Gita* arrived in Australia in September 2008 on a student visa to pursue a Bachelor of Business.
For the next eight years, she continued to live in Australia on a student visa and completed six courses ranging from a business course to an accounting course and then moving to a printing and graphic arts course.
In September 2016, she applied for a further student visa to pursue a Graduate Diploma of Management.
Her visa was rejected by the Department of Home Affairs who found Gita failed to demonstrate that she met the Genuine Temporary Entrant criteria.
Source: Reuters
"Genuine Temporary Entrant requirement is to ensure program used as intended"
According to the Home Affairs website, the genuine temporary entrant (GTE) requirement is an integrity measure to ensure the student visa program is used as intended and not as a way for international students to maintain ongoing residency in Australia.
“The GTE requirement provides a useful way to help identify those applicants who are using the student visa program for motives other than gaining a quality education. An applicant needs to show they are coming to Australia temporarily to gain a quality education,” the department says.
However, the GTE requirement does exclude those students who, after studying in Australia, go on to develop the skills required by the Australian labour market and apply to obtain permanent residence.
In Gita’s case, the department considered her immigration history and the benefit of her proposed course to her future, which she found was at a lower level to her previous studies.
The delegate found that Gita appeared to be using the student visa program to remain in Australia rather than to further her education as a genuine student and refused to grant her a student visa in October 2016.
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"Tribunal not persuaded about her incentive to return to India"
Gita applied for review with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal of Australia (AAT) who affirmed the Home Affairs’ delegate decision.
During the hearing, the tribunal heard that Gita’s career goal was to return to India to manage her father’s 15-year-old business.
The tribunal also found that Gita was married and her husband lived in India.
But the tribunal was concerned that she had not returned to India since 2012 to visit the business to assess whether her skills could be applied to its upkeep and management.
The tribunal also questioned the significance of her relationship with her husband whom she had visited only twice in nine years since arriving in Australia.
“On the basis of the amount of time spent away from India, and her infrequent visits to her husband and family, the tribunal was not persuaded that her family or husband acted as a significant incentive to return to India,” the tribunal said.
Gita then took the matter to the Federal Circuit Court of Australia who, despite acknowledging that she had complied with her visa conditions so far, still dismissed her appeal as it ‘fails to advance her case in any meaningful sense’.
