JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Border control is again a key campaign issue ahead of November's U.S. presidential election. Across the world, in Australia, it is, too, but it's international students who are at the center of a national migration debate. The Australian government is facing criticism of its plan to limit overseas student numbers as it seeks to contain migration. Kristina Kukolja reports from Melbourne.
KRISTINA KUKOLJA: In Australia, a national election may still be months away, but immigration is already a focus of policy debate as politicians like Michael Sukkar and Mehreen Faruqi argue in the Parliament.
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MICHAEL SUKKAR: Nine hundred thousand migrants compared to 265,000 homes. Where on Earth are those people going to live?
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MEHREEN FARUQI: We are in the midst of a housing and rental crisis, and it is not the fault of migrants.
KUKOLJA: The national government wants to cap overseas student numbers amid pressure to reduce migration and ease Australia's housing shortage. Education minister Jason Clare says the change will improve the quality of the education system, with overseas enrollment returning to near pre-pandemic levels.
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JASON CLARE: The overall number of international students starting a course next year will be set at 270,000.
KUKOLJA: Official data shows more than 800,000 international students were enrolled in Australia in the year to May. Abul Rizvi is a former deputy secretary of the Australian Immigration Department.
ABUL RIZVI: The number of overseas students at universities, and, in particular, the big universities in Australia, are at levels we've never seen before.
KUKOLJA: Rizvi says the government initially welcomed its predecessor's policies to recover student numbers lost during the COVID pandemic.
RIZVI: But once it looked like net migration was going to hit new records, there was political pressure for them to tighten, which they have now started to do in an increasingly panicky way.
KUKOLJA: Reactions have been swift, with some of Australia's largest universities warning critical jobs and research funding could be lost if revenue from overseas students drops due to the caps.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Thank you.
KUKOLJA: Students on campus are talking, too. Nearly half of all those enrolled at Melbourne University, one of Australia's most prestigious public universities, are from overseas.
ELDEN LEE: Since coming here, I've managed to kind of scrape together a life of my own here, making friends and even working at a university.
KUKOLJA: But postgraduate student Singaporean Elden Lee doubts the government's caps on overseas enrollments will address housing pressures.
LEE: It feels like a knee-jerk response to other issues because international students take a disproportionate amount of blame regarding the housing crisis.
KUKOLJA: A crisis the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, a government advisory body, says is also affected by other factors, like interest rates, inflation and labor shortages in the construction sector. Now, government data shows 15 public universities face cuts to international enrollment under the new policy. Some private education providers warn they could even be forced to close. There's concern, too, in business circles, says Philipp Ivanov, a senior fellow at Asia Society.
PHILIPP IVANOV: At the time when Australia is competing for talent for areas of economic growth, it's competing to demonstrate its soft power credentials. The signal that we're sending to our key partners in Asia is that Australia is not open for business.
KUKOLJA: Australia is one of the world's top markets for international students and education, one of its biggest export industries. Ivanov says the caps, which the government vows would not harm the international education sector, could hurt the economy.
IVANOV: If it goes ahead in the form and shape that it is now, it will have a significant impact in dozens of billions of dollars to the economy. At the time when economy is fragile, at the time when our other core exports, like iron ore - the prices for these exports are in decline.
KUKOLJA: The National Parliament must pass the international student caps for them to come into effect in January as planned, before the start of a new Australian academic year. For NPR News, I'm Kristina Kukolja in Melbourne.
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