They go there as students, end up as cheap labour

Anshu Tiwari, 22, from Ludhiana has been in Melbourne barely for a week, but already he realises he’s been suckered. “I’m here to do a diploma in computer arts and crafts, which I was told would support my ‘PR’ (permanent residence) application after I complete it. But after coming here, I realise it won’t be so easy,” he told DNA on a train to Epping, a northern suburb.

“Back in Ludhiana, I was also told (by education agents) that I could, while studying, get jobs that pay A$15 an hour (one A$ is about Rs 38.5), but there are no jobs to be had. I will now try getting a taxi driver’s licence or try other low-paying jobs.”

Tiwari doesn’t know it, but he is only one of tens of thousands of Indians from small-town Indian cities and towns who are the tiny cogs in a gigantic machinery that imports cheap blue-collar labour into Australia in the guise of providing education to overseas students and without any entitlement rights. The only allurement in most cases is a shot at ‘permanent residence’ in Australia after they complete the program (and subject to other conditions), for which families in India fork out huge amounts of money.

Recent racial attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and other Australian cities have served to refocus attention on these ‘schools for scandal’, which, in some cases, fake qualification requirements, breach immigration laws, and serve as fronts for the import of cheap labour masquerading as students.

The other pieces in the machinery are unscrupulous education agents and immigration touts — in India and Australia — who feed a booming education industry for international students. The A$15 billion industry is Australia’s third biggest service export sector — after export of coal and iron ore; of all the countries that constitute the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Australia accounts for nearly a fifth of all international students, the highest proportion.

After the education sector was opened up earlier this decade, most of these students registered with “registered training organisations” (RTOs), which are vocational education organisations that may be state-owned or private institutes. “Many of the private ‘colleges’ and ‘universities’ are one-or-two-room establishments with hundreds of ‘students’ and offering courses in, for instance, ‘haircare’ and ‘commercial cookery’,” Federation of Indian Students in Australia founder Gautam Gupta told DNA. “They provide two hours a week of ‘contact classes’, beyond which the students are on their own.”

But education authorities at the federal and state levels in Australia are beginning to acknowledge that corrupt training colleges are fleecing foreign students by breaching immigration and education laws and are bringing Brand Australian Education into disrepute. The regulator of education providers in Victoria state, of which Melbourne is the capital, has admitted to the existence of “dodgy operators”. Reputed Australian universities and colleges too have been pushing the government to clean up the sector.

Last week, a ministerial council on education agreed to carry out audits of education and training providers following allegations that some of them were in breach of regulations. The crackdown is expected to target small, private education providers that have been the focus of complaints.

Last month, The Age newspaper revealed that Gurvinder Singh of Melbourne, the marketing manager of a cookery training college, was accused of having demanded bribes from foreign students for an upgrade of their marks. Last year, the same paper disclosed similar scandals in other agencies, under which private colleges and migration agents were faking certificates of academic and ‘work experience’ requirements in exchange for cash.

The Immigration Department is known to be investigating 20 colleges in Melbourne for alleged breach of immigration laws. In March, offices of immigration agents who allegedly faked documents for international students were raided.

In the past three years, the number of Indian students has doubled, to about 100,000; typically, they pay about A$25,000-35,000 for a two-year program. Under immigration laws, students are permitted to work 20 hours a week, but since they get only a fraction of the minimum wage, they end up working more, in breach of immigration laws. But the government looks the other way

“It’s a masterstroke by the Australian government,” says Gupta. “If it had to import labourers to run taxis and clean offices, it would have to provide them support services — which come at a cost. Under this system, it not only gets cheap labour without providing entitlements, it makes the labourers pay to come as ‘students’. How good is that!”

Tiwari is already seeing his permanent residence dreams turn sour. “I came with A$1,500,” he said, “but I’m already down by half, and it appears that even after I complete the program, my chances of getting ‘PR’ are dim.” If things don’t work out, he says glumly, “I’ll have to go back to India.”