close contacts, Australian citizens need to purchase their own COVID-19 kits for nucleic acid testing. ）
Although the time for mandatory quarantine has been shortened, Xiaohuang said that she still wants to stay in the student apartment "for a longer period of time" before going out, because the University of Melbourne still offers online courses in the next semester, so Xiaohuang said that her home isolation will not affect the curriculum. In addition, she said that the N95 masks she bought in China were enough for her to use in Australia for a while.
(Xiaohuang WeChat circle of friends has reached the new crown self-testing agent box purchased by Australian students)
It is understood that in addition to the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne, monash university, Australian national university, queensland and other students who return to Australia can return to school in the next semester and participate in some campus activities. Australian universities say details of returning to school next month are currently being finalized. At the same time, students' online learning options are also preserved.
(There are still online course options in the University of Melbourne course selection column)
Nine Pai News intern reporter Hong Zhixuan