Indian PhD Students Say Long Australian Visa Delays Have Put Their Lives On Hold — Global Issues
Sydney, January 12 (IPS) – When Megha Jacob, who has applied for a PhD at many universities abroad, received an offer from the Department of Chemistry at the Australian National University to undertake the program. The PhD was fully funded, she was delighted and immediately accepted. Position.
It’s a January 2022. She applied for a visa and quit her job at Indian Institute of Technology Madras. A year later, she is still waiting for her visa to be processed.
Some international Indian students applying for PhD courses at top Australian universities have been waiting for their visas to be approved for months, some as long as two years. “The long delays have brought our lives to a halt. We seek clarity and a clear timeline so that we can plan our future,” said students from one of the WhatsApp groups formed by Indian PhD students. are facing delays in Australian visa processing.
These students allege that since Australia’s strict easing of COVID-19 restrictions, visa processing times for PhD students have increased. A Department of Home Affairs (DHA) spokesperson told IPS: “The average processing time for a student visa application was 18 days for the Postgraduate Research Area in November 2022. , the most recent processing time on the DHA website for 500 – Student Visa (subclass 500) The Graduate Studies Area shows 90 percent of applications processed in 10 months.
According to DHA, processing times will take some time to improve as the department processes older applications in the backlog. Processing times may vary depending on the applicant’s circumstances, including the time required to perform the necessary checks on supporting information provided by the applicant; and how long it takes to receive information from outside agencies. This is particularly relevant to health, character and national security requirements.
“I have submitted additional information, such as published research papers, but the last updated date on my visa application page on the DHA portal is still nine months away! I wonder if there is a technical glitch in the system or my application was missed.”
“When I called DHA last month, I was told that the waiting time for 90 percent of subscribers was nine months, and for the remaining 10 percent of subscribers, we didn’t know how long it would take. Perhaps, some of us are in that 10 percent. But we don’t know why or what puts our app in that category,” she added.
Many students in the WhatsApp group personally contacted DHA via email, complaints section or by phone, but they received only general responses. Deepak Chahal, who holds a master’s degree from Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology in Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala).
Chahal, who is registered as a PhD student at Macquarie Universityof the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics in December 2020, waited the past two years for his visa to be processed. He said: “I have started working remotely due to COVID-19 restrictions, but I cannot continue to work remotely as I need access to Australian observatories to collect data. data and a laboratory to analyze it. I spent two years doing the research, so giving it up now is not an option.”
For students in the fields of applied science, technology and engineering, working remotely is not an option as they require access to many resources – labs, equipment, data, fast internet connection and the availability of supervisors to supervise their experiments.
“We are losing precious research time because we don’t even know if our visa application will be successful after all this waiting. Our lives are in balance,” said a 26-year-old applicant from Mumbai (Maharashtra), applying to University of Sydney‘s School of Chemistry, who requested anonymity. He applied for his visa in August 2022, as his joining date is October 1st. He had to delay his research until his visa application was completed. socks.
India’s High Commissioner to Australia, Manpreet Vohra, told IPS, “Many Indian PhD students who have secured admission in various Australian universities have been waiting really long for their visas. This has delayed their research and, in some cases, also jeopardized the grants that had been guaranteed to them. We have regularly raised this issue with the Australian authorities and urged them to soon overcome the difficulties that the PhD students are facing.”
DHA data shows that the visa rate for the higher education sector for the period 2022-2023 is 76.5% as of 30 November 2022.
One glimmer of hope, these students say, is support from Australian universities and faculty. Dr Clement Canonne, Lecturer at the University of Sydney’s School of Computer Science, recently tweeted on his personal account: “My hope for 2023 is not to increase my PhD and Postgraduate Studies. learn. #Australian Visa processing delays are gone and to see not only the current backlog processed but also increased transparency and communication from @ausgov for candidates.”
There are 1608 Indian citizens Register for a PhD courses among 96,005 Indian international students registered across all education sectors as of October 2022, according to a spokesperson for the Australian Government Department of Education. International students from India in all fields of education contributed $3.729 billion to the Australian economy in the 2021-22 financial year.
Speaking personally and without expressing the university’s official position, Canonne told IPS, “Students from India’s top STEM institutes have many other options. When they, Chinese and European students, choose to work with us, it’s because of the right research. It’s really disappointing when these excellent students are accepted, we work hard to apply for funding and get it, but then we can’t use the money to do research for the purpose. Student visa applications are pending for months, even years.”
Department of Education data shows that in 2019, international students accounted for 61% of Higher Degree Studies students in engineering and related technologies and 57% in Information Technology.
“We chose Australia because it is a ‘perfect fit’ with the high ranking of Australian universities, our research professors, laboratory facilities and other resources, academic full scholarship and less time to complete a PhD in 3.5 years than Parkarsh Kumar from Ranchi (Jharkhand), who is enrolled in most other countries, said five years in most countries other family. UNSW SydneyDepartment of Materials Science.
He said, “I completed my master’s degree at National Taiwan University on a scholarship and got two job offers, but I turned it down because I wanted to do my PhD and one day become a professor. at an Indian institution. I was a role model in our family and community, but now people joke that don’t be like him because I’ve been sitting at home since January 2022 waiting for my visa application to be processed.”
Many of these students have left their jobs to pursue research, some going against the wishes of their parents and elders. Prolonged visa processing delays have put them under mental and financial stress. “If I applied for a job, I would be asked why I haven’t worked in the past 10 months. If I say it’s because I’m waiting for an Australian student visa, they’ll immediately refuse, saying there’s no certainty how long you’ll be working for us,” said Jacob, who self-isolated. close to society because even though her family is very supportive of her. , the social pressure of being constantly asked, “When are you going to Australia?” is too much for her.
Prolonged visa delays are causing some people to apply for PhDs in other countries or find jobs. The Group of Eight (Go8), representing Australia’s leading research-intensive universities, in its submission dated 16 December 2022, to the inquiry into Australia’s 2023-2024 Permanent Migration Program, archived Noting that “the visa backlog is not just about the number of applicants in the queue, but also about the critical expertise that Australia is missing out on or at risk of losing due to avoidable processing delays. ” It urges DHA to “consider ways to improve and streamline visa assessment processes to facilitate migration in areas of priority or strategic need.”
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